I am sure this blog post will resonate with all college students (especially east halls). When people leave home, they tend to handle it differently. Some are happy that they get to explore, some look at it as a new chapter in life, and some just do not know how to handle it and get a certain feeling called homesickness. My entire life I always had the belief that homesickness was just an emotion that you were too far away from home and felt hopeless. This specifically is a huge factor when teenagers finally arrive on campus and their parents are not constantly beside them. In a way, that is being termed homesick, but it is also referenced as fear of independence. Kids do not know how to handle living by themselves and give up. That is one form of homesickness, but there is also such a disease as homesickness that leads to physical distraught.
There has been in depth studies that have gone into homesickness that are on record back from 1608. Homesickness was elaborated on by Elizabeth Van Brocklin from a study she researched in which a man traveled from Berne to Basel and noticed physical ailments. The surprising changes lead him to inference that these occurred since he left his home. The study has its flaws because of the time of the occurrence and maybe the man happened to come down with the flu. Apparently, when the man returned home because of a doctor’s advice and he immediately felt better.
This lead to the conclusion that homesickness is a physical disease. A study at the University of Michigan shows that there are various levels of homesickness due to the way people adjust to their absence of home. Personality plays a huge role in the physical illness and that is why different people get hit harder than others in how they are feeling. Its symptoms are dehydration, upset stomach, a sense of loneliness, and constant vomiting. People inherit this mindset that they are all alone with no direction in life and there is nowhere to go but down. This leads to failure and sickness which in end result leads to a mass amount of medical help.
This disease is all about adjustment. In my opinion, it is all in your head, which leads to overreaction which results in physical impairments that your mind has trouble creating a solution for. Homesickness is more of a disorder in your mind that plays you like a puppet. If someone leaves home with no sense of how to handle themselves, this can lead to emotional letdown. Some instances affect some people more than others. That is why some people survive in college atmospheres, and some do not.
Sources:
http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/08/16/homesickness.not.about.home/
http://elitedaily.com/life/culture/homesickness-is-real-sickness/1115415/
Photo URL:
http://jess-da-pest.blogspot.com/2010/06/homesick.html
http://lucysmilesaway.com/2014/04/10/feeling-homesick/
I can relate to this blog post! I got a little homesick at first, but I was able to get over it after I started meeting people. It makes sense to me that people will start to feel sick due to homesickness, since it’s very common for mental factors to affect a person physically. It reminded me of depression, and how it affects the body say.
I know that being homesick is not fun at all. Although I have gotten over it by now, during my first few weeks of college I had a very hard time being away from home. However, there are ways to conquer homesickness. One of these ways is to completely immerse yourself in your new surroundings, which is really is to do when living with on a campus with 1,000 clubs. Also, one I found shocking, is that it is possible to talk to your family and friends from home too much. Sometimes if you disconnect yourself, you may feel more motivation to go out and do something different or meet someone new.
I certainly didn’t expect to hear that being homesick could cause vomiting, that seems like a very extreme response to missing home. I’ve always associated being homesick with depression, which is obviously a physical disease, less than thinking of it as a physical disease of its own. I would also be curious as to what the differences are between being homesick and depressed, if any. While I knew being homesick had an effect on someone, I did not know it could be as extreme as you mentioned.
This blog post is extremely relatable! When I first got to Penn State over summer, I was extremely homesick. Actually, it felt more like sickness (as you explained above). I was sad, lethargic, and in general, just didn’t feel well. However, after a few weeks, it went away. I don’t completely agree with your idea that it is all in your head. I think a major part of it is time. No matter how hard one tries not to be homesick, they could still experience the symptoms. However, by just giving it time, people will tend to feel better.