(Limassol, Cyprus)

The first thing I noticed when I arrived in London was how different it was from what I had imagined.

Coming from the dry, sunlit landscapes of Cyprus, I found it curious — almost unsettling — that people here were allowed to step freely on the grass. In Cyprus, where I had spent the last three years, there was mostly sand and pebbles… It’s funny how much one appreciates simple things like fresh grass when it’s so scarce.

And then, there was this London sky: not just days, but whole weeks passed before I caught a glimpse of its blue… up above, the sun always staying hidden. Green was everywhere, but so was grey. People kept mostly to themselves. Teenagers wore business-like suits. Everyone seemed so tall. I felt small, out of place — vulnerable in an unfamiliar world.

It reminded me, oddly enough, of another time: when I first left home to go to university at 18. Back then, I moved to Bucharest — the largest city in Romania — from a quiet little town with just one main street. Bucharest had trams, buses, underground trains, theatres, galleries, entire neighbourhoods to get lost in. It was exhilarating. And overwhelming. London, in my mid-twenties, revived that same sense of awe — and disorientation.

As much as these were symptoms of entering a new place, according to Carl Jung, I was also undergoing the inner shifts expected at that stage of life. In Modern Man in Search of a Soul, Jung writes that childhood psychic life is more “primitive,” driven by instincts, whereas the psychic life of the civilized adult is full of problems:

“We cannot even think of it except in terms of problems. Our psychic processes are made up to a large extent of reflections, doubts and experiments, all of which are almost completely foreign to the unconscious, instinctive mind of primitive man. It is the growth of consciousness which we must thank for the existence of problems; they are the dubious gift of civilization. […] For consciousness is now called upon to do that which nature has always done for her children — namely, to give certain, unquestionable and unequivocal decision.”

As adults, we are happy to turn our faces away from problems, ignore them, put them aside somewhere. We long to have simple lives, certain and smooth. But Jung argues that the more we ignore a problem, the more our psyche demands a higher level of consciousness to bring us the certainty and clarity we need.

A recent study estimated that we think on an average of 6,000 thoughts in a day. Others claim it’s closer to 60,000! But, where are all these thoughts coming from? Or, as Jung asks: In what way does our consciousness arise?

He admits that nobody knows for sure, but we can observe its early stages. In early childhood, there’s a shift from not-knowing to knowing — for instance from recognising mother’s face or learning the first words. This stage is later followed by ‘youth’, which for Jung stretches from adolescence to mid-thirties or early forties.

In this second stage, we face what he calls “an almost inexhaustible variety of individual problems”, often rooted in what he describes as “a more or less patent clinging to the childhood level of consciousness”:

“Something in us wishes to remain a child; to be unconscious, or, at most, conscious only of the ego; to reject everything foreign, or at least subject it to our will”

The problem-free state of the unconscious child has its appeal. No wonder adolescence — and the transition into adulthood — can feel so difficult. It’s a slow letting go of the safety that comes with dependence, and a gradual learning to live with the uncertainty that accompanies autonomy.

Reflecting on the experience of young people navigating unfamiliar worlds, psychotherapist and educator Nick Luxmoore writes in Listening to Young People:

“At times young people feel themselves to be strangers in the world and at other times they see strangers and strangeness all around. ‘Strange’ is the word they use hint at a whole area of experience and wonder. Strange is familiar yet somehow different. Strange is feeling alone even though there are other people around. Strange is the way things don’t make sense like they used to. […]

‘Strange’ is how the world looks when we peep out from behind Mum. The big world says ‘Boo!’ — which is really scary but always exciting. So we peep out again.”

And that’s exactly how it felt, arriving first in Bucharest and later in London: strange, exciting, frightening. A slow process of peering out, again and again, until the unknown began to soften.

In Jungian terms, the foreigner (or outsider) often represents what is unfamiliar or repressed, both within ourselves and our culture. When we encounter someone who seems different, we may unconsciously project onto them parts of ourselves we’ve yet to acknowledge:

“The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.”

The foreigner, then, doesn’t just challenge our external world — they stir something within us. They hold up a mirror to the parts we haven’t yet understood or accepted, evoking both fear and fascination. Sometimes, they can carry seeds of transformation, as if bearing knowledge from a deeper, hidden self.

Julia Kristeva explores this duality in Strangers to Ourselves, drawing from her own migration from Bulgaria to France. She writes not only from observation but from lived experience — framing the foreigner as both external and internal. For Kristeva too, our discomfort with others often reflects the disowned strangeness within. To truly meet the other, we must first meet ourselves.

“The foreigner is within us. And when we flee from or struggle against the foreigner, we are fighting our unconscious — that ‘improper’ facet of our impossible ‘own and proper.’ Delicately, analytically, Freud does not speak of foreigners: he teaches us how to detect foreignness in ourselves. That is perhaps the only way not to hound it outside of us.”

Perhaps the real work of growing — whether moving cities, leaving home, or simply encountering someone unlike ourselves — is learning to stay present with what feels strange. To resist the urge to flee or to label, and instead pause long enough to wonder: What part of me is being stirred here?

Whether the foreigner stands across from us or resides within, recognising them may be the beginning of a more honest and generous way of being in the world.