It is normal for a human to express their emotions with specific “others”. However, as I started living in a foreign country alone four years ago, I started to fight the loneliness, as time passed, I got used to it gradually. As an international student living in the UK, I always find that it is common and important for me to cope with my emotions independently. So for this project, the change I want to see is for the improvement of international student social-belonging, helping them to cope with their emotions independently in order to get involved better in the unfamiliar environment. According to the survey results I have done with some of the international students, although most of them will share their emotions with someone else, there are 43.8% of them not sure about if they received any useful responses for helping them handle with their emotions while there are still 18.8% of them didn’t receive any help at all. Therefore, based on the result data, it’s clear to see that awareness of being independent on coping with emotions is important for international students, also helping with improving social-well being and happiness in their independent life.
Before I narrowed down the specific ideas for making the change, I have done some research from resources for knowledge and questionnaire about the general ideas of how emotions influence physical human health conditions to be the supportive point of view for how I find the importance of caring about the emotions. Neuroticism, defined as the tendency to experience negative emotions and display aggressive, hostile, or angry behavioral patterns, is well-known to be a risk factor for a range of physical health outcomes like cardiovascular disease, asthma, and hypertension. (Liji Thomas,2022) And according to the data from my questionnaire, 86.7% of people have physically felt bad or uncomfortable or have any other physiological response when they are coping with their negative emotions, especially anger and depression. However, it is also important to engage with how they feel individually especially when they have some personal situations when they come up with their emotional problems. So for my next possible step, I will try to take a step forward on the primary research to engage with their stories and feelings towards their emotions problems and also find out some organizations related to international students such as student union for more primary resources.
Lastly, I would like to point out an idea for the theme I would use in this project: “pocket” as a functional feature to create an emotional companion for people experiencing loneliness to express their emotions. It will become a trustworthy relationship between you and your pocket. The emotional companion helps us to empathize ourselves with the function of collecting our emotions, representing the other side of “us”.