Being homesick can not only be debilitating it can be so extreme as to lead to depression and suicide. Some people are so ill they cannot be travellers or if they are they cannot go anywhere for long. We tend to dismiss this as something to do with ‘feelings’ and many people having no such problems laugh it off, but the physiology of the human species always tells us something.
All animals have to learn about their immediate surroundings as quickly as they are able. The first place of birth is imprinted upon us all and many people who are taken to several places as babies always have a feeling of ‘needing’ a home. This imprinting not only aids survival as we grow up it gives us a feeling of security. We do not like to think that things are imprinted upon us, as we usually associate that with ducks, but we are animals and we work in the same way as other animals.
Homesickness is a terrible feeling of being away from the most secure place we know, and the how we deal with it depends on strength of character and how interested one is in difference, as opposed to how scared one is of it.