The Brutality of Coming Home (Surviving the Death Pangs of Reverse Culture Shock)
The Core Reality of Culture Shock
Culture Shock is Real.
In fact, it is one of the most difficult pieces of the “coming home” experience for expats when returning to where they’re from after living abroad. It is a ruthless, persistent enemy that comes for us all. No matter what took us galivanting across the world in the first place: Whether vocation, education, or the simple love of experiencing other cultures and places, the return from our global adventure inevitably creates a potent mix of joy and pain. Those “pains” that creep into (and sometimes sucker-punch us in) our thoughts, emotions, and bodies, are precisely related to that evil piece of luggage we bring back with us that we call, “Reverse Culture Shock.”
Now, I know my fellow interculturalist nerds who will read this want some precision and technicality, so for a moment, let me give you some at least moderately respectable descriptions of culture shock and reverse culture shock:
“…if you see yourself in those words- feeling exhaustion, grief, and desperation- it isn’t because you are weaker than the rest of us, or because you are a failure; It is because you are a human. Period.”
Defining Culture Shock
Culture Shock is essentially a disorienting, confusing, period of acute anxiety a person experiences after moving into a new culture that is foreign to them. Some marks of culture shock follow:
Key Characteristics of Culture Shock:
The Initial Excitement: Upon arrival, everything around you is new and different, and the “new” feels exciting at first.
The Dip: Excitement soon gives way to frustration at various levels as tension grows between what is culturally “normal” to us and the different ways things happen in the new place we are in.
The Impact: Culture shock is real and very hard. Some people who are unprepared for the challenges of it end up leaving their journey abroad earlier than planned, or simply suffer through it in damaging ways. This can take a toll on us emotionally, mentally, spiritually, physically, relationally, vocationally, and more.
Defining Reverse Culture Shock
If culture shock is hard, what in the world is, “reverse culture shock?”
One definition of it is,
“A feeling of disorientation and alienation experienced upon returning to one’s home country and realizing that both the self and the home environment have changed in the interim” (Gullahorn; Gullahorn. Expanding on the W-Curve Model. 1963/66).
Let’s really briefly explore some of the marks of experiencing reverse culture shock:
The Collision of Re-entry:
Disappointment Hits: Expectations about what returning “home” should look like come colliding with a very different reality in disappointing ways.
Initial Excitement Fades: There are often really exciting things about returning home (for me, eating In N Out, seeing old friends, etc.). And yet, that excitement then drifts, sometimes because forgotten frustrations related to your home culture come back into view (perhaps politics, personality conflicts, and so on).
Change Felt: Compounding that layer of friction is the realization that both you and your home culture have changed. You are not the same person who left, and your home culture is not the same exact place you left (once favorite restaurants closed, new housing developments, etc.).
Alienation: The result is that you no longer feel like you “fit” in the place or even with the people of your home culture like you once did.
Apathy: Add to that the difficult reality that many people you return to are only moderately interested at best (sometimes not at all) in what have been for you dramatically life-changing and heart-expanding experiences abroad, and the recipe for frustration is really getting flavorful.
You’re Not a Wimp: Validate & Process Your Feelings
If all of that sounds like a lot to handle, it is.
And if you have recently transitioned home and see yourself in those words- feeling exhaustion, grief, and desperation- it isn’t because you are weaker than the rest of us, or because you are a failure; It is because you are a human. Period.
Personally, I have absolutely experienced all those elements of reverse culture shock. They have been my unwanted companion at numerous times in my life as I’ve faced the challenge of returning to my home culture in the United States after spending significant amounts of time living abroad. It is never as easy as I want it to be.
It is important to talk about and understand the dynamics of what this can look like if you are planning to move interculturally, return home soon, or know someone who is. One of the challenges in preparing for the reverse culture shock experience is that, in intercultural competence education and discussions, a lot of emphasis is put on the shock and stress challenges of going to live in a foreign context, but not on transitioning back and finding stability once you come home.
In the rest of this article, I want to share a few ways reverse culture shock has hit me hard personally, and some very simple, practical ways to survive it and thrive beyond it.
To read the full article and learn a Four-step Survival Framework for thriving beyond reverse culture shock, jump over to our Interculturing publication!
