Reverse Culture Shock

[Include Quote:

Once the mind has been stretched by a new idea, it will never again return to its original size.
– Oliver Wendell Holmes]

Reverse Culture Shock describes the challenges you experience re-adjusting to your own culture once you’ve spent a significant amount of time abroad.

It’s mostly unexpected unless you’re well prepared for it – and most of us are not.  It’s also commonly regarded as much more challenging than adapting to a new culture.

It’s hard to imagine that coming home can be shocking.  That moving back to what you know well can be so uncomfortable and disturbing.

You could be feeling:

• Lonely because nobody around you understands your experience

• Alienated, disconnected and withdrawn from your own mainstream culture and social dynamics because you find it all uninteresting, strange, superficial or restrictive

• Out of place in your own culture and that you’re not part of the mainstream anywhere

• Weird, crazy, weak, and/or incompetent – because no one understands how you’ve changed, how you see things differently and why you can’t just “get over it”

• Misunderstood because you have a wider worldview than the people around you, so you may hesitate to say what you really think

• Difficulty expressing yourself to others, because your experience abroad has become such a big part of who you are
  

• Restless because you are more at home in the world than at home, you’re a wanderer, a global nomad, and your perception of what “home” means has changed

• Bored because the adventure and daily learning that comes with adapting to another way of life is over

• Directionless because you haven’t figured out how your experience abroad has changed you

• Stuck in the past, unable to move forward and you’re questioning how you want to live your life

• Confused because you keep comparing and contrasting your home culture with your adopted culture(s), and you constantly feel like you need to make a choice between them

• Unsure how to incorporate the new values, goals and priorities – and maybe even the new identity – you’ve picked up abroad into your current life

You may have Reverse Culture Shock for the first time – just returning from overseas.

Or you may be experiencing what I call “lingering” Reverse Culture Shock, having felt its effects over many years, without knowing what it is or how to manage it.  That’s my story.

The more immersed you were in another culture, the more intense your experience of Reverse Culture Shock may be.

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