As many of us know and have experienced, living in another country changes you forever. You will never be the same and will never see things the same way again. I mentioned this to a friend after having lived abroad for a year. She looked at me confused and responded, “Oh come on, don’t be so depressing!”
Yet, for those of us who have lived abroad, this is simply the way it is.
The first time I experienced what experts call “Reverse Culture Shock” was after returning home from a Year Abroad Program in Galway, Ireland. My home town, which before had given me a sense of comfort and belonging, upon returning seemed stifling and bereft of warmth. I moved about my days feeling that something was missing but I had no idea what it could be. I eventually came face to face with the startling reality that my home would never, ever again feel the same as it had before. I had sealed my fate the moment I had boarded that plane the year before.
I don’t think there is really any way to describe this feeling to those who haven’t experienced it themselves. It’s a little like free-falling. It feels as if we are floating aimlessly on restless waters. We feel distinctly ungrounded.
Although it is true that those initial feelings of strangeness have subsided, I still feel that something will never be the same even now, so many years later. What I constantly contend with now is a continual pull to go back; a pull to go back anywhere as long as it isn’t here. Yet when I am back there, I feel the pull to return here, the place I call home. It is as if I am living in a kind of suspended reality, never really here and never really there; restless.
The joy of having spent time in another country is that you slowly become a part of it and bit-by-bit one of its people. Our attention to detail is heightened and we make a concerted effort to understand and fit in until we become one with our new location. What I have seen and felt and heard and smelled in each of the places I have lived has made me who I am.
Some of the impacts of cultural differences we find after returning our home are:
Relationships
At least four types of relationship changes often occur during re-entry. The first is with those people who stayed at home while you were abroad. You’ll likely find some of these relationships to be what a friend of ours likes to call “low-maintenance” friendships. You can pick up right where you left off, even after being apart for months or years. Others are likely to be “high-maintenance” friendships, the kind in which after you are apart for a period of time you suddenly discover that you don’t have all that much in common any more. Recognising the difference can help make these changes easier to accept.
It’s also helpful to realise that while some of your low-maintenance friends will want to hear all about your overseas experiences—and the most empathetic of them may even be able to relate it to many of your stories — sometimes they just won’t “get it.” Some of your experience may need to be internalised, processed, and integrated into your own life in ways that make sense for you, without your ever being able to fully share them with anyone else. Don’t let this discourage you.
A second set of relationships that may change as you come home is with students who were abroad with you and who may be coming home with you to the same town or campus or community. These are people who actually can relate too much of what you experienced abroad, and they can be an invaluable source of support when you’re feeling down. Seek them out and share your feelings. When you no longer have the common experience of living, studying, or working together overseas, you might start to drift apart, too.
The next set of relationships that usually changes when you come home is with the people you grew close to while you were abroad and who didn’t come home with you. These may be host family members, classmates, housemates, or other friends, either from the host country, or from third countries. As much as you may try to stay in touch with them — and new technologies make this easier nowadays — it’s never quite the same as being in the same place at the same time. Knowing that you have friends in far corners of the globe who may visit you and who you can visit someday is exciting but not having them with you when you need them—especially when your friends at home can’t fully relate to everything that you experienced while you were abroad — can feel isolating and lonely.
The final sets of relationships to consider are the new ones. If you formed close ties while you were abroad, you have proven how good you are at forming new relationships. The ability to form new relationships is a skill that often grows from venturing out of your familiar environment. Now that you’re back, there are countless people out there just waiting to meet you, to learn from you, and to share their own lives with you. This is your chance to establish connections to new people and places.
Roots
People sometimes say they feel “rootless” when they come home. They no longer feel as attached to their home culture as they once were. Yet they also may never feel completely connected to a country where they haven’t grown up. As you live, study, work, and play in your community, you develop ever-deeper roots. We think of people who spend a long time living in one place as being “vertically-rooted.”
When you go abroad, you deliberately “uproot” yourself from the environment where you have always lived and, in the process, lose a lot of familiar reference points and distance yourself from your familiar support networks. At first your host country may present some challenges, but ideally you learn to adapt as you adjust to a new way of life. You meet new people, from many different backgrounds, and you form new relationships that act as your support network abroad. You become comfortable with this new environment, find your place in it.
We think of people who have lived in more than one place as being more “horizontally-rooted,” a trait that may be accompanied by a feeling of wanderlust as you realise how eager you are to explore new places. People who have had the experience of adapting to different ways of living develop skills that can enable them to adjust — plant their roots, if you will — in other new environments with increasing ease. This ability to feel almost at home anywhere — but not quite as totally rooted anywhere as you once did — can be at once exhilarating and frustrating.
Work
One student said: Sometimes people at home don’t appreciate your achievements... When you get back you really have problems at work. Nobody wants to accept the ideas you have learned.
If you are returning to your previous job or employer, you might find that, while you have been away, you have lost touch with important information or developments. At first, you may feel unable to contribute in meetings and conversations. In addition, your colleagues may be jealous or hostile, because you had an opportunity that was denied to them. They may be suspicious of your new skills and knowledge; and may think that the changes in the type of clothes you wear, the way you behave or the way you speak mean that you think you are better than them. Perhaps they will have unrealistic expectations of what you can achieve. In the beginning, you may not have much chance to use the skills that you worked so hard to develop during your study, because of lack of equipment or funding. You may also feel frustrated by different ways of working or procedures.
Economic and political conditions
You may find that your country has experienced economic problems and that it is difficult to buy things that you could find very easily. You may have to go without some of the conveniences you got used to. However, if your country’s economy has become very successful, you may find that familiar environments are now very different and that there are now new procedures and regulations. A different government may be in power and there may also be new political groups, so you may feel out of touch with politics.
Customs and ideas
When you come back to your home, you probably had to adapt to a number of cultural differences, which in time you came to take for granted. On returning home, you may find that it also takes time before the customs and ideas that were once so familiar to you in your everyday life seem normal again. Many areas could present challenges, such as:
• preparing and serving food
• the way people dress
• the way women and men are expected to behave
• administrative procedures
• attitudes to timekeeping
How can I prepare for reverse culture shock?
Of course, many students going home are looking forward to returning to their family, friends and a familiar way of life. However, as we have discussed, it can be difficult in the beginning to adapt to being back home. This can be made easier by knowing about reverse culture shock; understanding that you might experience it; and accepting that is a common and very normal reaction.
Keeping in touch
When you have returned to your own country, it can help to talk to others who have returned home after living in another culture.
