Sunday, 15 February 2009
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Reverse Culture Shock
by Molly 
The idea of reverse culture shock is one that is taught at various study abroad seminars, and is discussed by avid travelers who have been away for months at a time. When you are on the road or getting used to another culure, the last thought on your mind is what it is going to be like for you when you get back home. For some, the thought of going home is more like the light at the end of the tunnel. For others, home brings about the end of a journey.
One of my close friends in college went away on a backpacking trip to Thailand. What he found was a very depressing reality that he never thought existed, and was unable to fully grasp. His time there was one of introspection and self evaluation. He backpacked across remote regions of the country, where he was able to see a very different way of life. On the plane ride home, he realized he was getting strange looks from fellow passengers, and realized the he looked aweful. He hadn't been able to shower in at least a week, and was sleeping amongt mules and yaks. But he had grown accostumed to this way of life during his time, so much so that he stopped noticing when his normal hygeine had fallen to a new low.
Once he got home, he was able to see where he lived in a new light. Coming from the desolate areas that he had seen to the nicely groomed streets and abundance of luxurious amenities all around him, he felt sickened by the life he lived. His friends welcomed him home, but he wasn't happy to see them. The way they lived and the ignorance they held to the world around them made him resent them. It wasn't that he didn't understand, he lived the same way they did before he had taken his trip. But now it all seemed so menial and the abundance of material things that his friends required to be happy angered him.
Nobody knew how to react to this newfound bitterness in our friend. We had not seen what he had seen, and we had not walked in his shoes. I understood a little more of where he was coming from because of my experiences overseas, but I had never felt reverse culture shock the way that he was feeling it. It took him almost a month to settle back into his old way of life. And even then, he would lash out at anyone who complained about not having enough or needed small material things to be happier. His experience had changed his outlook on life completely.
Have you ever experienced reverse culture shock? How did you deal with re-acclaimating yourself after your experience outside of your hometown?
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Comments (29)
Hola.. i don´t speak englis .. no me entero.. lo siento!!
i went to the DR for 6 days and came back and it was a reverse culture shock. it wasn't as shocking going from snow and cold and running hot water and technology to heat and cold showers and no technology. but coming home, it was like woah.
Yes, I have. It's enlightening and depressing at times. I constantly find myself sounding very condescending when people talk about materialistic things. And when it comes to friend, I've lost a lot of the commonalities we use to have. And the worst part is, sometimes I feel like I've lost a friend. Or I question why I was friends with this person in the first place.
I have experienced it many times over.
I don't think you ever completely reacclimate yourself to your former life
You've seen and experienced too much
You adjust your life because you realize more easily the difference between necessity and extravagance, what you need and what you don't.
The most you can do as far as other people are concerned is teach them. Tell them about the things you saw and the things you experienced. You can't expect them to understand.
I've noticed it with food. In American, we eat large meals with lots of grease and fat, and that seems so garish to me right now.
I totally experienced this when I came home from Germany two years ago. I never realized how many cars there are here and how inefficiently we use our land compared to European countries.
I've experienced it a few times. I served in the Army for 5 years, including 2 years in Iraq. Coming back from Iraq was difficult, to say the least, and the PTSD effects weren't the worst of it. What I saw was a contrast between the way people live there, in their poverty, versus the way people in America live, in their extravagence. The biggest eye opener? Obesity. Outside the US, you just don't see it, but you come home and it's everywhere.
I experienced all this again when I was able to take an educational tour of Israel for two weeks. Although the first thing I did when I returned home was to eat the most unkosher meal I could come up with, the same things flooded my mind from when I returned from Iraq.
Differences in culture aren't all bad though. I don't hate Americans because so many of us are obese, or whatever other things we might consider to be flaws. Every culture has it's virtues and it's vices. It's easy to see the virtues of another culture when your stay there isn't permanent, and those virtues will sharply contrast with the vices of wherever you might be coming from. However, America has it's virtues too, if you look for them, and remembering that helps to cope with reverse culture shock a great deal.
@comsciguy82@xanga - you are so right! I've lived in a foreign country for the last 8 years (UK) and its important to remember that just because other countries teach you things doesn't mean that your own country doesn't have its own benefits.
I get very cross with people who think they can condescend to other people because they have had the privilege to travel. Yes, you will learn things that you could only learn from travelling but everyone has their own unique experiences. I don't care what kind of life anyone has lived, but I sure hope he or she has learned something from it.
The first time I tried to go grocery shopping after living in Taiwan for a year and a half, I freaked out. I never managed to buy anything and I ran out of the store mumbling to myself, "There are too many choices".
In the end I never fully adjusted and returned to Asia for another four and a half years. This second return to the motherland has been going a lot better.
hey guy~
You add in my xanga
Do I really know you....
NVM, just say a HI to you!!
i think i was so prescient (having been taught to be aware of it) of reverse culture shock i actually limited what i did while there in order to NOT experience reverse culture shock upon my return home.. so i had a less-than-spectacular time there but had no trouble adjusting when i came back after a four months stay.
I handle reverse culture shock by learning to accept the culture and the people as they are.
omg, I hope he did not sit next to me on the plane. After he took a shower and a change of cloths, he would be a facinating person to talk with though.
Coming back home after studying abroad was one of the worst periods in my life. I was literally depressed. I left Beijing, this huge bustling city to come back to a small town. My friends hadn't changed and we were doing the exact same things we did before I left. The way I got out of it was to change things up, I rushed a co-ed fraternity, made new friends and got involved the community.
So to sum, up I made new and deeper connections to my home, and it became another adventure.
Why did he have to settle back into his old life?
During my sophomore year of college I moved to England for awhile.
Before I even left I could tell I'd go through severe reverse culture shock: I could spot an American from a mile away and was embarrassed by their behavior for the most part.
When I came home it took me almost a full year to adjust. I had gotten used to the quiet, polite English mannerisms, no-nonsense behavior, and global awareness.
Two of the hardest things I had to get used to again was people complaining in public and how we dress. In England if you're waiting too long in a line, you're quiet about it and just wait your turn (then again, the English love to queue). In America, you're bound to have that one person in line turn around and complain loudly to anyone within earshot about how long the wait is.
And to this day, I still can no longer bring myself to wear sweatpants in public anymore.
You don't have to go overseas to have culture or reverse culture shock. I live in Hawaii but go to school in the Midwest. It takes me a few weeks to get back to normal every single time, both going home and going to school.
Reverse culture shock is the whole point of traveling in the first place. To experience new things and get a different perspective in life.
People get culture shock b/c our minds were not prepared for change when they get to their destination. Hence, the shock. All part of traveling to a different world than we know.
I had my first cultural shock when I first moved to the States 14 years ago. And whenever I go back to visit Vietnam, I experience cultural shock. And whenever I return to the States - reversed cultural shock.
It's the same no matter where I go, France, Spain, Switzerland, England, Scotland, Ireland, Dominican Republic... cultural shock and reversed cultural shock.
But I love it - that's why I travel.
While I do understand your friend's reaction to the over-indulgence here in the States, I also know that eventually he will fall back COMPLETELY to the way he was before his trip. The appreciation of the conveniences here in the States will fade... unfortunately. His view will always be altered but his behavior will revert back - it's simply the way it is. I have had 2 serious near-death experiences, and while I was appreciative of life and opportunities and butterflies and rainbows after it, soon I was sucked back in to life - mundane.
Cultural shock and reverse cultural shock will fade. That's why I keep on traveling - I try to never let myself forget that feeling.
@psuedomattmatt@xanga - Well said.
I've had mild reverse culture shock. I came back from the Netherlands and it took me awhile to break myself of the urge to speak Dutch to everyone and was actually disappointed that most of the people I ran into in the US only spoke English. Nothing like what happened to your friend, though.
Yeah, but it wasn't from going abraod, it was from moving back to my state from another state. Before living somewhere else, I never noticed how people here all dress, talk and think about the same things.
i visited the amish once, boy did that change my perspective. they work their tails off!!!
I have not experienced that in another country, but I have simply by moving to different neighborhoods.
Sounds less like culture shock and more like opening his eyes.
Returning from Honduras when I was about fifteen, going on 16, after doing work for the Missions, and villages built for the children and mothers that had been abandoned during the floods, was much the same for me. Especially with how much hope I still had. I remember being strange to my patents especially.