How to prepare for reverse culture shock

by Gadling Staff on

You’re planning your return from an extended vacation. Or, you’re coming back to live in an old, familiar place after a long stint working abroad. Either way, you’ll need to prepare mentally for your return home.

Although you may have grown up in this old familiar place, returning home can be a real jolt to the system. After all, you’ve grown accustomed to the lifestyle, attitudes, and perspective of some new culture. Now, this new culture is in your blood; you’re a new person now. Remember how different the new culture felt when you first arrived — the “culture shock” you experienced? Believe it or not, returning to your old stomping grounds can be just as rattling. This is known as “reverse culture shock.”

For weeks — maybe months! — you’ll be experiencing your home base with fresh perspective; seeing old friends who may not understand what you’ve seen and done; and navigating a (potentially) unfamiliar culture of consumerism. It can be stressful. Here are some tips for making the adjustment and learning to love your new, old home again.

Don’t expect your friends and family to want all the delicious details of your trip.
More often than not, they’ll ask, “Did you have a good time?” or “Was it what you’d hoped it would be?”. They’ll smile and nod and be happy to hear you reply, “Yes!” And … that’s it. No more.

So don’t plan the two-hour slide show, and make peace with the fact that even your closest friends and family may just not care about the time you found yourself on horseback roping cattle with Mexican cowboys or schmoozing on the Jungfrau ski slopes with Swiss business clients. You may have had a life-changing experience abroad, but back home, people were living their lives and enduring the same ol’ same ol’ you got to escape. So don’t rub it in. (To be fair, it may not be that they don’t care. It may be that, at home in their normal lives, they just can’t understand the massive, life-changing experience you enjoyed.)

Find some friends who can share your new, wider world perspective.
Seek out expats living in your area, or reach out to others who have also spent significant time in other cultures. There’s a good chance those folks will want to hear your stories — and they might even agree to look at your photos.

Get on Facebook.
Find your friends from abroad. Seeing photos and daily updates of friends you’ve left behind will help you feel connected to the life you left behind.

Get off Facebook.
However, resist the urge to simply hang on the Internet. Make plans that involve face-to-face contact, actual food, and real experiences. The best way to re-kindle the flame for the culture you left behind is to embrace it. Give it a hug. So make a dinner reservation, buy a movie ticket, and leave the house.

Make shopping lists.
Rediscovering a developed nation’s shopping experience can leave a person breathless. Nowhere in the world are there as many choices, stores, and products. After buying at local boutiques, green grocers, butchers, and bakeries, a developed nation’s mega-retailer or grocery store may feel overwhelming. The Halloween costumes for cats may be captivating, but you’ll never get out of there if you don’t stay focused and buy what you came for.


Keep up your language skills.
Get the foreign language channels on your cable service and watch Sponge Bob in Spanish. Don’t select English when you watch your DVDs. Call friends, speak to shopkeepers, read foreign magazines. Unless you make the effort to use your language skills, you’ll lose them. And down the road, you’ll feel really bad about that.

Incorporate foreign customs into your lifestyle.
Since most Western holidays have become consumer-driven events, many holiday traditions of foreign cultures can feel like a breath of fresh air.

Instead of spending an arm and a leg on artificial amputated arms and legs for Halloween, why not create a “Day of the Dead Altar” with fruits and flowers, and photos of relatives who’ve passed on? Alternatively, make a Dragon head costume and have dim sum for New Year’s Eve.

Get involved with a cause.
Westerners can be among the most generous and proactive members of the social and environmental activism movements. There’s no better way to feel good about your country than to be a part of an effort that makes the world a better place — for animals or for human beings, even for rivers, mountains, and forests.

Make plans to visit the country you left behind.
Investigate house swap websites or invite friends to trade your apartment or house so you can more easily afford to travel. If you know you have plans for a visit, coming back home may not feel so final.

Be careful what you eat.
In the Western world, high fructose corn syrup is in soft drinks, spaghetti sauces, and even sandwich breads. It’s easy to gain a few pounds after being away for so long, unless you check labels and look for hidden calories. And, while your first stop after the airport may be McDonald’s to eat some french fries, you don’t really need to “super size it.”

If you’ve learned anything by living in a foreign country, its that you can get by eating and buying and having less. Remember how happy you were with less. Less is more.

Returning home after a long experience abroad can be jarring initially. However, with a little patience, you’ll feel comfortable in your new, old home again — and richer for having explored other cultures.

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A Canadian in Beijing: Reverse Culture Shock

by Ember Swift on

(This will be my last blog for this travel series. See the end of this blog for where to read my blogs in the future.)

I have been back in Canada for just a few days and the music touring has launched in full force. Only two full days at home after three months away is not enough to recover and balance the reverse culture shock – a legitimate phenomenon that I can personally attest to – and even though I am ultimately responsible for deciding my fate, I’m currently shaking my head at my scheduling insanity.

I’m writing this from the Vancouver International airport where I am waiting for our transfer flight to Castlegar, BC where we will be performing at a Peace & Justice Festival called “On Our Way Home Reunion.” We will only be there for less than twelve hours, however, because we are expected in Illinois the next day at the National Women’s Music Festival and no connecting flights would get us there in time. That means that we have to drive all night back to Vancouver (about six hours directly following our performance) in order catch a morning flight to Chicago. This flight will then transfer to Bloomington, IN where we will arrive tomorrow at approximately three p.m. central time to be picked up and driven to Normal, IL. We perform tomorrow night and then drive back to Toronto on Sunday (about 11 hours) and then back to my home in the country on Monday (5 hours).

I am the one who approves or declines performance offers. The main problem is that I do this at least six months in advance of the actual travel time and I often imagine myself capable of anything when it’s so far away! So, here I am wondering what poison I was smoking when I decided that this was a good idea.

I am already exhausted from the twelve-hour, China-Canada jet lag not to mention the emotional adjustment to leaving Beijing and returning to my life here in Canada. Top that off with an early morning of five a.m. to catch my first flight out of Toronto and I’m wondering how we will ever make it back to Vancouver tonight without copious amounts of caffeine and some serious injections of good humour?

And people ask us how we stay healthy on the road…

My answer is usually “by staying home.”

On the flight over here from Ontario, I opened the in-flight magazine and flipped directly to a picture of the entrance to the Forbidden City and Chairman Mao’s face (top image). My heart nearly stopped when it fell open to that picture. That image feels so far away and here it was, staring at me from the pages of a magazine, smooth under my fingertips.

Just outside the bathrooms in this spacious waiting area in the Vancouver Domestic Airport (I actually miss the squatters!) are the computers that list the flights. I was walking briskly towards relief and then almost tripped over the friction that suddenly gripped my sneakers to the carpet and stopped me dead in my tracks. It was as though my feet read the screen before I did.

Beijing flight. 12:30pm. Air Canada #29.

My stomach, already heavy from the food I’m not used to – french fries and salad and a veggie burger that had too much relish and mustard on it were all squishing in my now non-western stomach – felt like it was going to lose my whole lunch. I’ve been feeling that way for the past two days, actually. I was convinced that it was the kind of wheat that I’ve been eating and I vowed to avoid wheat today. My burger was without the bun, but the nausea persists. And then, just the sight of the word “Beijing” and I felt sure I was going to wretch.

On the plane, I could hear a couple a few rows up speaking Mandarin and I was craving that perfect moment to interrupt, to pass them by and say something – anything – to have just to have another conversation in this beautiful language. I have felt like part of my ears have been plugged since I arrived home because all I can hear is English and French. Where’s the song of Mandarin? Where’s that language that has become like a friend, like music lilting through my head, like the perfect companion for my brain as it’s constantly challenging me, pushing me, waking me up and forcing me to think. There’s something so dull about English and French. Hearing just these languages (and mostly English) just awakes more of the despair at being separated from Mandarin.

For instance, as I was speaking French with my friend from Quebec two nights ago, I felt more and more sad. The words in Mandarin kept coming to me first and I had to translate them into the French words. It just feels like Mandarin is trying to come out and I was keeping it locked up inside, against its will but for its own good, of course.

Because no one understands here.

What a stupid thing to think while sitting in Vancouver, BC! Of all the cities to write that sentence in, this is not one of them. There is a huge Chinese population here…

Only, they’re not sitting across from me in this little café, or sitting beside me on the plane, or standing behind the counters at the cafes waiting for my order. At least, not on this particular path that I’m on towards Castlegar in the interior of this province (here’s a picture of the tiny plane we took to get there) and the festivals that will fill my weekend with music and other challenges.

I’m clearly flipping between stability and complete meltdown here. Half of my sentences are crying out and the other half are quietly comforting. The overall truth is somewhere in the middle. On the outside, I’m going to be fine. Maybe a little tired, but fine. On the inside, I’m going to be sad. Maybe a little happy too, but sad.

There is such loss and such gain. I have returned to my amazing life: my loved ones, my home, my music, the stage, my band… and I have lost my beloved China (until I return) and Mandarin (until I build more contacts here to keep it alive in my mouth until I return to China) and, last but not least, contact with the loved ones that I had to leave there.

To all of my friends in China: I miss you already. Save me a su baozi for my return.

And to my stomach: get it together. You’re home and you’d better start digesting this food! Head down, and forge ahead.

Keep it down.

And to my overall self: reverse the reverse culture shock. There is no choice in the matter. Eventually, you must arrive home.

Wo lai le 我来了。I have arrived.

It’s okay.

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This blog will soon be located in its chronological order at a new location on Gadling entitled “On The Road.”

I will continue to blog for Gadling about my North American travel adventures (and beyond), so keep checking the www.gadling.com site and just clicking on my name for new blogs. If there’s a new series, I’ll let you know via my own site‘s main news page, which is also the front page.

Thanks so much for reading this blog and for being so encouraging… and for reminding me that people far away cared enough to check in. I loved writing it and I’m thrilled that I’ll continue to blog for Gadling as I coast from coast to coast in between longterm adventures like this one in China. And, besides, I’ll be back in China before too long.

Of this, I am sure.