Reverse Culture Shock
Reverse culture shock is culture shock that is experienced in response to your home culture after having spent a significant time abroad.
Going home after spending several months or years in the U.S. might feel awkward. After adapting to American culture, language, and habits, you will face a sudden shift when you return. The shock of returning home can be as powerful as the shock of your first few months in the U.S. There are ways to prepare yourself. One way to help you prepare for reverse culture shock is to find other students who have also just returned from studying abroad, to share concerns and coping strategies.
Returning home can be as great an adjustment as going abroad. Just as you may have had a period of adjustment upon arrival, you may also experience a period of transition and readjustment to home.
Over the course of your time away, you no doubt gradually adopted or accepted many of the ways, traditions, and lifestyle of your host country, maybe without even realizing it. This new cultural perspective often leaves students feeling somewhat ambivalent about being back home; while happy to see family and friends, it may sometimes seem that you were strangely more at home abroad. Such feelings are common.
Adapted from: Kohls, Robert. Survival Kit for Overseas Living. Yarmouth, ME: Nicholas Brealey Publishing (2001).
Like culture shock, which you experienced while abroad, re-entry shock, too, has distinct stages.
Stage one: Disengagement
This may happen before you leave your host country and often times occurs because of the pace of finals, goodbye dinners. As a result, you begin to distance yourself from friends and host country nationals.
Stage two: Initial Euphoria
This may occur as a result of leaving the U.S. and returning home. This is where you may have formed idealistic views of home, and what will happen upon your return. You are happy to be home! This feeling of euphoria may last a few weeks, but may inevitably give way to feelings of loneliness.
Stage three: Irritability & Hostility
The realization that life at home went on without you, and as you were learning new things and making subtle changes, they were too. You may feel that friends and family don’t understand or want to hear what you experienced abroad.
Stage four: Readjustment & Adaptation
You may see the world through a different lens now, but are quick to find that the cultural differences you once thought so great are, in reality, infinitesimal. You have learned to incorporate the changes you’ve made within yourself, into new goals and ideas that don’t negate your own culture’s norms and values. You have attained a balance between both cultures.
Back on home soil, you may experience a number of challenges, including:
- Boredom
- Restlessness
- People at home do not appear to think beyond their home country
- You can’t fully articulate your experience
- Relationships have changed
- Homesickness for your host country
- People misunderstand you
- Feelings of alienation
- People don't want to hear about you experienced abroad
Adapted from: Kohls, Robert. (2001). Survival Kit for Overseas Living. Yarmouth, ME: Nicholas Brealey Publishing.
These are all natural reactions to have after having spent a great deal of time and energy in adapting to a new country, culture, language and way of life, only to pack up and leave a few months later. It takes time to process what you have experienced and the sense of loss once you leave.
It may be months or even years before you can truly express how this experience has shaped your values, beliefs, politics, and goals for the future. But, you will come through it.
- Stay connected with U.S. nationals you befriended as well as well as the local students you shared this experience with
- Share your experiences with other students at your university who were abroad at the same time
- Like you may have done while you were in the U.S., continue to write in a journal about the new journey you are on at home
- Try to be patient with friends and family who may appear uninterested or who want to talk about what happened to them while you were in the U.S.
- Volunteer to help your home institution's study abroad office during orientation or at information meetings about studying in the U.S.
- Join an international or intercultural club
Adapted from the VT & SFSU websites.
Patience and continued reflection will lead to Stage four: Readjustment & Adaptation.
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