Flightster

The Reverse Culture Shock Experience

• by Srinivas Rao
• on January 11th, 2011
• 8 Comments

For the first 6 months of my second year in graduate school, I lived in Brazil.  My MBA program had a mandatory orientation for all students who would be studying abroad and they filled us with information about culture shock, adjusting to life in a new country and much more.  So, we were prepared or as best as we could be prepared by a bunch of old men working  in the idyllic offices a Malibu Campus that could easily be mistaken for a country club.

As long term travelers, in the excitement of our departure and all the adventure that lies ahead, we often forget about the reality we’ll be faced with upon our return home. This reality is commonly referred to as reverse culture shock.  How is it that a place we call “home” can feel so unfamiliar and so uncomfortable after just 6 months?

I thought I was immune to the effects of reverse culture shock. I was happy to return home. I was living on the “high” of  a return home  only to find that after about a day nobody cared about my life changing adventure and most had even seemed to forget we were once friends. In my first week home, I went on Google to look for everything Brazilian that I could find within a close vicinity. Ironically or not, I ended up with an apartment in what is known as the Brazilian district of Los Angeles. I even was mistaken for a Brazilian at a Brazilian grocery store. All of this actually made me feel a little less miserable about the fact that I had returned.

Knowing that one of your life’s greatest adventures has come to an end can often make it seem like you have nothing to look forward to. I had come back to an economic meltdown, no prospects for a job after graduation, and short of 6 amazing friends from all over the globe.  A friend had warned me about the effects of reverse culture shock and he was right. Nobody cared and nobody was interested in hearing about my amazing experience.  To top it all of the only people I felt like I could relate to were all scattered across the globe. In a world that was once completely familiar to me, I’d never felt so alone. I couldn’t relate to people that were once my friends and most of them I’m not friends with today.

It turns out I’m not alone in my experiences of dealing with reverse culture shock. I decided to ask a few friends on Facebook what their own experiences have been with reverse culture shock and they had some very interesting things to say:

When I return, I always get a sense that everything in the US is huge and clean (certain things, anyway). Bags of chips, buildings, people…just a lot bigger than most places I’ve been. It’s also disorienting to understand all of the conver…sations going on around me without effort, when I’ve been accustomed to having to listen closely to catch everything, or been completely left out of that side of everyday life. – Colin Wright, Exile Lifestyle

After 5 weeks in India i came home & realized what stupid conversation topics people have here, how overkill whole foods is, how much money some people have, how i wished i’d never of bought any material item & how i wish i would have stayed longer. -Charlotte Rule

Only place I’ve been abroad is New Zealand and coming home to Australia I noted a general lack of “culture” among society, despite our nation being made up entirely of migrant cultures from all over the world…The difference especially bet…ween the pride, continuity and public face of the natives (Maori vs. Australian Aboriginal) – there’s just a whole world of difference in the roles the two cultures have in their countries with relation to how they settled with the European settlers. -Laneth Sfarlenn, It Takes 10 Years

When coming home from Japan, I was shocked, stunned and well, also offended by how very “rude” and without manners everyone and I mean everyone seemed to be, because let me tell you, relativity is a terrible thing and relative to the Japanese, no one in this world has manners or can offer a service properly – and for that, I LOVE them!! Course I also wish I could have lived in Tokyo indefinitely….!! – Farnoosh Brock, Prolific Living

Oh boy. Lots of that in my life these days haha. For me, honestly, it’s that while I was abroad every day was an Adventure the second I stepped out the door. Now, I have to really seek out that adventure. And, I miss all the craziness of ea…ch day. Even the things that pissed me off and I didn’t understand, I catch myself missing them. It’s a really cool feeling – reverse culture shock -and I think it’s harder to cope with than the initial culture shock of a new place. -Lauren Rains, The Mad To Live

After 5 months abroad in Berlin, i couldn’t remember English words. I knew them in german. I could describe them in German better than english. English is my first language. After 5 months in Melbourne, I missed good public transportation, the adventurous and outgoing spirit of everyone there… and i though ‘Murekans sounded dumb. I also drove on the wrong side of the road for a solid block or 2 before i stopped to think about which side i should be driving on. – Dani Jumper Harty

When I came back from traveling around the world, I remember thinking that life should be so much simpler here than it is. I think the Europeans (Spanish in particular) have it right – take long lunches, put family first, take siestas, enjoy life and then worry about money. Relationships with people are more important than earning more money so you can have a lot of stuff that you don’t really need. -Maria Brophy, MariaBrophy.com

The good news is that eventually this nostalgic depression starts to wear off. While your life can never go back to what it was before, you do return to some semblance of a healthy well adjusted balance.  Unfortunately the only real cure for dealing with it seems to be time or getting back on a plane for another adventure. I’d recommend the latter.

Srinivas Rao

Srinivas is an avid surfer and personal development blogger at The Skool of Life. He's also the host and co-founder of BlogcastFM, a podcast for bloggers.