Well, I am home for a wedding and I figure this is as good a time as any to talk about reverse culture shock. Most of us know about culture shock but reverse culture shock is also totally a thing. Reverse culture shock is the emotional and psychological distress suffered by some people when they return home after a number of years away. Away can be moving to the city, or a small town. It can be going away to college. Or it can be leaving the country all together. Our familiar has been reset and “home” is now something new and different. Like all new and different things this can be both exciting and exceedingly frustrating, especially when it’s unexpected.
My first major move was from my hometown of Baton Rouge to Houston, Texas. Both are sprawling, suburban cities with economies heavily based in oil and chemicals. But BR has a population of a bit over two hundred thousand. Houston has a population of a bit over two million. Houston has a dynamic, diverse population with a thriving arts scene. It’s a bit of a bitch of a city but once you figure it out there are multiple choices of things to do on any given night. Live music, alternative theater, art both modern and classical, and the food. BR has some great vittles but the sheer variety of food from so many different cultures available in Houston will blow your tastebuds.
More, because we were in Houston, we spent time in Dallas, in San Antonio, and, most of all, in Austin. Houston is a mere four hours from BR and a city I’d been in at least a dozen time growing up. But living and learning a place is different. In Houston I did the same thing migrants everywhere do, searched out more of my own kind. My initial friend group was ninety percent people from South Louisiana. (The joke is that the two biggest cities in Louisiana are Houston and Atlanta.) But by the end of our three years there my friend circle included people from around the country and the world.
After Houston I lived in New Jersey, then in three very different cities in South Korea. All of this changed my perception of BR. Never a huge fan of the city – I remember asking my parents when I was as young as nine why on earth they made the decision to move back to BR when they could have gone anywhere in the country – I saw its flaws even more clearly from the outside. BR is a city deeply divided by race. Though things are getting better even now, in 2019, there is active vocal resistance to that progress. The race problem stains everything, underpinning deep corruption, apathy towards the educational system, even the failing infrastructure. But I also see the warmth of the people, that parts of the city are undeniably beautiful, and the strength of the people who are united in fighting against the corruption and the ingrained racism and for progress. Still, the three years we lived back home were a struggle.
When we leave home we immerse ourselves into new cultures, with new practices. We learn the feel of our new location. We learn to interact with people under a new set of rules. We develop new routines. We learn new smells, new sounds. Our first apartment in Korea was next to an orange grove. When the trees flowered the clothes we hung out to dry smelled of orange blossoms. The smell takes me right back there. All of this becomes part of us. Through a cascade of subtle and not so subtle adjustments, we change. Wherever we are coming from when we move back home we are different people. More, home isn’t static. It also changes. The people we’ve left behind move on with their lives. This can result in unexpected difficulty in readjusting to the culture and values of what once seemed natural. Normal.
Returning home we find ourselves being the “new guy” in what was supposed to be the comfortably familiar. When I first moved back home I got several comments on my accent. Having taught English in a foreign country I’d developed a sort of over enunciated mid-Atlantic diction that was also influenced by my fellow teachers, native and non native English speakers from around the world. The familiar becomes the unfamiliar.
When it has been a while going back home can feel a bit like being left behind, living in a time of “Remember when?” Reintegration can be easier if we don’t talk about our experiences away. People at home are only so interested in hearing about our time abroad. We had to consciously stop ourselves from starting every other sentence with, “In Korea…” After a while bringing it up can come off as pretentious. This can feel incredibly lonely, as though a large part of who we have become just doesn’t count. As a result we can get homesick for what had become for us routine. This can lead to a feeling of homelessness, or worse, a feeling of never being truly at home anywhere.
Add to this differences in the pace of life, in values, in philosophies. We may develop new attitudes and perceptions. Walking into a Walmart after our first year in Korea, on a rural island where we’d done much of our shopping at a daily market, was completely overwhelming. So many different types of apples! Tipping, which I didn’t like before, I hate now. Just pay people a living wage! The longer the absence the more it can play havoc with our sense of identity. Some of us are simply unable to adjust to our new lives in their old homes. Korea, for sure, has a boomerang affect with many a recipient of a going away party returning after spending a year or two back home.
So, how to handle it? Plan well in advance and tackling one stage at a time can make it more manageable and less stressful. First the practicalities. When away we make money. If away is also abroad that money may be in a different currency. But even if we are moving from a different part of the country this may mean closing and opening bank accounts. Research. Ask friends and family back home who they bank with and why. If converting currency take the time to look into different alternatives. While banks do money transfers they may charge fees. Depending on the size of the transaction a reputable currency broker may be a viable option. They can secure competitive exchange rates and may offer the option of fixing a favorable rate up to two years in advance of a trade. Here, again, research is key.
Then there is moving the stuff. Obviously in country, at least on the mainland there is the do it yourself option. With one exception all of our moves Stateside involved us packing up a rental truck and driving it to our new destination to unpack. For many of us time constraints make this less than feasible. In which case it makes sense to hire movers. This can be anything from the bare minimum of getting things from point A to point B to an all inclusive service that will pack, unpack, and place everything exactly where you want it. After our first year in Korea we came back with pretty much what we left with. For the next nine years we moved around the country. When heading back to the US, though we got rid of the vast majority of what we amassed, we still had far more than what could be checked onto a plane. So we rented part of a shipping contrainer through an international moving company. Doing it this way means it took months for our stuff to arrive, but it was affordable.
On the mental side the best advice about reintegration is, don’t. Any move is stressful. As returnees we may experience the same feelings of disconnect that we felt when we left in the first place. On the extreme end this can lead to exhaustion, resistance, withdrawal, self-doubt, and even depression. We need to understand that when we move home we aren’t going back to anything. We’ve changed, the folks back home have changed, home itself is different. One of the biggest mistakes we made was going not only back to our hometown, but to the old neighborhood. A place we hadn’t lived in in twenty years. Like a lot of people who moved away, we went back to BR to settle down and expand our family. There were some practical reasons for this but there was also the idea of bringing up our child in the same family filled environment in which we’d been brought up.
The nostalgia factor is strong. In the US, we told ourselves, everything works better. Things and people are more efficient. We’ll be able to easily slip back into our old roles and resume old relationships. The problem is the world kept moving while we were gone. Familiarity, routine, communication, and identity, these form home. We thought that they would be there, waiting to engulf us when we stepped off the plane and into the arms of loved ones. They weren’t. The reason we chose BR was family but our families had been getting along just fine without us for the past two decades. Fitting ourselves into their lives was a process. For many it may be best to avoid all together going back to the same place with the same people. Because nothing will be the same.
Instead treat the whole thing like a move to a new place. Deal with it as a foreign country. My husband is fond of saying that ideally we should treat the place in which we live like a tourist would. By which he means do the things that otherwise we may never get around to. Don’t wait for visitors to go on that swamp tour, check out the museum, eat at that restaurant. Find the discounts and the free days. Enjoy the festivals. Seek out other former expats and expat communities. People who’ve been away and have come back, get it. We were lucky in that my brother and his wife both understand the whole one foot in one foot out of life as a migrant. To re-experience American culture through the eyes of other migrants can make things a little easier. Realise that by having lived away, in a different culture, our personalities and ways of thinking have changed.
People who travel or live away from home will always come back with a different view of home. Too often we underestimate the transformational aspect of living away for an extended period. It means no longer taking home for granted but also being able to see that there are other, perhaps even better, ways of doing things. Trying to adapt to what we were before we left is a mistake. We’ve changed and, hopefully, we’ve grown. That’s not something we should abandon. Home is made up of people, actions, feelings, emotions and cues. I know plenty of people who have thrived on their return to their homelands even after extended periods away, but it is always an adjustment. The hardest thing to do is to understand it all takes time. It takes, at minimum, months to get to a comfortable level of predictability, one that fosters feelings of security, understanding, trust, safety and, most importantly of all, belonging.
Sources
https://www.expatica.com/moving/leaving/the-common-challenges-of-eAdvertisement
https://www.state.gov/m/fsi/tc/c56075.htm
http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20161104-how-expats-cope-with-losing-their-identity
http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20161024-the-problem-with-being-a-long-term-expat