Reverse Culture Shock
WTF is this and why did no one tell me this was a thing?
I am going to pull this topic out from the archives of my brain, because all I can remember is this hit me like a freaking freight train when I returned home to the US in 2019 after 2 years of traveling and living abroad.
In a lot of ways, it is easier to write about this in retrospect, now that I have fully recovered from this unexpected little interruption.
Borneo, Malaysia
What is Reverse Culture Shock?
Reverse culture shock, also known as re-entry shock, is the psychological and emotional discomfort experienced by individuals returning to their home country or culture after an extended period of time living abroad. It's the counterpart to the culture shock experienced when initially adapting to a new culture.
Common Symptoms:
Feeling out of place, boredom, difficulty relating to your friends and family, difficulty explaining your travels, loss of identity, nostalgia and longing, change in relationships, etc etc you get the picture.
I will get to these...
but you know what was really funny to me?
When I got back I noticed everyone had these new things in their ears called AirPods, you could use an app to find scooters on the street and ride them, and everyone and their mother was suddenly drinking something called "White Claws"!
These things seem so subtle and insignificant when you live them, but coming back and seeing all these new things, it felt like I had missed so much!
AGUA POR FAVOR
I can tell you the one thing I was most excited for though - free and abundant clean water. Traveling in places like Latin America and Asia, water needed to be purchased everywhere you went in bottles, clean free flowing water did not exist in public spaces and was not complimentary at restaurants.
Water fountains felt like a dream, I kid you not I could not wait to get off the plane in America and fill up my water bottle at the airport.
And this is how it went:
Fresh off the plane I raced to the water fountain, the amount of excitement I had about this almost feels surreal now, but I was in fact SO EXCITED, I drink so much water and was so elated to have this luxury.
I got to the water fountain, it was a traditional water fountain, there was a woman that walked up to the water fountain just before me and immediately her body language went sour and she turned to me and goes
"Ugh, why do they not have the water fountains where you can fill up your water bottle like they do in the Chicago airport, those are so much better"
You know when you are so excited about something and someone just rains on your parade?
I looked at that water fountain like it was the best thing I had ever seen, a true treasure. And she had a completely different perspective.
I felt sad, she had no clue what a glorious luxury it is to have readily available clean drinking water.
This little story really embodies what I experienced the next couple of months.
I can't relate
I felt a strong sense of not being able to relate to my old world or the people in it. It was very difficult to convey or communicate with words to my friends and family what the experiences I had had over the last 2 years were like and how they had changed me as a person. Because I was in fact, a completely different person. I was not just one degree of a different person, I had experienced what felt like 50 different evolutions of self when I was away.
When I think about it now, our experiences and getting out of our comfort zones are what make us evolve and grow as people. I had been living a life perpetually outside of my comfort zone for two years straight. I was not experiencing the daily routines life at home brings, I was challenged and uncomfortable everyday. Constantly learning new things about my self, the world, and my place in the world. This is what I loved that about traveling.
When I got home that stopped, and it felt like I no longer belonged.
Everything felt over indulgent and gluttonous.
The parties felt big and the problems felt small.
I had not realized how accustom I had gotten to living in third world countries and being surrounded by people with so little.
It is a crime I never wrote about driving a motorcycle through north Vietnam (I will one day!)
I found myself in conflict with people I loved over things I felt they did not take the time to or have the capacity to understand.
I lived in fear of slipping back into a materialistic life. I felt how much you are who you surround yourself with. A couple weeks of hanging around my friends and all their cute outfits and suddenly I felt a pull to go buy a new outfit only to be met with self conflict when I thought to myself...
"but you just wore the same clothes for 2 years and literally did not even care.. don't you remember that it does not matter what you wear on the outside, but only who you are on the inside? "
It was not a comparison or a judgment thing, more just the feeling like, am I ever going to feel like I belong here again?
And if I do get back to feeling like I belong... will it come at the cost of losing everything I had just gained?
I kind of shut down for awhile. I focused on figuring out where and what my next focus in life was going to be and how I was going to incorporate the new me into my new life here.
Slowly, I adapted and found balance between who I was today, and the things I loved most about where I came from and the people I loved.
Slowly, I learned how to take the best of both worlds and marry them together to begin the next chapter of my life.
Kyoto Japan
The lessons I learned from traveling the world and being on my own for so long are such a gift.
I learned to always be grateful for what you have, I learned that we are all doing our best, I learned that you can only control yourself and your emotions. I've learned to take more chances, live more life, and focus on the things that actually matter.
I found balance between being grateful for what I have, but also never taking it for granted.
This lesson and realization has been a continued gift.
It has been something that has stuck so deeply with me.
The things I learned from traveling are the same things I learned from losing my hair.
The more your experience, the more perspective you have, the more you shape your own world and the more confidence you have.
The more you fall in love with yourself, the more you fall in love with the process of living.
I have realized we are always growing and learning, and we better take every opportunity that comes our way because we never know what we can learn. And we can never learn to much.
If you think you have learned it all, you are wrong.
Humans do not often have to be taught, they have to be reminded.
The reverse culture shock was a reminder that live is precious.
A reminder that we come into this world with nothing and we leave with nothing
A reminder that our worth comes from how we make people feel and not what we have.
A reminder that empathy and understanding a crucial to the human experience and everyone is on a different path.
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