Ready to Travel Again? How to Cope with Culture Shock
If you've ever traveled outside of your hometown, you probably are familiar with the highs and lows of experiencing a culture different from your own. Traveling (even to another state or city) can be exciting, challenging, and full of learning opportunities. It also can be scary, frustrating, and overwhelming. In this season when more of us may be traveling, and students will be heading out to and returning from study abroad experiences, let’s consider what happens when our travel involves culture shock.
The term culture shock, coined by Anthropologist Kalervo Oberg (1960), describes the mixed emotions and sense of disorientation that are commonly felt by travelers to a culture different from their own. As I've spent much of my career helping people coping with grief and loss, I find it helpful to frame parts of culture shock as grief, and some of the coping strategies are similar. I've often described grief as a "roller coaster" of emotions. Cultural adjustment could be described in a similar fashion - seldom linear and often a series of ups and downs.
Just as the stages of grief are not linear, neither are the stages of culture shock, which are likely to involve lots of emotional ups and downs.
Depending on how long a person is staying in the different culture, culture shock might last days, weeks, or even months. It's not one event that happens but an overall feeling of how well you are coping with living in a new culture. Knowing that this is normal and can be managed effectively is key to surviving the most difficult phase of culture shock, which usually is described as having five stages.
Stages of Culture Shock
1. Honeymoon
This is the fun stage of experiencing a new culture. It's the excitement about being in a new place and trying new foods, seeing new sites, or maybe learning a different language. It may be characterized by your viewing the new culture with "rose-colored glasses" and finding everything about the new place enjoyable and exciting.
For a well-seasoned traveler seeking an adventure, this might be the very first stage experienced in a new place. However, if you're not accustomed to traveling or are fearful of the place in which you find yourself, this phase could come after an initial period of adjustment.
2. Negotiation (Shock/Crisis)
During this phase, the "rose-colored glasses" effect is wearing off. The differences between your home culture and the new place may stop feeling exciting and feel frustrating instead. It may feel overwhelming to order food in a restaurant, figure out how to shop, or navigate around a new city. There might be grief associated with leaving behind loved ones and a familiar way of life. Some have postulated that this phase is most likely to occur about halfway through your tenure in a new place, whether the timeline is days or years.
In the worst case scenario of this phase, you may become overly critical of the new culture and its people, comparing them unfavorably with your home culture. This is likely when homesickness sets in, as you idealize your home culture and may begin to reject parts of the new culture.
Trying new foods, like this South Korean hamheung naengmyeon, can be fun, but it’s also part of the adjustment when you’re in a new culture.
3. Adjustment (Recovery)
Happily, successful navigation of the negotiation phase most often leads to adjustment. This stage is classified by increased comfort with the language, foods, and customs of the new culture. Even though there will still be difficult moments, it may feel more comfortable and less overwhelming to cope with daily life.
Don’t feel surprised, though, if at some point after this initial phase of recovery you ultimately experience another plunge into shock/crisis. This is especially to be expected if you will be living in a new place for months or years. The initial adjustment tends to be to the more superficial elements of experiencing a new culture. At some point, though, you likely will confront some of the deeper cultural realities of your new setting and will have a new set of adjustments to process. You may also have to confront what it means for you to live outside of your home culture for prolonged periods of time, and that could lead to an experience of grief.
4. Adaptation
If you live long enough in a second culture, you may reach a stage of adaptation, or even bi-culturalism. In this phase, you no longer feel like "just a visitor" to a new culture. You have friends, regular activities, and a sense of belonging. Daily life is a normal routine and does not feel overwhelming. You have confronted some of the deeper issues of living in a new culture, perhaps for a prolonged period, and have negotiated the initial sense of grief this experience can bring.
Making connections and finding enjoyable activities is an important way of coping with culture shock.
5. Re-Entry/Reintegration
This phase is sometimes called "reverse culture shock" and refers to the adjustment of returning home after an extended stay in another culture. You may have to repeat the stages of culture shock when returning to your home culture. Depending how long you have stayed away from home, life might have changed, and you will need to re-adapt. It may also feel disappointing that the knowledge and comfort you gained in the place away from home no longer applies. You will need to process the grief of leaving friends and places you have grown to love and enjoy.
As you re-adapt to your home culture, the ultimate goal is to integrate the experiences of living in each place. In this way, you are able to keep the best of what you learned in the culture you visited while successfully navigating life at home. Just as we come through grief by integrating loss and its meaning into our lives, we negotiate culture shock by integrating all of our knowledge and experiences into our selves.
This graph is a helpful visual display of the stages of culture shock. Like the experience of grief, the stages are not a straight line and might involve lots of ups and downs.
Photo courtesy of iesabroad.org
Coping with Culture Shock
The good news is - there are lots of ways to cope with culture shock. The most helpful starting point may be to recognize that the emotions associated with this experience are normal and expected. Before heading to a new place, start to plan for how you will combat culture shock and cope with the more challenging emotions when they arise.
I can testify that I have tried each of the suggestions below at some point, and they really have helped me when traveling and living in other cultures. You likely will find additional strategies that work for you, but it can be helpful to know how someone else managed when things got tough. If you've coped with grief in the past, you might recognize some overlapping strategies.
1. Bring something familiar from home
Depending on the length of time you’ll be away, what you choose to bring from home could vary a lot. Photos of family and friends, seasonings you love to cook with, or your own bed pillow or blanket are possibilities. If you’ll be living for months or more in a new culture, it’s especially important to think about what you will miss most from home and can help to re-create in your new space.
2. Find a comfortable space (or spaces)
Whether setting up a home or just finding a cafe you like, find a spot where you feel comfortable and safe. It can be stressful when you’re first out and about in a new place, and returning to a familiar home base is really important.
Adjusting to daily life in a new place can feel overwhelming. Set yourself up for success by planning some coping strategies in advance.
3. Give yourself time
Sometimes there's no substitute for being kind to yourself. Culture shock is normal, and it's normal to grieve for parts of your life that have changed. Be patient, feel the feelings, and talk it out with someone you trust. It will almost always get better, and if it doesn't think about seeking more formal help to develop further coping strategies.
4. Stay active and explore
First, exploring a new neighborhood, city, or country can help you better understand the culture in which you're living. This may deepen your appreciation of the new place and combat any overly-critical comparisons with your home culture. Learn to drive or to use public transportation if these options are available to you.
Second, exercise has been shown to combat depression and anxiety by releasing endorphins and other natural brain chemicals that increase mood. If the more difficult phases of culture shock persist and cause your mood to plummet, regular physical activity may help.
What can you explore in your new culture? Even better if exploration keep you active!
5. Find a project
If you’re moving for a job or school, you might have this built into your new routine. If you won’t have a built-in way to structure your time, think about creating a routine and finding a project that gives you some purpose.
Learning language could be its own category, but I'll put it here. It is certainly a project that engages the mind, and the more language you know the easier it is to engage with the culture. Even learning simple, common phrases can increase comfort with daily life.
6. Keep an open mind
You won't love everything about a new culture. Who loves everything about any culture, right? It's OK not to love everything, but try not to be consumed with criticizing, either. Say "yes" to new experiences and invitations as much as possible (within the bounds of safety). Cultural curiosity may be a protective factor in assisting adjustment to living in a new culture. Remember that living with some uncertainty is OK.
Researching and engaging with a new culture can give focus and help you adapt more quickly to living in a new place, especially if the culture is very unfamiliar to you. Try a new food, walk down a new street, and try to understand why the culture functions the way it does. Viewing people and situations with empathy and non-judgment may help to curb frustration with cultural differences. Often, understanding goes a long way toward building patience with the way things are done.
When all else fails, keep a sense of humor. Sometimes it helps to laugh at yourself when you realize you (yet again) have no idea what's going on!
7. Make new friends
If you're staying in a new place for any length of time, build a social network. Isolation is deadly when it comes to feeling sad or overwhelmed. Plus, it's often more fun to explore with a friend and can deepen your understanding of your new culture. Try to find those with positive attitudes who will help you learn and grow, rather than using friendships as a means to be "down" together on your new culture.
Don’t be afraid to engage with expats as well as local groups on social media. This is often the easiest way to find an “in” that will lead to more connections. The most important thing is to start building a network somewhere.
8. Keep in touch with family and friends at home
If anything good can be said of this pandemic era, it's that we all have been forced to learn new ways of communicating. With a whole host of communication tools, it's easier to keep in touch than ever. And when you feel down, phone a friend!
Final Thoughts
The good news about culture shock is that when managed well, it can provide us with opportunities for personal growth. It also can help combat ethnocentrism, the tendency we all have to evaluate and judge other cultures from the perspective of our own cultural norms. If you're not navigating culture shock well at the moment, be patient with yourself. There are so many personal and situational factors that inform how well we can cope, even from one moment to another. Keep learning, keep making connections, and see where the adventure takes you!
Coping with culture shock can feel lonely. Want to talk with someone about adjusting to a new culture, or cultural reintegration? You don’t have to do this alone.
Where can life take you? Stay open to possibilities.
All photos courtesy of p.m.graham unless otherwise credited.
Sources
Brown University Office of International Programs, "Culture Shock" (2020).
Introduction to Sociology - 1st Canadian Edition (2014) by William Little and Ron McGivern.
Madrid Metropolitan, "Finding Your Feet – Cultural Adjustment" (2017) by Chris Neill.
NOW Health International, "Culture Shock Stages: Everything You Need to Know" (2020) by Lauren McCluskey.
