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How To Lessen The Impact

Before leaving home, you may do the following:

1. Find out as much as you can about your new country beforehand. One of the best antidotes to culture shock is knowing as much as possible about where you are. Read books, talk to people who have been there, explore this Web site.

2. Find out about the living conditions of local people, the political situation, the currency, climate and what the cuisine is like. Pick up a phrase book and start practicing counting and simple greetings.

3. Familiarize yourself with the phases of culture shock. Like a forecast of rough weather ahead, you’ll still have to weather the storm but you’ll be better equipped to cope well.

The Different Stages of Culture Shock

Stage 1: Honeymoon Phase

Most people begin with great expectations and a positive mindset. Anything new is fascinating, and even early problems are seen as quaint—all part of the experience of newness. The first few hurdles of settling in (such as opening bank accounts, getting a driver’s license, finding schools, doctors, or shopping centers) are successfully overcome. You’re in control, and feel fortunate for having the opportunity to move overseas.

• Be a tourist; try to spend some time visiting the local attractions, send some postcards and photos back home.
• Make some new contacts by joining clubs and associations, sign up for activities
• Join a language course
• Book/plan a holiday a few months ahead to give you something to look forward to

Stage 2: Rejection Phase

The honeymoon phase comes to an end, and the newcomer has to struggle with normal, everyday problems e.g. trains don’t come or leave on time, can’t buy their favorite food or brand of shampoo, can’t understand the local accent or idioms. Daily frustrations build up into disillusionment and self-doubt, leading one to “reject” the host country and think that he is not welcome.

• Look after yourself: exercise, treat yourself to a massage. Avoid excessive alcohol and over-eating. If you take care of your physical well-being, you feel better about yourself overall and this will help curb the number of negative thoughts that could get into your head from day to day
• Try to record your thoughts and feelings in a journal or a blog. This gives you a healthy outlet for expressing your frustrations
• Continue language study
• Don’t give in to the urge to criticize the new country and culture; resist making snide comments and jokes which are intended to illustrate the “stupidity of the locals“
• Try not to associate with other expats who do make them—they will only reinforce your unhappiness and aggravate the culture shock that you are already experiencing

Stage 3: Regression Phase

In the regression phase, you find yourself “moving backward“: you spend much of your time speaking your own language, eating food from home, and moving in social circles that are comprised almost entirely of people from your own culture and background. You may only remember the good things about your home country that suddenly seem wonderful now. You wonder why you ever left your home, where it seemed nothing ever went wrong for you. This is, of course, not true, but an illusion created by your culture shock crisis.

• Identify a local national (e.g. a neighbor, a parent of someone in class with your children) who is sympathetic and understanding, and talk to that person about specific situations and your feelings related to them. Talking with other expats can be helpful but only to a limited extent — you should concentrate more on your relationship to your new country
• Keep yourself busy; set daily targets and make the effort to achieve them
• Re-evaluate and reinforce the goals you had in going overseas

Stage 4: Recovery Phase

In this stage, you become more comfortable with the language and customs of your new country, and can move around without a feeling of anxiety. You may still have problems with some social cues and things that people say or do, but you know to take it easy on yourself and you are more self-understanding and tolerant of others. You even start preferring some things in your new country to those at home. You may also find that you’re now the one helping others in the same situation you were with adjusting to the new culture. Best of all, you find that you’ve regained your sense of humor.

• Explore the new culture and don’t be afraid to try new things—food, sports, shows, etc.
• Buy some local tokens and furnishings for your home
• Branch out a little more from your current social network. This is also a fantastic opportunity to practice speaking in the local language.
• Take that holiday that you booked earlier!

Stage 4: Reverse Culture Shock

The last stage of culture shock, called Reverse Culture Shock, occurs when you return home after a long stay abroad. Strategies in coping with reverse culture shock are similar to the ones we’ve learned above, and one more important tip is to realize that no one country is really that much better than another—it is just different lifestyles and different ways of dealing with problems in life.

Not everyone experiences all the different stages of culture shock. Moreover, you can experience all stages at different times; for example, you may go through the regression phase before rejection.

How long will culture shock last? That varies depending on where you came from, how different the cultures are, the support systems available to you, and so on, but it also depends to some extent on you and your resiliency. Don’t forget to have faith—in yourself, in the essential good will of your new countrymen, and in the positive outcome of this exciting experience.

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This is the second part of Katlyn Batuigas’s article on Culture Shock. (In case you missed it, Part 1 is here.) In Part 2, Katlyn offers insightful tips on really understanding Culture Shock and how you can cope up with it’s devastating impact.

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A few years ago I made one of the biggest life-altering decisions that anyone could undertake: packing my bags and moving to another country. My first several days as an “alien” in Singapore were exciting and exhilarating; the sights, smells and sounds were so different from what I had grown up with back home in the Philippines. I moved into my room, spruced it up with my colorful flower-print bed sheet, stuffed toys and a handmade dreamcatcher given as farewell gifts from friends, photos of loved ones up on my wall, and my guitar tucked away in a corner. I was all geared up for a new school, new friends, a new life, some 3000 miles away from home.

Needless to say, the “honeymoon” period came and went, before I was even aware that I had been in one. It started with the little things: “Why does the sun rise at 7 a.m. instead of 5:45—I almost slept through my alarm!”, “They cook spaghetti weirdly in this boarding school—bland and watery”, “NINE dollars (quick conversion in my head: two hundred seventy pesos) for a movie ticket?? I could watch four movies with that in Davao”… and unfortunately, things didn’t seem to be looking up anytime soon. I was doing unsatisfactorily in school. I had made new friends but they couldn’t seem to compare with my old friends back home. I missed my house, good home-cooked meals and most of all I missed my family. I resented almost everything about this new place, and wondered: Did I make a very big mistake in coming here?

This was one of my earliest and biggest encounters with culture shock, and virtually every person travelling to or moving to another country is bound to experience culture shock as well.

Why Do We Get Culture Shock?

Our personal identity is partly shaped by the community that we live in and belong to. When we move to another country, the familiar is now replaced by foreign landscapes, cultures and lifestyles. Our personal identity is thus threatened, and we respond with varying degrees of anxiety and confusion. This is what we refer to as culture shock.

In our own home community, we know how people interact with each other and the environment according to certain “rules” that we have learned over the years—we know how things are supposed to work. In a new foreign community, however, we discover that things don’t work the way they always have. For example, in your hometown, it may be customary for strangers to give greetings as they pass each other on the sidewalk, but on the streets of a new city you find, to your astonishment, that people don’t even acknowledge one another! You know that there are different “rules”, but you don’t know what they are and whether you’re violating any of them. Culture shock is hence also brought about by all sorts of insecurities that arise from this feeling of being in the dark.

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Katlyn Batuigas has lived in Singapore and the US and has traveled in other countries as tourist. In this article on Culture Shock she offers her insights based on her personal experiences and the way she handled it.

The second part of this article will be on tips on how to lessen the impact of culture shock.