What is Culture and Reverse Culture Shock?
Before going abroad, you may have heard of a phenomenon called culture shock that you expected to experience during your time overseas. Culture shock and its counterpart, reverse culture shock, refer to the psychological, emotional, and cultural aspects of entering a new culture or returning home after spending time abroad. While useful, these two frameworks can be overly simplified and not reflective of the experiences of all individuals who cross cultures. Instead, let’s explore the Cultural Transitions Model; a series of phases that represent common experience of engaging in a new cultural environment, whether or not you are leaving home to live in a different country or returning to your home country from abroad.
Phases of Cultural Transitioning
Cultural Surprise
An early, typically positive phase in which one becomes aware of new, exciting, visible surface-level and striking differences. While this phase may be energizing at first, it can also lead to over-stimulation and fatigue.
Cultural Exploration
An early and ongoing transitional phase focused on seeking out understanding of a new cultural context. Individuals in this phase typically start at a superficial level, such as examining visible cultural elements (e.g. food, clothing, etc.), and work toward deeper examination of a culture, including more invisible aspects of culture (e.g. values, beliefs, etc.). This may include discovering elements of a culture with which one agrees and disagrees.
Cultural Adjustment
This is a trial and error phase where individuals make conscious and unconscious decisions that reflect their ability to navigate daily life and building relationships with others in the host culture. This phase may be characterized by cultural overcompensation, followed by re-calibration in an effort to balance adaptation of home and host cultures into one’s daily living.
Cultural Stress
Encountering difficulty in daily living can sometimes lead to frustration or annoyance. This phase can occur in response to cultural stressors and is a common response to being highly stimulated for an extended period. Cultural stress can lead to withdrawal, stress response behaviors (i.e. excessive sleeping), or stronger emotional responses than expected. Generally, this phase is a mild emotional response that may appear and fade away, depending on daily activities. With support, this may also lead to breakthroughs in learning about the culture.
Cultural Fatigue
Cultural fatigue may occur when responding to a consistently high level of stimuli, such as continuously processing cultural information and making efforts to respond to the behaviors of the new culture. Individuals may feel disconnected from their home culture and/or their own cultural identity. This can lead to a decline in interest or function in the new culture, an increase in irritation, and may be accompanied by high levels of emotional response. This may also be accompanied by “language fatigue” for individuals making efforts to primarily use a second language.
Cultural Conflict
This phase may manifest in response to observable behaviors in the host culture perceived as “different” from one’s home culture, particularly those that may irritate or annoy an individual (e.g. street harassment, staring, etc.). It may be in response to a critical incident that occurs challenging our values and behaviors or encountering a difficult situation that is exacerbated by the unfamiliar cultural context.
Self-Reflection Questions
- Is this the first time you’ve heard about the six phases of cultural transitions?
- How does it compare to the idea of culture shock/reverse culture shock?
- Which idea better helps you explain your experiences abroad?
- Take a few minutes to reflect upon your experiences abroad. Can you remember any specific instances when you may have been experiencing one of these phases?
- What strategies or coping mechanisms did you use to help yourself navigate through each of these phases?
- Take a few minutes to reflect upon your re-entry experience so far. Have you experienced any of these phases since returning to the U.S.?
- What strategies or coping mechanisms can you use to help yourself through these phases during the re-entry process?