Reverse Culture Shock

It’s a real thing. Dude. Really. I was a little skeptical about the idea of reverse culture shock when I was preparing to head back from Thailand last December. After all, Chiang Mai is a pretty comfortable place to live. There are plenty of Westerners and I was rarely in a situation where I felt disadvantaged by the deficiencies in my Thai vocabulary. Further, I’d only been away from home for 14 months (only!) and had even visited home once in the middle. Surely, surely, it would not be too big a shock to my system to return to the way of life I’d always known. But as any Star Trek fan knows, logic and emotions don’t mix and I was trying to apply logic to an emotional condition.

My friend Jes Steinberg is just starting her second year as a teacher in Jeruselem, and she wrote a blog post before her first summer back in the States that really illustrates the adventure of heading out versus the adventure of returning home.

The other night at a friend's BBQ, I noticed that there was a ladder that led to her roof. "Ever been up there?" I asked. "No way!" she stated. Who knows what awaits us up there! I thought. There could be a beautiful view of Jerusalem and it is not being seen. What else could be waiting to be found way up there?

I began to climb the ladder.

Now, to some, this would be no big deal. But I am afraid of heights. And ladders, to me, are the worst. The getting up there isn't so bad. You are moving forward, there is a goal: to go up, to see what is there. But then one has to go back, and therein lies my problem. Going back down means I have to trust that the ladder is going to do its job. Although it had done it only moments before, coming back down has a different feel to it. Your goal is not to "go forth" and to "see," but for me, it is plain and simply to get both feet back on the ground and be alive when that happens.

For the first month or so I gleefully traveled around, visiting friends and going on a mission trip to Honduras with my parents’ church. I was not looking forward to the time when I would be settling down and I’d have to face the business of real life. One of the hardest things about reverse culture shock was that I didn’t really get that I had it. I was stressed out about finding a job, but even with that I knew I had some time. I guess it was almost like for the past year and a half I’d been living in a space where things didn’t seem quite real and suddenly all the worries and insecurities of my old life came flooding back. I didn’t have a job or any idea of what job would suit me. I didn’t have the excitement of Thailand and missions to define me. I started feeling like a complete loser! Things were supposed to be better after that amazing experience! I had a hard time trying to talk to people about what I was experiencing because I didn’t feel like I had the right to complain. Even on the hardest, loneliest day in Thailand, I never regretted making the decision to go there, but there were many times after I got back when I wondered if it had been a foolish decision. To further confuse me about my life and my identity, I was trying my hand at an unfamiliar new lifestyle called dating. I’m not sure if that was a good thing to attempt when I was already stretched to my emotional boundaries.

After a few months of this I finally broke down and bought a book about reverse culture shock. I’m not sure how much I actually learned from it, but there was one point I needed to accept. As much as I thought I should be fine, reverse culture shock is a real thing. I had it. Everything I read said that it typically lasts around 6 months, which seemed crazy since that was almost half the amount of time I was gone to begin with. But 6 months in was pretty much exactly the time I started to feel better! For all my talk about logic vs. emotions, there was a very logical reason for when started feeling better, and that is that I got a job. I’d been hired by a large insurance brokerage and, though it wasn’t my dream job, I finally had some structure in my life. I had a reason to get out of bed before noon. I had projects that actually had a purpose outside of my own whimsy.

There is another factor here that is harder to pinpoint. I’d like to call it the magic of karaoke. Okay, not exactly, but I was spending time with a fun new group of friends a few times a week. And I was starting to realize that they actually enjoyed my company! I don’t want to minimalize the importance of my other friends (small group for life!) but there was something about seeing the same people every Wednesday and Friday, in the homey atmosphere of our pub, Durty Nelly’s, that made me feel valuable. And suddenly the whole culture shock thing began to take on a whole different look. The fact that my life looked so different from what I was used to didn’t confuse or scare me anymore. It was exciting! It sounds cheesy but I felt like I’d been reborn. Who was I becoming? I don’t know, but somehow I knew it was someone I would like.