Dealing with Reverse Culture Shock

What if you no longer fit in the puzzle after coming back from a long trip or living abroad? After dealing with culture shock, now comes the hardest part, dealing with the shock of your own culture, also known as reverse culture shock. This happens when people who repatriated after a number of years overseas have to readjust to the values and culture of their home country. When the familiar becomes unfamiliar.

Long-term travelers have been bitten by this travel bug and dread the life after travel scenario. You have finally gotten out of your bubble, defied society, appreciated other cultures, welcomed changes in your life, but what if your own is something you couldn't understand anymore? After seeing all those nice travel blogs about long-term travel, most of it missed the hard part, the reality, the reason why most people prefer to stay in their comfort zone.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

There must be a line between getting out of the conditioning of your own culture and returning home and dealing with it again. The transition from being a traveler to being back into your old life. A lot of people wish to be location-independent and travel for a long time, due to the media hype, cheap flight costs and the over-glorification of backpacking in cheap countries these days, but what didn't they tell you?

Home is people. Not a place. If you go back there after the people are gone, then all you can see is what is not there anymore.
― Robin Hobb

However, should you really go back to your old life? This is when having a purpose comes in. If you are just wandering around without a goal in life or not searching for it, then coming back to your home without a sense of purpose would even be harder to deal with it. I don't know what kind of goal that is, whether being with friends, changing career, starting a business, or having a family. You need a strong goal that will make you go on living and not to escape life anymore, to be somewhere you can call home.

Be careful what you wish for.

After witnessing other cultures, I realized how strange my own culture is when I came back recently. It is actually not about being home, but more of the shock of how crazy and weird this culture is for most. There are some things that don't make sense to me anymore, and I just become totally out of place. I could try to join the conversation, reunite with friends and family, and I'm just going to be there. Worse, some people would even cause me not to be myself, I would be just adapting to the situation and nodding in agreement so as not to hurt their feelings. So here I am, watching their lives from a distance. It seems like I have changed big time while everyone else is still the same.

I would probably be prosecuted by my own friends who have this over-patriotic tendency, still blinded by the societal conditioning. When in fact, I am not really a fan of all countries' culture that brought all these conflicts and divides, perpetuated by the government's own propaganda. People should think for themselves, create a culture where people are more united through passion, creativity, art, self-expression and not about this us vs them anymore.

Of course, I want a perfect world, is that what you call Utopia, why not? Or at least free from stupidity, irrational decisions of those on the thrones, greed, and poverty. This might never happen in my lifetime though, but I'm really done with hardships. I'm done with my own government's shit and people's closed-mindedness. I'm old and tired of this shit. Life never gets easier for me.

The only way for me to deal with reverse culture shock is to just go through it, understand and see through people. I can't expect everyone to change overnight, actually, I can't expect them to change. It is not my business. And they might never even understand what I have just gone through. It is not as simple as asking me how was the trip? As if I can just tell it in a few sentences or in just one word. I can't make them understand this whole transformation and this fresh perspective of the world that I have now.

The only thing that holds me together right now is my own sense of purpose, why did I really come back? It has to be strong enough for me to go through all this reverse culture shock and focus all my energy on what is more important right now, that will perhaps, shape the things to come.

Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.
― Robert Frost