Reverse Culture Shock Is Real and Here Are Some Ways I’ve Dealt With It

Reverse culture shock is real for expats, long-term travellers and students who have studied abroad. Even if you’ve never experienced culture shock – a sense of disorientation and feeling out of place in an unfamiliar culture – that doesn’t mean you won’t find yourself feeling like a stranger when you get back home. Here’s how I’ve coped with reverse culture shock.

For someone who has always felt at home anywhere and had a sense of belonging everywhere – a true citizen of the world – it came as a shock to find that after a six-year gap since my last trip home, when I returned home at the end of last year, I felt like a stranger in my own country. In fact, at times I didn’t even feel like I was ‘home’, I felt so alienated. Had I changed so much, I pondered obsessively, or had my country and everyone in it changed?

While I’ve never experienced culture shock in 26 years living abroad, including almost 20 years living, working and travelling in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, and seven years bouncing around the planet as travel writers and digital nomads, I soon realised that what I was experiencing in my birthplace, Australia, was reverse culture shock – despite never having experienced it on previous trips back home.

It was disorientating, discomforting and disquieting – particularly as I’d spent so much of the pandemic dreaming of returning home: to family, to friends, to Australia’s breathtaking beaches, ruggedly beautiful landscapes, multicultural urban life, incredibly delicious food, and wonderful wine. All the things that Aussies typically miss and get nostalgic about when they’ve lived abroad so long.

At times during the pandemic – especially in the first few weeks when we felt abandoned by our country, and during the first two years when Terence and I spent a lot of time alone self-isolating after debilitating bouts of Covid at the start, before vaccines – at times I felt so homesick I’d get teary when I heard an Australian song, watched an Aussie TV show, or even heard the accent of a compatriot. Seriously.

I returned to Australia late last year to take care of my 76 year-old mother whom I hadn’t seen since the pandemic, and who had been evicted. She was very frail and had spent the pandemic alone. I had to give her a lot of love and I had a lot to do. I realised I had to get a handle on things and deal with these unexpected feelings of alienation, so I could give my full attention to her, so that’s what I did. Here are my tips to how to cope with reverse culture shock.

Reverse Culture Shock Is Real – Tips to Dealing with Culture Shock in Reverse

My reverse culture shock came as a shock. Because not only had I never experienced culture shock before – not even when I travelled solo through South America in my 20s as a research student, during my second year of a post-grad degree in international studies – I had experience in identifying those who did, and even those who had the potential to experience culture shock.

When we lived in Abu Dhabi, where I taught film, writing and media studies to young Emirati women, from time to time we’d have new colleagues who would ‘do a runner’ – people who had such extreme cases of culture shock that they couldn’t wait out their contract, let alone the resignation period, so instead just got on a plane, leaving without telling anyone, and disappeared.

After I was promoted to a management position at a different college within the same academic institution in Dubai, one of my tasks on a recruitment committee was to determine how well job candidates might adjust to living abroad and how quickly they might settle in. And, by contrast, try to identify whether candidates had the potential for culture shock, and the likelihood of them ‘doing a runner’.

I decided to use that knowledge and the advice I used to give to candidates who emailed with questions, and to new recruits and colleagues, and turn that around to help myself. I’m definitely coping better now than I did when I first returned. These are my tips for dealing with reverse culture shock based on my recent experience.

How to Deal with Reverse Culture Shock

Here are some of the ways I dealt with reverse culture shock this year and some tips for coping with reverse culture shock. This is by no means comprehensive – I feel like I could write a book on the subject! – but hopefully this advice will help if you’re experiencing the same disorientation and alienation upon re-entry.

Learn About Reverse Culture Shock and Accept that You Might Experience It

I can’t count how many times people have told me over the years that I will probably experience culture shock when I eventually returned home – old friends who visited us in the UAE and Cambodia, itinerary clients and participants on the tours I occasionally hosted with local guides, and even Australians I fleetingly met.

“It will be a shock to the system, returning home, after living here/having the life you’ve had…” they’d warn. It always came as a surprise. My response was always the same, that I’d be fine. I’d never experienced culture shock, despite living in Southeast Asia and the Middle East, regions that expats and travellers tend to find either very challenging or very easy to live in. Terence and I were in the latter category.

My logic was always that if I’d never experienced culture shock, I didn’t envisage experiencing reverse culture shock when I returned home. Especially as Terence and I had returned to Australia lots of times before, spending anything from a month to several months, visiting family and friends, which we often combined with guidebook and magazine assignments.

What I didn’t factor into the equation was that on this trip I was alone. I’d always returned with my husband before, but this time Terence remained at home in Siem Reap with our cat Pepper. Plus, I’d returned with a 7-kilo carry-on of summer clothes, expecting to stay a month, never imagining I’d still be in Australia months later, shivering through a brutal winter.

Had I not have been in denial for years that reverse culture shock might hit me on my next trip back home – especially after being away for so long, and during an exceptional period in which borders closed and travel ground to a halt while a pandemic swept the world – I could have better prepared myself for what might come.

Tip: if you’re an expat, long-term traveller or student studying abroad, despite how well you may have adjusted to your new home(s) abroad, don’t discount the fact that you might experience reverse culture shock when you return home. Read up on it, prepare yourself for re-entry, and the adjustment will be easier.

Acknowledge That You’ve Changed As Much As Your Country Has Changed

For the first couple of months back in Australia, I found myself incessantly apologising to supermarket checkout staff for not knowing where to tap my credit card, for expressing dismay at the high prices, and for constantly complaining about the cold – and that was during summer in rural Victoria!

“I live in Cambodia!” I’d say, as if to explain it all away, which always drew empathy. Although apart from feeling cold during a Victorian’s idea of a ‘heat-wave’ (“Don’t worry, it’s cold for Queenslanders, too – that’s why we head north for the winter!”), I knew they didn’t understand.

How could an Australian who happily pays $50 for a café breakfast and more than $3,000 for a $1500 iPhone on a Telstra plan appreciate my objection to forking out $30 a month for internet and comprehend that a developing country such as a Cambodia was technologically more advanced when it came to things like banking and telecommunications?

When you live abroad for so long you get used to things being a certain way, which in our experience means easier and cheaper – especially if you’ve lived in countries like Cambodia, where our monthly gas bottle costs $15 in contrast to my mother’s $100 a month bill for gas that only heats the ‘hot’ water, and doesn’t even do that.

But even in the United Arab Emirates, which these days is more expensive than when we lived there, life was still far easier in many ways than it is in Australia, and service was superior due to the tradition of Arab hospitality. When we went to the bank, staff would invite us to sit down at a desk and served us tea while they sorted out whatever it was that we’d gone in there to do.

While Australians as individuals are some of the friendliest, kindest and most relaxed people in the world, Australian customer service is some of the worst I’ve ever experienced, from the increasing use of AI chatbots to all the rules and recorded messages warning you to be courteous to multiple levels of customer service ‘specialists’ to get through before you reach a person with enough authority to resolve your problem, only to find they can’t.

As a woman on a popular TV commercial in Australia says: “It’s the little things, people!!!”

If you aren’t prepared for the fact that your country is no longer the laidback happy-go-lucky place it once was, and that it’s a challenge to sort out things that can easily be resolved with a $5 ‘tip’ or a calm conversation over a cup of tea in other countries, then trust me, it will drive you as crazy as it has me.

Tip: prepare yourself for reverse culture shock by acknowledging the fact that not only have you changed from your years living abroad a different culture, but that your country and home culture has changed, too, and not necessarily for the better. Once you recognise this, you’ll be able to exercise the same level of patience and respect that you did when you first moved overseas. And if you can’t, better learn to meditate!

Do the Things That Always Made You Happiest At Home

Being on the beach or by the sea, walking in native bushland, bird-watching and wildlife-spotting, experiencing indigenous culture, eating and drinking Australia’s wonderful food and wine, and doing road trips through the outback are the things that have made me happiest when we lived in Australia and on trips back home with Terence to research, photograph and write guidebooks.

I’m far from the ocean here in rural Victoria, Terence is back in Cambodia, and my duties here mean I won’t be travelling anywhere anytime soon for pleasure. Instead, I cook delicious meals for mum, which we wash down with Aussie quaffers and I make the most of what’s in my mother’s backyard – or front yard, in fact – and that’s a towering eucalyptus and colossal willow trees.

They’re home to everything from multicoloured parakeets and red-tailed black cockatoos to dusky grey and pink-breasted galahs and the black and white magpies that wake me up every morning with their melodious songs. There are pairs of bulbuls – Terence’s favourites! – that perch on the electricity poles and occasionally I see wedge-tailed eagles flying high in the sky.

When I have time I take a walk into town and stroll through the public gardens to a small lake, skirted by more lofty eucalyptus trees, and walking paths, where there’s birdlife galore, including pelicans, cormorants, ducks, and swans. Nothing calms the mind and restores the soul like stopping to sit still for a while and watch the birds go about their business.

There are few things as restorative as nature. I swear it’s a cure for reverse culture shock.

Talk to Strangers, Make New Friends, Become Part of a Community

As I had to focus on my mum, my motivation for returning, and there was a lot to deal with, I didn’t reconnect with old friends as Terence and I always did on previous trips. I simply didn’t have time. I had so much to do and I had to focus. And that was probably, in part, why I felt such a sense of isolation and alienation, and experienced reverse culture shock when I hadn’t on previous trips.

To make up for that, I did what we used to tell new expats all those years ago in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, and that was to make new friends. While I haven’t socialised – there’s no time for that – each day I’ve taken time to stop for regular chats and get to know people in the community, from neighbours and small business owners to volunteers at a local bookshop and even random strangers.

Australians have this special ability to blurt out their life history and problems to people they’ve known for less than a minute. I used to watch conversations unfurl and friendships form between strangers on trains, buses and planes in wonder, and admire their confidence, openness and listening skills.

Now I surprise myself by doing the same, sharing stories of pain and joy with strangers who fast become friends. I can’t tell you how comforting it has been, to finally feel like a part of a community, however small and fleeting that participation and connection will be; to finally feel at home in this strange homeland, before I return to the home I made abroad with my husband.

Have you ever experienced culture shock or reverse culture shock? We’d love to hear from you if you have tips to how you dealt with it?

If you enjoyed this, see our Meaningful Travel Guide, Experiential Travel Guide, our guides to Slow Travel (Our Best Budget Travel Secret) and Local Travel and Living Like Locals, How to Meet Locals When You Travel, How to Be a Better Traveller, How to Be a Greener Traveller, and It’s Not Where to Travel But How to Travel.

You might also enjoy these 20 Travel Lessons from 20 Years Living Abroad and Travelling the World, How We Created a Life Filled with Travel, How to Get Paid to Travel the World as a Travel Writer, and tips to dealing with Reverse Culture Shock.