Culture Shock: Coming Home

Many have asked me what, exactly, it is that I feel having returned home from over a year in Latin America.   I suppose most of us are at least vaguely familiar with the concept of culture shock.  But how can I suffer from that when I have spent so much of my life here in the States.  How can only one little trip confound me so?

Merriam Webster’s Online Dictionary defines culture shock as “a sense of confusion and uncertainty sometimes with feelings of anxiety that may affect people exposed to an alien culture or environment without adequate preparation.”  

Well, confusion and uncertainty definitely fit.  Now, perhaps in my case the shock would be lessened had I gone to New York, or New Orleans, or some other unfamiliar place.  The things is, I am intimately familiar with Northern California.  Or at least I was.  Over time, things change.  And either one changes with them, or not.  The thing about coming back to a place you once knew after an extended absence is that that place is no longer the same, at least, not completely.  For me, everything is at least familiar, sometimes exactly the same, yet half the time completely different.  And I never know which.  I live in a constant state of discovery, but for there to be discovery, there must first be uncertainty.  For me, this uncertainty is coupled with confusion, as I never know whether something is how I remember it, or one of the many things that have changed.  These feelings have, on occasion, also manifested into anxiety.

Furthermore, my mind has been reconditioned to living in less developed countries, thus making my original culture alien to me.  For example, although I had eagerly looked forward to being able to deposit toilet paper in the toilet, a week had passed before I stopped looking for the garbage can in the restroom.  Similarly, yesterday at work I was cleaning, and instinctively wrung out the towel over a floor drain.  My boss looked at me like, ‘what the fuck are you doing?’ and so I said, “well, I didn’t want to wring out a dirty towel in the sanitiser bucket.”  He replied, “that’s kinda the point of the sanitiser bucket.”  Okay, that makes sense.  Here.  But it is something that I need to recondition myself to think.  Everyday, hundreds of little things like this occur, keeping me in a virtually constant state of uncertainty.  

Normally, people do (re)adjust and acclimate to their (new) culture.  The length of time necessary dependent upon a number of variables.  I have no doubt that things will once again become familiar to me.  But it won’t happen over night.  Not even in a week. It will likely take many, many months... But it will.



NOTE:  Some would define my experience as reverse culture shock, though attributing it with the same symptoms of culture shock.  In fact, many sources cite that reverse culture shock can often be more difficult to deal with on account of it being more surprising to experience than the original shock of leaving.  I personally don’t see a need to define them differently.