When Returning Home After Living In Another Country Is A Challenge

If you have lived in another country, with a very different culture from yours, you will have noticed that some adaptations are a real challenge. Cultural shocks, a different language, different people… However, this is just the beginning of a period of adaptation. Either way, there’s not a lot of talk about readjusting when you get home, which can be equally tough if we’ve spent a lot of time away.

When we are away from home, it is normal to feel homesick. However, we never thought of returning one day and having to readjust to our country. Will it be a weird feeling, feeling like a stranger in your own home? A reverse culture shock, having to relearn how to live in your own country. This feeling is more common than we think.

Time and effort to adapt

When you arrive in a new country, you have to adapt to everything that is part of it. This not only implies traditions, but also landscapes, places and people. To this end, patience and effort will be key. The task of binding oneself to a place where one will live for a certain period of time has to be faced again.

But we already know this. However, we often ignore that we will have to repeat this adaptation process once we return to our home country. It is strange, but there is no worse feeling than feeling strangers in a place that you thought you were already known, the one in which you grew up and which, now, is partly unknown.

Don’t be too alarmed if you feel confused or have doubts about your personality echo in your head. It is quite natural that it has to do with this reverse culture shock that you are experiencing. You will feel awkward, a little strange surrounded by all those people who belong to the family, but whose absence, due to distance and lack of contact, you had come to get used to.

Start thinking about your friends, how many things you can do in their company. And where is that place where I loved to eat? Darnit! They moved, changed their name or closed . Many things change over the years  and if you are “suffering” from reverse culture shock, observing that everything is “out of place” will involve a double dose of tension.

Learning to live in our country again

The frustration will be noticed by the new habits acquired in what you once considered a foreign country, but which you now see much closer to yourself than a place in your early life. You will notice that the supermarkets have different products, that the meal times are different and, perhaps, the malaise will take over.

However, this feeling won’t last long. Think about how long it took you to learn to live in the country you left. What was the first thing you did? Definitely… break the isolation. Getting out, meeting new people and places is essential to get rid of that barrier that was limiting us.

Embrace this new way of reconciling with your place of origin and take advantage of it to get to know places you certainly haven’t discovered yet. Don’t reject the new identity you acquired abroad, don’t even try to repress it. It would be bad for your self-esteem as you have broadened your horizons and this is good.

Coming home can be a rewarding experience if it arouses all these negative feelings that affect us. It means that we now see the world from two different perspectives and that we are true experts on cultural shocks. Don’t try to avoid them, they are natural. In the same way, surely, you will have to regain fluency with the language and gradually stop thinking with that foreigner you were used to.

Most people who, like you, have spent a long time  outside their home country need to learn to live in it again. A completely natural process that must not cause sadness, which goes beyond nostalgia for the country left behind.

You certainly have many friends to contact and, if not, you can always make others. Act as when you arrive in a new place and enjoy the experience you are having. Without a doubt, it will enrich you.