US soldiers get the reverse culture shock blues
The US soldier magazine Stars and Stripes reports on the problems some american soldiers have with going home to the States after being posted in Europe. Apparently, after adjusting to European life, some soldiers are so accustomed to the slower European lifestyle that they find the competitive and money-oriented life back home both confusing and less rewarding than what they experienced while being stationed out:
It was seriously overwhelming,” said the Dayton, Ohio, native, who has been stationed in Europe for eight of the past 13 years and now works at RAF Upwood in England. “I forgot how to use the phone in the States. I forgot how the gas pumps worked. I couldn’t even rent a car in Dallas because I didn’t have a credit card because you pay cash for most everything in Germany.”
Jones had been jolted by culture shock when he first moved overseas in 1999. When he returned to the States after a few years abroad, he felt similarly disoriented. It was culture shock, in reverse.
I’ll suggest that reverse culture shock is worse than normal culture shock: the latter is almost a normal part of getting into a new culture, and has the advantage that there is always the normality of home to compare with. In the reverse culture shock, however, the normality has turned out to be non-existent, and there is nowhere to return to if it doesn’t work.
Except, of course, just somewhere else, or back to the new home, as some of the soldiers in the original article found out.
The blog Vagabondish has a list of advice on how one traveller dealt with her shock of coming home, Christian at nomad4ever has some other musings on returning home. However, although the initial culture shock may be equal for both travelers and ex-pats who lives abroad for an extended period of time (like soldiers), the problem of reverse culture shock is probably bigger for the latter group. When establishing a normal, routined day-to-day life in a foreign culture, a lot of new habits will form, that will be confusing and frustrated on return to the home culture. Someone traveling and exploring will most likely not form any new everyday habits, since every day is new anyways.
Has anyone else had experience with reverse culture shock?
