To most of us, living in Italy is a dream come true. That being said, it takes some time to adjust to your new home. But once you have figured out which type of trash goes where and your taste buds have adjusted to the different ingredients (both of which you can read about How to Be an American in Italy), you’re all set.
But what happens when you go back to your original home after living in Italy for an extended period of time?
We usually expect culture shock when we move to a new place, but a lot of us aren’t ready for the opposite side of the coin: reverse culture shock.
Here’s a look at what it’s like and how to make it a bit easier to readjust to life in the States after having been away for a while.
What Is Reverse Culture Shock?
Culture shock is the general feeling of “strangeness” you get when you move to a new country. You feel out of place and kind of lost, and it just feels like everything is too different. You feel disoriented, like you just can’t seem to get your footing. It can cause discomfort and even anxiety and depression until you find a way to adjust to your new normal.
Reverse culture shock, on the other hand, consists of these same feelings… but in reverse. They appear when you go back to your country of origin. Suddenly your hometown doesn’t feel like home anymore: little things have changed, and the things that haven’t, you just aren’t used to anymore.
In a way, reverse culture shock can be even more upsetting than the original culture shock felt when you moved to Italy in the first place. It makes sense to feel a little like an alien when you’re an American fresh off the plane eating dinner at your new Italian in-laws’ house for the first time, but to feel that way when you’re having an American family get-together in America with the American parents and American siblings you grew up with is extremely jarring.
Why Do We Feel Reverse Culture Shock?
Why do we suddenly feel like a stranger when we’re back in the place where we grew up or lived for a large portion of our lives? The reason is both simple and complicated.
First of all, your old home has changed. Sure, your parents still live in the same house they’ve lived in for forty years, but now they’ve changed the floor tiles in the bathroom and replaced those worn-out salt and pepper shakers they’ve had since you were nine years old and for some reason this makes you want to cry. You never really appreciated that dingy old salt shaker before, but all of the sudden you don’t know how in the world they expect you to eat without it! Then, to make matters worse, the grocery store you’ve been to a million times before looks the same on the outside, but inside they’ve moved the spices two aisles over from where they used to be and now they sell watermelons when they never did before. Watermelons!! It’s chaos, I tell you, chaos!
All jokes aside, these things may seem trivial, but to someone who remembers and expects things to be one way and comes to find that they aren’t that way anymore, it really can be disorienting. It is like singing along to a song you know by heart and have known by heart for years, only to discover that someone has changed two words in the middle. Those two words aren’t much, but they startle you out of the moment and put a damper on your enjoyment of the song.
The second reason one would feel reverse culture shock is because you yourself have changed. You’re not the same person you were when you left home. Sure, you have the same values and ideals at your core, but certain parts of you are different because of where you have been living. Maybe you used to eat dinner at five in the States, but now that you’ve been living in Italy, you’ve become accustomed to eating at eight. Maybe you are used to eating more fruits and vegetables now and the more processed items on American menus give you stomach trouble. Maybe you have different ideas about politics after having seen the U.S. from an outsider’s perspective, or maybe you just aren’t used to speaking English instead of Italian to people when you’re out and about anymore.
You may not realize it, but your mind and body both have adapted to living in Italy, and when you’re back in America, things just feel “off” sometimes.
What to Do about Reverse Culture Shock
Luckily, reverse culture shock does usually tend to fade the longer you are back home. Just like regular culture shock, it is all a matter of adjusting. If you fall back into your old habits and routines, you’ll soon start to feel like the old self you were there. Or, perhaps better for those of us who were looking for a bit of personal change anyway, you can find a way to combine your new identity with your old one and create new routines in your old home that make you feel more relaxed and at ease. Either way, things will eventually stop feeling so strange, because you will get used to them, just like you did when you moved to Italy in the first place.
Try to take things slow, however. Get lots of rest (everything feels worse when you’re jet-lagged, trust me). Make sure to spend some time on your own to sort through your feelings, and don’t feel afraid or ashamed to feel them. It may be difficult to make the people around you understand why you don’t feel as “at home” in their home as you used to (and they might actually be a bit offended by this, which isn’t fair, but is something you may encounter, FYI), so it may be hard to talk about. But just know that this is completely normal, and that you should never feel bad for not feeling 100 percent “normal” yourself when you’re visiting your loved ones or moving back to your hometown. Try to focus on the good things about spending time with those you love and doing the things you have always enjoyed doing in your hometown, and soon things will start to feel a lot less overwhelming.
Some More Insights into Reverse Culture Shock
Reverse culture shock is almost always worse the first time you are returning from having been abroad for an extended time period. The first time coming back home can be especially jarring, because you probably aren’t expecting the odd feelings that come with it.
For me, though, it wasn’t until I had stayed in Italy for over a year that “home” didn’t feel like “home” anymore for a while. The more time you spend away cultivating your new life and the new you, the harder it is to adjust when you get back. This can be remedied by leaving less time between trips back home if possible, so there isn’t so much to catch up on when you get there every time – and your own identity might not have changed as much in the interim.
Reverse culture shock isn’t always a terrible thing, though: sometimes it can be amusing. I have written two posts already about the little quirks of America that you don’t think much about until you move to Italy, like the way Americans smile more at each other on the street and how the roads are wider there. It can be almost like a game to see how different the two countries are and – perhaps more helpfully – how much they are actually the same.
The most important thing to remember is that you are not alone. Almost everyone who lives abroad (in any country) and then returns home experiences reverse culture shock to some extent. It is simply a matter of adjusting to your new old life.
Have you ever experienced reverse culture shock? What was it like for you? Let us know in the comments!
The idea for this post was suggested by a reader of the An American in Italy newsletter. If you have any suggestions for future posts, sign up for the mailing list in the sidebar or at the bottom of the page, or contact me directly at blog@anamericaninitaly.com and let me know what you want to read about.