Are you feeling Culture Shock?

You’re happy to be in Perth! then you feel wobbly and unsure!, then you’re happy again!, then you just don’t know how you feel ! – welcome to the world of Culture Shock. This is the process people go through when they are adapting to living in a new country and everyone feels it to some extent.  The four stages are:

1. The honeymoon stage

Moving from one country to another usually involves dreaming, planning and a LOT of waiting around! Small wonder then that when people finally get to Perth they are happy, euphoric even. In this stage, everything is new and everything needs doing so, whatever else you are feeling, you certainly won’t be bored! There is a lot to adapt to –  all those blue skies, palm trees, the clothes people wear, the way they speak…the list goes on. During this time there is often a rush to embrace “all things Australian” and a genuine desire to really fit in. Also, in this period there is so much to do including such trivial tasks as finding somewhere to live, getting a job, sending the kids to school etc!

One last point – the life you left behind isn’t very far behind right now. You only saw your relatives and friends a short time ago and the things you may miss later on are still familiar and feel recent to you. A big change always involves loss but the loss hasn’t started to bite yet.

2. The rejection stage

After the honeymoon stage comes a period of irritation and rejection of the new country. Simply put, the “novelty begins to wear off” and the less appealing aspects of Perth life begin to irritate. You may be annoyed that your bank charges you so much, that you have to do your own tax, there’s no post delivered on Saturdays, even that its too damn hot (oh yes ! – this happens!). Things that you may have written off as amusing quirks of Aussie life when you were in the honeymoon phase now just feel annoying! It’s during this period that you start to feel the absence of the life you left behind. It may be that you miss going to the football every Saturday, shopping with your mates or going to an Indian restaurant; whatever it is it will creep up on you during this stage and you will long for those familiar routines which made you feel “connected” or “grounded”. Its round about now that it can all seem a bit too hard and a lot of “British is Best” attitudes resurface.

3. The adjustment stage

After this period of recoil comes one of adjustment. Time passes. Perth life is no longer new and its contrast with life in the UK becomes less noticeable so you become more accepting of it as it really is. People may feel that it’s not all it’s made up to be on the Life Style Channel but it isn’t a bad place either. Life begins to feel more “normal” and you no longer think it strange that Christmas is sunny or that you can’t buy wine in the supermarket. In this stage most people “adopt” the Perth lifestyle and integrate it into their life experience – they become truly “dual nationals”.

4. Reverse culture shock!

The final phase is about how you feel when you return to the UK. In a nut-shell – “when your old home feels weird, that’s reverse culture shock!” Having lived abroad for some time, nothing is ever quite the same again. There are aspects of life in the UK you may rush to embrace! It could be your family, the shopping, the pubs or the countryside that you love to have back but you might be dismayed at the grey weather, the traffic or the steady diet of bad news on the TV. In this final phase of “reverse culture shock” you realize to what extent you have assimilated into Australian life. This becomes even clearer when you return to Australia.

These stages are all generalizations and people experience them differently and for different amounts of time. For instance, there are people who remain in the rejection stage and become almost stereotypically British and they never reach the stage of adjustment and acceptance. Most migrants do though.

Whilst you are adaping to living in Perth it is entirely normal to be drifting in and out of these stages and feeling all the emotions and ups & downs that go with them. If you have emigrated as a family its important to remember that different family members might be experiencing culture shock at different times so its important to communicate about this and understand what’s going on.

For me personally, I have felt all of these stages – do they match up with what you have felt whilst living abroad?

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