How To Survive Reverse Culture Shock: Understand It, Feel Better and Get Your Life Back! Workbook Edition

By Elena Nebreda

this is the solution to a growing problem: as more and more people move abroad, more and more people also return home and find re-adaptation challenges. this is the guide to making your transition back home easier, full of resources for you to:

- know exactly how reverse culture shock works and what to do about it
- feel better with stories of people who returned home
- empower you to feel good and normal again

this book will help you to better understand your situation and to get comfort while defining a clearer outlook for you with the more than 42 ideas that helped others before. the workbook edition gives you 19 exercises on top of that for a hands on approach to your re-adaptation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Elena Nebreda
• Release date: Nov 15, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301275953

Elena Nebreda

Spanish born Elena Nebreda got a case of Reverse Culture Shock so bad after living abroad that she had to do something about it. She interviewed tons of returnee expats to find out successful ways to re-adapt and turn Reverse Culture Shock into a much easier and lighter process for everybody. She wrote an understanding and supportive guide for expats to feel better and empowered to mesh all their cultures into the one works for them no matter where they are.

Book preview

HOW TO SURVIVE REVERSE CULTURAL SHOCK

Understand It, Feel Better and Get Your Life Back!

Workbook Edition

Elena Nebreda

.

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2012 Elena Nebreda

License Notes: This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this ebook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Ebook formatting by www.ebooklaunch.com

Table of Contents

Intro

1. Why this book

2. I am going home, why is this hard for me?

3. Hostsickness instead of homesickness

4. Life changes

5. Why are you going back? Find your own reasons

6. Develop the attitude that is right for you

7. Handle this section to a friend, family member, coworker or boss

8. What is Reverse Culture Shock?

9. What is home to you?

10. Time, Space and Change

11. Typical Culture Shock and Reverse Culture Shock processes

12. Cognitive dissonance

13. A question of identity

14. What is this Third Culture thing?

15. The radical approach

16. Know yourself and plan ahead

17. Logistic considerations

18. How to keep your old life present in your new life at home

19. 42 ideas for you to have an easier transition

20. Beware of how you use these ideas

21. Culture Cringe

22. Stress and how to reduce it

23. When home feels heavy

24. Social Expectations

25. The job and money issue

26. Dating and your love life

27. Typical fears and how to relativize them

28. When it is hard to let go

29. Ego issues

30. Letting go

31. Re-invention abroad and at home

32. Finding yourself

33. Looking at the bright side

34. Last word: What if after all I still can't re-adapt?

35. Extra note

36. Resources

Welcome to your Workbook!

Preliminary Exercise #01: Know where you are

Preliminary Exercise #02: Define your goals

Preliminary Exercise #03: Mentally prepare for this life change

Exercise #1: What are your symptoms?

Exercise #2: Which 5 are the most important symptoms you are having?

Exercise #3: Why are you going back?

Exercise #4: Who are the people who can help you?

Exercise #5: Choose the basic threads for your Third Culture Sweater

Exercise #6: Know yourself and plan ahead

Exercise #7: Choose your top 5 ideas from the 42 listed in the book

Exercise #8: Limit your Bubble

Exercise #9: Create a Sanctuary

Exercise #10: List your mistakes during this process and learn from them

Exercise #11: List your resources to snap out of negativity

Exercise #12: Create your phrasebook

Exercise #13: Create your own stress reduction plan

Exercise #14: Avoid feeling overwhelmed by getting organized

Exercise #15: Letting go exercises

Exercise #16: Visualize your future for Re-invention

Exercise #17: Congratulate yourself!

Exercise #18: What have you found about yourself?

Exercise #19: Keep your spirits up and focus on the bright side of things

HOW TO SURVIVE REVERSE CULTURE SHOCK WORKBOOK

Intro

Hello and welcome!

If you are moving back home you might be a bit concerned or anxious about some of the issues that can arise during this type of life move. You may even be there already, struggling with your own re-adaptation process. Either way, don't worry, with a bit of preparation and the right psychology everything can be made much, much easier.

People are often surprised that a sensation of emptiness or unease hits them when they go home, and they often feel unprepared and lacking the right resources to bring themselves back to normal. Our current society expects change, movement and the ability to be fully internationalized at all times from everybody while it regards as weak or silly to experience moderate to severe Reverse Culture Shock. We are all expected to be triumphantly sipping coffee the morning after we arrive as if nothing had happened in our lives, like it is not a big deal to switch countries and go back home leaving so many things of our lives behind. Many returnees crash and burn because of this, along with a plethora of feelings and strange behaviors attached to the experience.

The truth is, no matter how cosmopolitan and well-traveled you are, going home for the first time after extended time abroad is very different from going anywhere else in the world. Most people are not even remotely ready for it. Even very tough men and women in the military and very smart guys at MIT experience it, so please realize that it is not that you are weak or silly at all. Becoming aware of how to prevent and minimize Reverse Culture Shock will help you have a much easier and happier transition.

This book will help you ease into your new situation by providing you with specific tools and resources to:

1) Understand what is Reverse Culture Shock and why is messing with your life

2) Quickly feel better and more accompanied, relating to other returnees through their experiences

3) Empower you to kick that Reverse Culture Shock in the nuts and regain control over your life

As you can see, this book is not just about getting by and surviving as a victim of Reverse Culture Shock. This book is about fully understanding the situation you are in and getting the tools to turn Reverse Culture Shock into the great self-growth opportunity that it actually is. It is a companion that wants you to feel good along the way because sometimes it can get a bit lonely when you go back home. It includes reflections on important issues returnees face and comments from people who found a better way through their own re-adaptation process so that you can get inspired and find the one that works for you. This book can help you go through Reverse Culture Shock in a positive and constructive manner while you develop your own Third Culture mindset. Once you’ve mastered it, you won’t need to constantly switch the culture sweaters that you wear anymore; You will have taken your favorite parts of each culture and woven them like threads into your own culture sweater, making your next visit home much easier. Your own culture sweater is a better fit, and a more comfortable sweater to wear if you are a returnee going home.

Let's get started on converting your confusion, frustration, and headaches into confidence in your abilities and a bright outlook on your future. This book can help you do all that!

Here's to your brave and successful re-adaptation!

Elena

P.S. For updated resources, support and ideas to make this transition easier for you don't forget to visit www.howtosurvivereverseculturalshock.com

1. Why this book

I got interested in writing this book after hearing my friends’ stories, as well as many travelers’ and expats' experiences about going back home. It seemed to me that most people felt like they were forced into an old sweater that they no longer liked, needed, wanted, or fit into. A sweater that was either too old, too short, too tight, too itchy and uncomfortable or too out of fashion. The folks I interviewed for this book felt like it was very difficult or impossible to fit into the sweater they found, and they were right - it no longer suited them.

In any case, what really got me writing was I personally went through a pretty bad case of Reverse Culture Shock myself, and I swore I would do everything in my power to help people transition through it in a lighter and more positive manner. I’m sure you have heard some Reverse Culture Shock stories, or maybe you have your own, perhaps about how it made you do, say, and think things you never thought you would, and I hope you are feeling better now. The truth is that with a bit of self-awareness and psychology the transition can be made much easier from day one. I, like most, just didn't know how to. I am no Third Culture Kid, I lived most of my life in the same place and I did not expect Reverse Culture Shock at all. I didn't even know what it was or that such a thing existed in the first place. I thought I was just going home, so I was wholly unprepared for it when it snuck up on me and hit me from behind.

This is the book I wish I had read when I was going through my own Reverse Culture Shock so I could’ve had the tools and resources to deal with it. I researched its causes, then I interviewed many travelers, students and professionals who went home and dealt with it in one way or another. They gave me many ideas on how to better cope. I focused on those who had gone through it successfully and on their impressions about it, as well as on the strategies they used to get themselves out of it. I wanted to find out how they avoided sweating the small stuff that sufferers from Reverse Culture Shock often get so caught on. However, what gave this book its final twist was talking to Adult Third Culture Kids (ATCK for short) who made me realize that it was just not about surviving Reverse Culture Shock as a victimized version of yourself, but about realizing that deep down it is all in your head and that you have a much higher degree of control over it than you think. These ATCK also helped me understand that Reverse Culture Shock could actually be a great thing if properly understood and channeled, if one could develop his or her own Third Culture. The comments offered by the aforementioned people are adapted notes which were approved by them at the time of our interview, all the names have been changed to protect their privacy.

Just because you are physically back home it