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[scot47]

If you have enough money you can insulate yourselves from the difficulties of mixing when you get back to the land where you grew up.

[scot47]

When I came back to Scotland after two years teaching in Saudi Arabia in 1972 I had a bulging wallet, A few months later I was in the Psych Ward. Going crazy is easy. You can label it "Reverse Culture Shock" or anything you want.

It took me a long time to come to terms with it.

[isitts]

[nomad soul]

Good point about "going forward" vs "going back," isitts.

Another perspective about mitigating reverse culture shock:

How to Return Home After an Assignment Abroad
HBR | October 24, 2017
Source: https://hbr.org/2017/10/how-to-return-home-after-an-assignment-abroad

Start thinking about how you want to incorporate the new cultural styles you’ve learned and come to appreciate into your repertoire back home. For example, perhaps you’ve learned to be more outspoken abroad, but come back to your native culture where such behavior is less acceptable. In this case, you have a couple options:

• Take on a blended cultural style. Cultivate a new cultural style which represents a hybrid of the two styles — something that is a bit different from the way you originally behaved back home before going abroad, but not quite as different as you were when fully adapted to the new culture. There is no right or wrong way here. The blend will take different forms depending on your preferences, how much you did indeed adapt, and what you find acceptable back home — both for yourself and in the context where you work and socialize.

• Create segmented cultural styles. Develop multiple and distinct cultural selves — the one you had back home and a new style consistent with what you learned when you lived and worked abroad. Rather than apply these styles in places where they aren’t suitable (and possibly getting quite jumbled in the process), separate them just as you would clothes for different occasions. For example, in a meeting at work with people from your native culture, you might act with your typical, default cultural style. But when meeting new clients from the culture you just returned from, you might adopt an entirely different cultural persona.

(End of excerpt)

[nomad soul]

The US State Dept. on reverse culture shock: