Culture Shock! 14 Posts On Coping With Uncomfortable Cultural Changes
Anyone who travels, studies or lives abroad experiences uncomfortable cultural surprises if not shocks. Actually, you can experience these discomforts moving from one town to another or one job to another as you compare and contrast your former life to your life now. You can also experience cultural shocks by staying put, as the environment around you changes, as the people you used to associate with move on, as those who used to be in charge grow old, retire, move away or die off, or newcomers come in and take over. Change is a part of life, for good and ill.
This graphic explains how humans adjust to these changes, or not. It’s easy to get stuck in one stage, “uncertainty and doubt,” decide that the shocks are too great. This may require you to make a change for yourself.
My wife, sons, and I were fortunate in our years abroad to adapt and accept what were initially uncomfortable situations, cultural differences, and barriers.
In the following articles, my wife and I describe what were the biggest cultural shocks we experienced while living in Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.
A common experience for ex-pats.
Eliciting double takes after visiting the salon.
People of different faiths have much to teach each other.
I mentioned in the lecture above that the culture shock in adjusting to Alamance County, NC was in some ways as great as living overseas. Click.
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