How to Avoid Culture Shock When Moving Home

Most people associate culture shock with moving overseas, where the language, customs, and way of life are usually radically different from that which you experience in the UK.

But as many people who are moving home to an unfamiliar place are finding out, you can experience culture shock just by moving a few miles down the road.

One part of a city can have a totally different culture from another, and people moving from the city to the countryside, or vice versa, often experience a big culture shock.

However, just like an international home move, with the right information, tools, and frame of mind, the culture shock of moving home can be turned to your advantage and may help you realise what a wonderful life experience your new home is offering you.

So before you move to your new home it is helpful to know about culture shock and what you can do to recognize and prevent it from happening to you.

And if you have already moved home and are feeling homesick or disorientated, then there are some useful tips here for you.

You may also like to read: Is Life Better in the Countryside, City or Suburbs? An in-depth guide to what to expect when moving to an unfamiliar part of the country. Discover what the pros and cons of moving to the suburbs, countryside, or city are, what the major differences are, and whether it is the right move for you.

What is Culture Shock and Why Does it Occur?

Culture shock is the accumulation of unfamiliar events, strange surroundings, and new social norms rather than a specific event.

Moving to an unfamiliar country, town, city, or even neighbourhood can be unsettling and even overwhelming for some people.

The surroundings, people, and even accents can be so different that you feel like a fish out of water.

If you previously lived in the city you may have been comfortable with the fact that nobody knew your business or private life but when you move to the countryside, for example, you may find that everybody knows everybody and every last detail of their lives.

Living in your old area it may have been acceptable to have pink hair and nobody batted an eyelid, in the suburbs, you may be judged for the way you look or dress.

In the countryside, you may not be exposed to different cultures or religions whereas in the city you will live amongst a huge variety of cultures.

From the volume of traffic to even different foodstuffs in the local shops, it can feel very different from what you are used to.

The cumulative effect of all these new sensations and experiences can often lead to culture shock.

You may also like to read: How to Make a New Place Feel Like Home. One of the triggers of culture shock is that nothing is familiar. In this guide, we look at how to quickly become familiarised with your new neighbourhood and how to feel a part of your new community.

What are the Symptoms of Culture Shock?

Culture shock can manifest itself in both physical and emotional ways. What are the effects on you both mentally and physically of culture shock? If you experience culture shock you could suffer from:

• Anxiety
• Frustration
• Being short tempered
• Feelings of being overwhelmed
• Avoiding contact with others
• Tiredness
• Depression
• Aches and pains

Recommended reading: Help – I Can’t Settle in My New Home – Learn the best tricks and tips for helping you settle into a new home quickly and easily. Discover ways to make your house feel like your home as well as ways to integrate into your new community and more.

What are the Stages of Culture Shock Moving Home?

It is generally accepted that there are four stages of culture shock although a fifth stage is often reported too.

#1 The Honeymoon Period

#2 Period of Frustration

#3 Adjustment Period

#4 Adaption Period

#5 Re-entry travel shock

The Honeymoon Period

When you first move to a new area you will probably find everything really exciting, stimulating, and fascinating. There will be a lot to discover, new shops, new neighbours, new sights and sounds.

There will be unpacking to do, making your new place into a home, and plenty to keep you occupied and stimulated.

Your choice of new home and new area will seem perfect and this feeling may last for weeks, months, or years.

For many people, this period never ends and they live happily ever after, for others, this period is short-lived.

The Period of Confusion

The next stage of experiencing culture shock is when frustration, worry, and confusion start to set in.

You don’t know where the best shops are, there are not the usual things in the corner shop that you had in your old area, things are unfamiliar, and this can be unsettling.

People may use regional slang or have particularly strong local accents that you find disorientating, almost like moving to a foreign land.

Small things start to irritate you, you miss the familiarity and feeling of comfort of your old home, neighbourhood, and friends.

You may also start to compare your old home and area with your new one.

It is often during this frustrating period that you will experience depression and homesickness.

It is also not uncommon to experience minor health issues as a result of your anxiety and frustration at your unfamiliar new life.

The Adjustment Period

As you become familiar with your new surroundings you start to feel more at home and the adjustment period starts.

You start to make new friends, you set up your new home as you like it, you start to build a routine, and people and places in the community are becoming familiar.

Your new corner shop may not sell your old familiar brands but you discover new favourites, you adjust to the streets being quieter or busier, and you dress according to the local conditions such as needing Wellington boots or smart city wear.

You begin to understand how the public transport system works or what the local slang words mean.

In short, you are becoming familiar and feeling more at ease in your new surroundings.

The Acceptance Stage

Finally, you will come to accept your new place and area as your home.

Whilst it will always be different from your old home and neighbourhood, you will probably embrace that difference and learn to love it for all of its qualities.

The acceptance period often comes after a few weeks or months of arriving in your new home, although for some people it may take several years of living there before the acceptance period begins.

The Re-Entry Stage

There are some people who never adjust to their new home or surroundings and end up moving back to their old area.

However, even after a short period of time away, many find that things have changed quite a bit.

Your old friends may have formed new social circles, familiar stores have closed, good neighbours have moved away and things are not as you left them.

There is also the problem that you may have been looking at your old life through rose-tinted glasses.

So if you are considering moving back to an area that you once lived in, do your due diligence as you would if moving to another unfamiliar area.

You may also like to read: How to Make Your Home More Relaxing. To help stave off culture shock it’s a good idea to make your home yours, to make it feel relaxing and welcoming. In this guide, we offer some tips to make your home a place of peace and tranquility.

How to Manage Culture Shock

So now we know what the symptoms of culture shock are, and what each stage of culture shock is, how do you deal with culture shock, what can we do to prevent it, or do to help us accept our new home and environment?

During the Honeymoon Period make the most of your enthusiasm for your new home and new neighbourhood.

Your excitement will boost your positive mindset and energy which can be used to create good memories, form new relationships, and get and about to become familiar with your new surroundings.

Use this time to make your new place feel like your home and to create happy memories.

When you enter the frustration period you will likely need to call upon the support of the friends you made during the honeymoon period.

It will also help you immensely if you have managed to get your new home feeling like it is your home, and that you have familiar things around you.

Remember that you may be looking at your old life through rose-tinted glasses and focusing only on the aspects of your new life that you are not 100% happy with.

Look for the positive and good aspects of your new life to help you get through this difficult period, and focus on the fact that it is just a short period of time before these feelings of frustration and rejection of your new life pass.

In the adjustment period, you start to feel like your new surroundings are your home, you feel comfortable and at ease.

But now is the time to consolidate, to strengthen your attachment to your new home and area.

Seek out local interest groups, start a new hobby, or do community work, anything that helps you create an even stronger bond with your new area.

Get out more, explore more, investigate more, the more effort you put in, the more you will grow to love your new home and accept all those quirky things that used to annoy you.

Finally, you enter the acceptance period. Even after a year or so, you may still feel like an outsider in your new area, and that may never change.

But the more routines you develop, the more familiar everything becomes, the less you compare this home or area with the old one, the more at home you will feel.

This is a new home, a new life, and accepting all the new opportunities and good aspects of your surroundings will make life easier.

You may also like to read: How to Love a Home You Hate. Part of your culture shock could be a result of not letting go of your old home and not falling in love with your new home. In this guide, we look at how to emotionally detach from your old home and how to fall in love with your new one.

How to Avoid Culture Shock

As we have discovered, culture shock is a culmination of events and can manifest itself during different stages of the settling-in period at your new home.

You may find these tips useful to help you avoid culture shock and help you adapt to your new culture.

#1 Accept That it Takes Time to Adjust

Moving to a new home or new area is unsettling, it takes you out of your comfort zone into unfamiliar places.

Some people will embrace the changes and thrive with such stimulus, whilst others may suffer badly from relocation depression, or culture shock.

Give yourself plenty of time to get over what has probably been a quite traumatic few months moving home. You will need time to adjust to your new home, new life, and all the things that are unfamiliar.

It may help you to spend some time just walking around your new area, making new discoveries, and enjoying a never-before-seen park, or riverside walk.

Set yourself a routine, and you will soon see that people around you start to become familiar as most people live to a regular timetable.

Accept that making this new place your home will take time, you made the decision to move home for a good reason.

#2 Concentrate on the Positives

You will not feel ‘at home’ straightaway, it will take time to appreciate all the good things about your new life, so concentrate on building that new life and enjoying the new experiences.

It is easy to look back with rose-tinted glasses and compare your unfamiliar new life with your old life.

But there will be plenty of good reasons why you moved where you did, just focus on those and create some wonderful new memories to look back on.

#3 Relocation Depression and Homesickness

You may find yourself feeling homesick, wondering if all the upheaval and stress was worth it.

Leaving friends and family behind, starting a new job or a new school perhaps, the expense of moving home, trying to set up a new home, all whilst dealing with life’s normal ups and downs.

Thankfully it is easy to connect with your old friends and family via the internet, but the best long-term solution to homesickness and relocation depression is to embrace your new life and make new friends.

Constant contact with people from your past life may actually increase homesickness, so concentrate on building your new life rather than trying to hang onto your old life.

Try to create a new social circle, start that hobby you have always wanted to do, join local societies or groups, strike up conversations with neighbours, anything that will get you involved with your new community and will give you the opportunity to increase your social circle.

#4 Take Time Out to Relax

It is far too easy to become overwhelmed when you are trying to get used to a new area, set up a new home, and build a new life in an unfamiliar place.

Therefore it is important that you take time out to relax and to wind down.

Watch a film, meditate, do exercise, maybe sit in the garden with a book, whatever you like to do to relax.

The less stressed you are, the more likely you will be to be able to successfully prevent culture shock.

#5 Be Open to Change

Keeping an open mind, being ready to accept change, and embracing new challenges and a new lifestyle are key to avoiding culture shock.

If you are prepared to accept that things will be different, that you are embarking upon a new chapter in your life, then the changes that come from moving to a new home and new area will be easier to adapt to.

You may also like to read: The Brightside of Moving Home. Staying positive during your relocation is crucial to get the most benefit from your new life. In this guide, we look at all the positive things that can happen when you move to a new home.

What is Reverse Culture Shock?

Try as they might, some people just cannot settle in a new area, or circumstances change and they make the decision to move back to their hometown.

Many, however, find that moving back is often even more traumatic than moving away.

The longer you spend away from your old place, the more things are likely to have changed there.

Note too that you may have changed, and your new normal routines or experiences may make it harder for you to reintegrate to your old place.

New people could have moved into the streets you know with a negative impact, friends could have moved away or formed new social circles, and you may have formed habits or accepted new ‘norms’ in your new place without realising it, but that is alien to your home town.

Depending upon why you are thinking of moving back to your hometown, the transition may be harder for some than others, as with the initial experience of culture shock.

If you have to move back due to unexpected events, you have been away for a long time, you had little interaction with those you originally left behind, or if you are moving back to the city from a very rural location, the transition is likely to be extremely difficult.

Reverse culture shock can manifest itself in the same ways as culture shock when you may experience frustration, feelings of isolation, anxiety, tiredness, and depression.

As with culture shock, this is to be expected but is often harder to overcome than the culture shock you may have experienced when you left.

You expect everything to be the same as you remember, you expect not to have changed yourself.

But the reality is that you will have changed and in all likelihood so has your home town.

Using the tips we discovered in the previous section on dealing with culture shock you may need a period of readjustment again.

You may also like to read: Moving Back to Your Home Town – A Move in the Right or Wrong Direction? In this guide, we examine whether moving back to your hometown is a good idea or not and what the pros and cons are of such a home move.

What is Transition Shock When Moving Home?

Transition shock can manifest itself when we are going through changes in our lives, and moving home to an unfamiliar place is certainly one of the biggest life changes we can go through.

Going from your comfortable and familiar old place to a new and unknown place can throw your world upside down, for some it will be extremely exciting and rewarding, for others it will be a time of anxiety and stress.

What Can Cause Transition Shock When Moving Home?

When moving home there are a number of emotional and physical experiences that can trigger transition shock including:

• Unrealistic expectations of your new home and life
• The stress of moving home, setting up a new home, new job, new schools
• The fear that you may have made the wrong choice in a new home or location
• The breakdown of your familiar routine
• The shock of the different culture in your new area
• Your unwillingness to change or adapt to your new surroundings

What Are The Signs of Transition Shock?

Symptoms of transition shock can include:

• Anger
• Boredom
• Compulsive eating/drinking or weight gain
• Sense of loss for the old home and old friends
• Compulsive cleaning
• Excessive sleep
• Feelings of helplessness and withdrawal
• Becoming fixated on one thing
• Glazed stare
• Homesickness
• Hostility towards locals
• Being impulsive
• Being irritable
• Mood swings
• Physiological stress reactions
• Stereotyping host nationals
• Suicidal or fatalistic thoughts
• Withdrawal

How to Deal With Transition Shock

So how can you make a positive transition from your old to new home?

• Take time to say goodbye to your old home and life properly. You will have built up special memories there but there are more wonderful memories to be made in your new place.
• Make a list of all the wonderful opportunities that this move will open up to you.
• Plan your home move meticulously and make it as stress-free as possible. The less stressed you are the more you will be able to devote your emotions to the positive side of the home move.
• Create a bucket list of things that you intend to do when you move, whether it is a healthier lifestyle or a new hobby, this is a super opportunity to make your dreams a reality.
• Be positive about the move. Don’t think about the negatives, think about all the positives and the best-case scenarios that the home move will present to you.

You may also like to read: How to Move Out of a Home You Love – Sometimes we have no choice but to move home. Here we look at ways that you can joyfully leave a home you love and look forward to a wonderful new future in your new home.

How to Manage a Home Move to Help Avoid Transition Shock

You will notice that the theme running through culture shock and transition shock is managing your emotions and expectations to both help prevent it and recover from it.

Planning your home move down to the last detail will relieve you of a stressful relocation, the last thing you need is to start your new life in an unfamiliar place stressed out and highly emotional.

Here are some useful guides that will make your home move as stress-free and easy as possible.

How to Pick a Good Removal Company – Hiring a reputable removal company will take the stress out of your home move as they will manage all the logistics for you. Discover the best way to avoid moving scams, how to compare removal companies, and get the best deal for your home move in this comprehensive guide to hiring a good removal company.

Moving Home Checklists and Calendars – Good organisation is key to a successful home move. In this guide you will find every checklist you will need so that no task is left undone, ensuring a stress-free relocation. There is a home moving calendar as well to help you manage your time effectively, moving day will soon be here!

How to Declutter When Moving Home – The best moving advice there is. The fewer things you pack and move, the cheaper your home move will be. Learn all the tricks used by professionals to declutter a home before you pack a single item. A must-read guide.

How Can I Make Moving Home Less Stressful? – Learn all you need to know about making your relocation less stressful. Moving home is hard enough, don’t make it any harder on yourself by ignoring these top tips.

You may like to also visit our home moving blog where you will find many helpful guides and tips to make your home move cheaper, safer, and less stressful.

Good luck with your home move and we hope you have a wonderful new life in your new area.