Culture shock is commonly referred too as the stages of comfort an individual experiences when moving to a foreign culture which is vastly different from his or her own. The writings below are from the perspective of an individual living in Japan and having reached the third stage with fears of the fourth. Personal experience is used and may or may not be what you wil experience when you travel to another country for work, education or otherwise. This is just to give you an idea of what 'might' happen.

Upon arrival in a foreign country often times an individual will be impressed with virtually everything. It will be like they have rose-colored glasses on and everything is amazing, new and exciting. The feeling will make the individual talk fast, take lots of photographs and generally comment on any new thing they notice which differs from their own country with aw and amazement.

This stage will last quite awhile and depending on how much the individual has 'always wanted to live there,' can take several months to wear off. Individuals in this stage are often passive and will allow whomever their local contact is to guide them around, introduce new aspects of the culture and generally drive their every day life. This is not because they are generally passive people but because they would rather defer responsibility for activities in the new country to their more familiar counter party.

After passing the entry period the individual will now be faced with making his or her own way in the culture. Meaning their guide will not be available to help with every day tasks nor be there to interpret cultural points for the individual. The problem with this phase is that individuals will tend to take one of two approaches to their life.

One method of dealing with this phase is to get frusterated, explain differences and not accept the culture they are living in for what it is. They will often complain, try to force their belief on members of the opposite culture and create a lot of stress from which they will feel the need to 'destress' constantly and immerse themselves in their own culture via television, music or food.

The better method, is to remain positive and while constantly explaining the differences (this is the favorite pastime of any individual in a foreign culture) they will accept the culture they live in and understand those differences in preparation from the next time they counter that particular point. Individuals will get stressed and withdraw into their own culture but the reprocussions will be less stressing for those surrounding the individual as he or she will not feel the need to 'talk down' the culture he or she is now living in.

In the final stage of being in the new culture the individual will find his or herself totally immersed in the culture. Capable of doing day to day activities by his or herself and feel comfortable by having already encountered and 'conquored' many of the strange new cultural points they were not prepared to see.

This 'advanced' experience in the culture makes the individual seem 'jaded' or a little arrogant when their friends from back home come to visit. They will take on the role of cultural tour guide and explain every nuance that took them months to learn so that their counterparts from back home will have an 'edge up' on other foreigners who visit. This feeling of pride is hard to stop as the immersed individual wants to look 'cool' in front of his or her friends by explaining all of these nuanced points.

The final stage of dealing with culture shock is the re-entry into ones own culture. Again the individual will be faced with the first 3 stages but in an excellerated fashion and likely without the first stage being so 'spectacular.' The major problem of this is feeling 'strange' in what was technically your own culture is the fact that many obstacles will come up in your day to day life that you had forgotten while living abroad. This will again frusterate and cause 'change' to interrupt the individual's life.

While this guide is helpful for individuals thinking of moving abroad it's even more helpful for the individual's daily contacts to know and understand so they can help him or her get through the experience. Often times the people surrounding a person in adjustment can be more harmful than helpful by pushing too much of their culture on the new member of society. This can cause a lot of stress and depending on the circumstance force the individual to withdraw from the culture and cease to enjoy or actively attempt to seek out new experiences.

Please let me know if you have any questions about any of the above and feel free to share your experiences! This is something that is little talked about and should be addressed with anyone thinking of living overseas.