Moving countries is one of the most stressful things you can do in life. I know. I have done it five times in my adult life. There are all kinds of challenges—logistics, visas, cost and language to name a few. Moving for work adds the stress of a new team, new office and the pressure to perform. If your family is coming too, that's more to worry about.
It can be easy to feel like once you land, the work is over and you can settle into your new life. The unfortunate reality is that you are most likely going to have to deal with culture shock. And be prepared for it to hit you when you least expect it. Understanding how feeling homesick can affect you and knowing how to cope can be the difference between gracefully dealing with stress and having a total meltdown in front of your coworkers, or worse, your boss or a client. Or even worse, your family!
Expect a culture shock
Culture shock can affect up to 95% of people who move abroad. And if you are moving for work, one study (McFarland, 1999) found that most companies (83%) that send employees abroad have seen those assignments fail. When asked why, nearly 9 out of 10 pointed to the same problem: the employee simply couldn't adjust to the local culture. It’s a clear sign that "fitting in" is the biggest hurdle in working overseas.
That means if you are moving overseas, you need to expect a culture shock or homesickness, and you need to treat it very seriously. The first step is understanding what culture shock is.
Culture shock isn't a single moment of confusion or wishing you were home. It’s a process that sometimes feels like you are hitting a wall. The physical and emotional disorientation you feel when you move from a familiar environment to an unfamiliar one should not be underestimated. It isn't just about a language barrier, different money or a strange climate; it is the psychological drain of losing all the social cues and routines that usually make your life automatic. What was easy and natural at home becomes work and stress.
Think of your brain like your PC. When you are in your home country, you are running OS: Native . Your "drivers" for social interaction, navigation, and humor are all pre-installed. You don't "process" how to order a coffee or read a room; it happens in the background while you think about other things.
When you move to a new country, you've essentially installed OS: Foreign , but you have zero drivers, and there is a real strain on the system from all sorts of factors:
- Lag (Language): You hear a sentence, but your brain has to manually translate it, check for grammar, and then formulate a response. By the time you're ready to speak, the conversation has moved on.
- Overheating (Social Cues): In your home country, you can easily tell if someone is being sarcastic or rude. In a new culture, you're constantly scanning for clues on body language and tone, which keeps your brain at 100% capacity all the time .
- Drain (Decision Fatigue): Simple tasks and decisions like what to buy at the supermarket or what different signs and sounds mean are no longer automatic. Every tiny choice requires a manual override, leaving you mentally exhausted.
The result is that everything —from buying a bus ticket to understanding a conversation—suddenly requires 100% of your conscious processing power.
Stages of culture shock
Culture shock happens in stages. If you understand the stages, you can stop blaming yourself for feeling miserable or overwhelmed. Knowing where you are in the process, means you can act to remedy your feelings. These stages are shown in the image at the top of this article:
- Honeymoon: You arrive, and everything is charming, new and exciting.
- Shock: The novelty wears off. Maybe it’s frustration dealing with local bureaucracy, or the realization that the culture of your new office is vastly different to what you are used to. You start to complain and resent your new home.
- Adjustment: You're settling in. You find a place where you can get a taste of home. You stop using Google Maps to find your way around. The chaos starts to look like a system—the lag & burden of just doing ordinary, daily things starts to diminish.
- Adaptation: You aren’t a local, but you operate with ease. The differences become background noise as you get used to being there.
But don't make the mistake of thinking that once you reach the Adaptation stage, you are free and clear. Homesickness and culture shock will happen in waves of diminishing intensity till eventually life starts to feel like life at home. You're less triggered by things and life overseas looks and feels a lot like life at home—routine and predictable. The process over time (how long depends on you and how "foreign" the your new home is!) looks a lot like this:
Stop trying to "solve" it
The biggest mistake you’ll make is trying to apply your home-country logic to a place that doesn't want or need it. You can accelerate your adaptation to a new place by deliberately and systematically learning the systems and ways of doing things. That means that if the bank requires three different stamps on a document, don't ask why. Don't waste energy on being frustrated or missing the ways of doing things that you are used to. Just get the stamps.
The moment you treat the local environment like an immutable, mandatory thing rather than a personal affront, the weight starts to lift. It is what it is. Lean into it. If your work is sorting everything out for you, that's great. But there is a risk that avoiding those things will diminish the vital experience of how things are done you will need for other aspects of your life. In order to be able to operate independently, make sure you do as much of the administrative stuff for yourself as you can.
Supporting your team
If you moved with a partner or kids, your culture shock is only half the battle. While you have the structure of an office and a predefined role, your dependents are often left to build a life from scratch in a vacuum. This can have the added isolating effects of a new language and different culture:
- For Partners: Acknowledge the loss of identity and community they will feel. Back home, they were a professional, a friend, or a local. In your new country, they might feel like the spouse of the employee. Support them in finding their own "Third Place" that has nothing to do with your company. The sooner they find an independent and fulfilling place for themselves, the better it will be for everyone.
- For Kids: Don't dismiss their "small" problems. To a nine-year-old, not knowing the rules of a playground game is just as stressful as a multi-million-dollar merger. Create a sanctuary or bubble at home—even if you’re surrounded by moving boxes—make sure their favorite snacks or books are accessible on day one.
- A United Front: Schedule "venting sessions" where everyone is allowed to hate the new country for twenty minutes without anyone trying to fix it or stay positive. Letting the family blow off steam is essential to managing the transition to a new life.
- Find your People: As rapidly as you can, get you and your family involved in the community. This could be expats from your home country or a group you find on MeetUp. Sports teams, night school and hobbies are great ways to meet new people who enjoy what you enjoy.
Reverse culture shock
I lived in overseas in Japan for the first time in 1995. I was 19 and away for nearly a year. Nobody warned me about what would happen when I got home. I got culture shock. In New Zealand! I was shocked by the shock.
I had changed, but home stayed the same.
When you come home from your overseas assignment, brace yourself. Reverse culture shock is very common. You might find yourself frustrated that your old friends don't want to hear your "When I was in..." stories, or that the pace of life back home feels different. Part of the beauty of life abroad is you see new and different ways of doing things, and some of those differences will be better than the way things are done at home. You might find yourself becoming critical of your home country. Readjustment can be difficult.
This "W-Curve"—where you hit a second dip upon returning—is often harder because you didn't see it coming. Give yourself the same grace returning home that you did when you arrived overseas.
A Survival Strategy
You don't need a five-year plan. You need a Tuesday plan. On the bad days, narrow your focus and build a comfortable bubble:
- Find refuge: Find one spot that feels familiar. If that’s restaurant where the food and staff are from home, or a supermarket that stocks your favourite snacks from home, go there. You don’t have to be intrepid and adventurous all the time.
- Pick a fight: You can’t learn the tax system, the transport grid, and the social etiquette all at once. Master something simple (like ordering at a restaurant) first. Everything else can wait.
- Digital decompression: Figure out how to access content from your home country. Talk to friends and family back home (just make sure your friends and family know that sometimes you just need to let it all out and complain!).
How to install the drivers
You can't force the installation of OS: Foreign; it's a background download that happens over (a very long) time. However, you can prevent a crash:
- Reduce background tasks: On high-stress days, don't try to learn the history of the city or a complex new skill. Stick to the basics to save your processing power.
- Run in "safe mode": Spend an evening in your apartment with a familiar TV show or food. It lets your system cool down in a predictable environment.
- Accept the "glitches": You will say the wrong thing. You will get lost. Think of these as bugs that are helping the system learn what not to do next time.
- Talk to people: Everyone goes through similar experiences. Your colleagues and friends will help you navigate your new place and figure things out.
One last thought
Culture shock isn't actually about the new country. It's about the loss of your old self and the understanding that you have no idea how anything works. You’re a version of you that doesn’t know how to do simple things, and that’s a bruise to the ego.
Eventually, the bruise fades. One day, you’ll find yourself dealing with challenges and new situations without thinking. You'll realise that somewhere amongst the frustrations and the freak outs that you actually started living overseas.