At Counselling Madrid we welcome “blog contributions” from anyone wanting to share his/her experiences and views about life as an expat. Els Barkema-Sala has written an excellent article about the “ins and outs” and “ups and downs” while living the expat life.
(Els runs a private practice in The Netherlands helping expats with counselling, couple therapy and mediation.)
Article:
My life has been interesting with lots of traveling and living in different countries, including many years in Japan. Whenever I returned to Tokyo International Airport from a trip outside the country, the choice for lining up at passport control was always: ALIEN or NATIVE. It did not take long to absorb the fact that to Japanese this was a distinction of importance – not something to joke about. So I learnt to choose my place (as outsider, foreigner) and avoid hassle, but some other foreigners kept complaining about the airport signs.
Initially, life in a new country and culture can be a wonderful experience you just love to tell the folks back home about, but sooner or later the thrill gets mixed with frustration or anger, and you may miss home and all it stands for. This reaction is not so strange if we consider the definition of culture: ideas, customs and social behaviour of a particular people or society or the attitudes and behaviour characteristic of a particular social group that are
• based on learned human behaviour
• passed on from generation to generation
• a coherent, dynamic complex of norms, values and behavioural codes
• shared by a group of people.
When we try and settle in another country, we bring our own ways of being and thinking with us, and find they/we are different, which often comes across as ‘wrong’. Trouble is that when people from different cultural backgrounds interact, each takes things for granted that the other often finds unfamiliar (and sometimes appalling). The more that something is taken as ‘simply a fact of life’ by one, the harder it may be for the other to deal with it.
People miscommunicate for a number of reasons:
It is hard to communicate in any language, more so in a second or third one. Little misunderstandings add up and stereotypical thinking or assumptions distort what is said or heard. Even body-language (non-verbal communication) differs subtly or majorly between cultures.
How people use space differs: a good distance for one can be uncomfortably close to another. Private space is much more important in one culture than in another. Trouble is, there tend to be unspoken ‘rules’ about these things.
How people regard time differs, for example: punctuality, dividing work and free time or private and family time. When people from different cultures live or work together, this can create chaos – consider for example what happens when a linear thinker (time is a line: one thing at a time) tries to interact with a person who likes to shift quickly from one thing to another or rather do several things at once…..
Cultural values tell us what is seen as good, bad, important or trivial. They can differ hugely as to: how men/women/children should be treated, what food to eat, how to behave… Using your partner’s bathrobe may be a sign of pleasing intimacy to you, but to the other absolutely ‘not done’. Whenever people make judgements, values come into play. It needs awareness of one’s own values and a fairly strong sense of self to accept the fact that others have different values, without feeling threatened.
Decisionmaking can vary from a high-context model (all opinions must be taken into account and ethics are situational) to low-context (strong demand for quick top-down decisions). Having to work things out with someone from another background can be much more difficult because of this difference in approach, however when you live anywhere long enough, there will be important decisions to make about: home, beliefs, lifestyle, childrearing, managing finances/ time/ vacations, family interaction, etcetera.
Also the way in which information is shared, varies. An ‘outsider’ may be expected to know all about ‘the system’ (be it: social/ medical/ company/ family) without a need to explain. Trouble is, if someone expects you to know, but you don’t even know you ought to know, miscommunication is sure to happen.
People’s personality and character play a role too – in fact each individual carries her/his own culture, worldview and experiences from way-back that go beyond the mere fact of nationality and family of origin…… Even travelling to the other side of the world, we carry our own ‘bagage’ with us and that gives us that uniqueness, that can be fascinating as well as singularly difficult. Because wherever one lives, there is a need to create and maintain relationships and to find a niche to be comfortable in as an individual as well.
In close relationships, problems arise sometimes because there are too many unresolved issues (like family of origin or childhood difficulties). People think they get involved with a certain kind of person and then may find themselves plunged into situations they are unprepared for.
Having given up a career or satisfying job to be with this partner or spouse and thereby feeling fairly strongly dependent initially, this is bound to create difficult and painful situations. Another source of difficulties is that often signals are missed or misread as to: how a person feels, what is important or trivial, what really liked or disliked, what wanted or needed. How to communicate these things clearly? Too often we expect lover or friend to understand or be sensitive enough to know those things that are dearest/most personal to us.
People can behave differently when they are abroad as compared to back home in familiar settings, and this too can be confusing or upsetting – it may be useful to distinguish here between more group-based cultures (like many Asian, African or rural/traditional) and more urban, individualistic, Western societies. Interestingly though, intercultural interaction between people from a fairly similar background, that expect to have a lot in common, may actually be full of difficulties, probably because of those unspoken assumptions and high expectations. Of course our thinking about people and culture should not be rigid – sterotypes never promote understanding and neither do misconceptions, mistaken self-views or biases.
But if life in one’s own tried and trusted environment is hardly ever easy, international and intercultural living tends to be even more of a ‘mixed bag’. In fact, it can be said that living in another country is a life-altering experience, in ways that you never expected or could have foreseen. Of course, it makes a difference whether you chose to be there, or if fate has somehow thrown you there – and whether you plan to stay for a while only, or ‘for life’ because commitment or circumstances make leaving unlikely. When, for whatever reason, you feel you don’t have much choice, the experience is likely to be more stressful. Being part of a couple requires deeper commitment – when things do not go so well, there may be a greater sense of loss of ‘what was or could have been’. Short-term expatriates can take refuge in social interaction with people of their own nationality exclusively (a bit of Why bother?), but those who plan to stay feel a need to succeed, to get to know their new country and its people; there is likely to be more pressure to learn about and adapt to the culture and customs, and that may bring marvel or joy, but also frustration, irritation or tension. Support and understanding from partners or in-laws is not always there – it may be hard for them to be that empathic.
Occasionally things really go wrong. When you keep questioning yourself: What in the world am I doing here? and when you are feeling down all the time, you may be experiencing culture shock. That can be defined as: a condition of emotional upset and tension that becomes chronic for a period of varying duration and is experienced by persons who, exposed to life in an unfamiliar setting, react with anxiety, irritation and frustration. It can happen to anyone who has had to leave home, with its familiar and manageable routines and social patterns, and feels confronted with life in a different social setting with a language and mores/values that are unfamiliar (and that may be repugnant to the person with culture shock). No wonder this happens, because to feel lonely, isolated, uncertain about proper procedures, unable to control life, does give a lot of stress and wears a person down.
Culture shock has:
1. a honeymoon phase when all is terribly new, exciting, unknown but charming…
2. an angry, upset phase when you can’t help thinking Why don’t they do things properly?
3. a coping phase with more resignation, trying to adapt without losing your sense of self
4. a more integrated phase, when you are comfortable most of the time with where you are and how things are going.
Actually these phases may come and go and even after a long time any of those moods can become more dominant in certain circumstances. It helps to be aware of them, to know that what is happening is not uncommon, and to try and get help for the middle phases, such as an empathic listener, encouragement, good tips or support, if need be professional help. Don’t wait too long because getting timely professional help can save a lot of heartache!
Human beings are creatures of habit and maybe a nomadic existence is only good for those who can carry their ‘home’ with them, who feel at home whereever they are. That takes quite a bit of inner strength and considerable flexibility of mind. Those people have little trouble finding their feet in a new environment, they often have a talent for languages and a high degree of curiosity about other cultures or other ways of life. Experience learns though that even the most experienced expats can get some culture shock when they finally do go home and find it/themselves somehow changed, difficult to fit in again. It should be noted all of this goes for kids and especially adolescents as well – they may have been comfortable in a particular environment, but feel uprooted when they have to go and live in their ‘own’ country and feel ‘different’.
Of course in all of this there are many positives to consider, as the following statement expresses: The international and intercultural experience can be an unparallelled opportunity for learning and developing, for personal and professional growth and for sharing with others a sense of the uniqueness of the individual, whilst celebrating the diversity and similarity of human beings here, there and everywhere…..
About the author:
Els Barkema-Sala, MPhil, MBACP
www.counsellinginternational.com
Els, thanks again for your contribution!
Joseph Maussen
Head of Counselling
Counselling Madrid
