Let’s kick off the new year with a series of posts on the cultural adjustment experience!

While living abroad can be an exhilarating and incredibly enriching experience, the process of adjusting to a new culture can also be quite stressful — sometimes downright overwhelming. The ups and downs can be extreme, causing emotional whiplash if you’re not careful.

Having some sense of where you’re going — or at least knowing that what you’re experiencing is normal — can be reassuring and can help you trust that your current struggles as part of an ongoing process. Remember: whatever challenges you’re experiencing right now, the story isn’t over yet.

In this series of posts (which will come out over the remainder of the week), we’ll explore various theories of cultural adjustment that apply to expats/immigrants, international students, or anyone making the transition to a new culture.

I’ll share some of the major theories (boiling things down so it’s very applicable to your experience) as well as some of the limitations of these theories. Then, we’ll try to integrate all this information to help you make sense of what you’re feeling and give you a bit of a roadmap for what may be to come.

This post is an introduction to the Cultural Adjustment Series. As I add additional posts to this series, I’ll continue to update this page to keep them organized, so stay tuned!

Cultural Adjustment, Part 1: Say Hello to Culture Shock

Cultural Adjustment, Part 2: The Expat Rollercoaster

Cultural Adjustment, Part 3: There’s No Place Like Home

Cultural Adjustment, Part 4: Moving Abroad with Kids & Teens

Cultural Adjustment, Part 5: Wrapping Up & Food for Thought

–Dana

p.s. As always, I would love to hear from you — your thoughts, reactions, or questions about this post or any of the posts in this series. Additionally, if there are subjects related to cultural adjustment that you’d like to learn more about in the future, please let me know!

However, if you choose to share your thoughts below, please keep in mind that these comments are visible to anyone who visits the blog. Therefore, I would encourage you to use a pseudonym (not use your real name) to protect your own privacy. If you would like to get in touch but would prefer to contact me privately, you can do so here.