Pandemic Culture Stress
By Emily Oldenkamp
The world has been on lockdown due to the pandemic. We were asked to stay at home and not resume our day-to-day activities for the time being. As the days raced on at the pace of a snail, I started to get a familiar feeling. The shelter in place new normal reminded me of an old normal I had. In 2013, my husband and I moved to a country where we did not speak the language to help with a ministry there for a few years. Being far from family and in a completely new environment where we could not ask strangers what was going on was stressful and stretched us in ways we did not anticipate.
One of the challenges of living in a new culture is culture stress, which is the discomfort of not understanding the way of life we are surrounded by. Culture shock is the big moments of frustration with the new culture, but culture stress is a continual sense of being foreign. With culture stress, you feel like you are missing the context, expectations, traditions, jokes, language, or general how-to of everyday interactions. When you get it wrong at best the outcome is you seem dumb and at worst you seem rude. One of the results of culture stress can be isolation.
The pandemic has changed many things in our daily lives, and even as places begin to reopen it is a different world out there than it was six months ago. A friend once described culture stress as the feeling of a constant low-grade fever. It is always present to some degree and it can drain emotional, social, and physical energy. I have brainstormed a list of experiences I had living abroad and I wonder if any of them will sound familiar to your experiences the last few months of lockdown. If you have lived cross-culturally, these may be familiar to you and you can draw on your experience moving forward as our communities reopen. If you plan to live cross-culturally one day, you can draw on your experiences this year to help you acclimate to your new home.
· Going outdoors can feel uncertain- how will I mess up and what will the consequences be?
· Learning how things are done ‘here’
· Grocery shopping is difficult because you do not know where to get things or the proper etiquette or protocol
· Routines are disrupted and need to be reestablished
· Doing basic things suddenly becomes complicated
o It can feel embarrassing when you make a mistake that seems like kids should understand not to do
· Spending a lot of time at home with your family/housemates
· Having very little face-to-face interaction for a time as you adjust to this new context
· Seeing family and friends only via screens and video
· Seeing others on social media doing things you wish you could join but you feel a million miles away
· Missing traditional holiday activities or special events
· Being stuck with yourself and any unhealthy coping skills you have such as avoidance, numbing, self-loathing, etc.
· Only feeling safe and secure at home
· Not being sure what the future will look like, how long the hard part will last, and how long you can handle it
· Knowing the only way out is through
Moving forward, as we engage in the world outside our doors, we will have to discover the new culture and norms being formed. There will be a big adjustment period of learning “how things are done here” and everyone will be adjusting together, wondering if things are the same or changed, and worried about how others will respond. Do we shake hands or just wave? Will I offend someone for wearing a mask or not wearing a mask? How do we form lines? What are the expectations for eating at a restaurant?
One day, when we lived abroad and were feeling particularly out of place due to culture stress, my husband bit into a banana and exclaimed, “bananas taste the same here!” We were so used to everything big and small being slightly different from what we expected that it was a welcome surprise to have familiarity. The truth is, we adapted to our new home and many things that initially caused culture stress became our new normal. We adjusted to our context and were able to build a life there. Whatever new context we may find ourselves in, whether from COVID-19 or an international move, we can persevere and flourish.
