Reverse Culture Shock Is Real
And It’s Not Instagrammable
Every now and then, a story pops up that feels uncomfortably familiar. Not the glossy “I moved abroad and now I drink better coffee” kind. Something more layered. Slightly messy. Human.
On Business Insider, Alcynna Lloyd recently shared the story of Kat Smith under a headline that deserves to be read twice: “I left the US in 2013 and have since lived around the world. Reverse culture shock hit me harder than leaving ever did.”
Let’s pause there.
Not the leaving.
The returning.
Kat joined the Peace Corps in 2013 and moved to Ecuador. Since then, she’s lived in Peru, South Korea, and now Italy — in Trieste, of all places. Not exactly the stereotypical expat playground. More wind, fewer hashtags.
She says something that tends to confuse people: living abroad has always felt more fun.
Not easier.
Not necessarily more comfortable.
But more alive.
She grew up in Conyers, near Atlanta. Typical suburban setting. Not a hotbed of “let’s all relocate internationally and reinvent ourselves.” At 18, her parents basically forced her into a gap semester in Guatemala before university. She didn’t want to go. (Which makes it even better.) In hindsight? Transformational.
Classic story arc. Except it’s not.
Because what struck us isn’t the “I found myself abroad” narrative. That’s everywhere. What’s interesting is what happens when you try to go back.
Reverse culture shock is the part nobody sells courses about.
You leave your home country. You adapt. You struggle with bureaucracy, language, awkward dinner invitations, supermarkets that don’t stock your favourite cereal. You rewire your brain. You learn to read subtleties. You build a new rhythm.
Then you go back “home.”
And suddenly everything feels… off.
Not bad. Not wrong. Just misaligned.
Your friends are where you left them — but you’re not who you were. Conversations feel slightly narrower. Assumptions feel louder. You realise that what once felt normal now feels foreign. That can be deeply unsettling.
Kat says she loves being American. Important nuance. This isn’t about rejecting your passport. It’s about recognising that identity stretches. And once it stretches, it rarely snaps back neatly into its original shape.
This is something we see constantly across Europe.
Americans buying in Italy after binge-watching renovation videos. Brits relocating to Puglia. Germans testing slow life in Sicily. Romanians moving west. Italians moving everywhere and then — sometimes — coming back.
The leaving is exciting. The paperwork is annoying but manageable. The first espresso feels cinematic.
The coming back? That’s existential.
Reverse culture shock is not dramatic. It’s subtle. It’s noticing that you don’t quite share the same cultural references anymore. It’s feeling impatient with debates that once seemed urgent. It’s struggling to explain why living in South Korea or Peru changed you in ways you can’t summarise in a dinner conversation.
And here’s the uncomfortable bit: it’s not Instagrammable.
There’s no aesthetic for “I feel culturally displaced in my own birthplace.”
Kat’s story is refreshing precisely because it doesn’t romanticise either side. Abroad is stimulating, but it’s not a fantasy. Home is familiar, but it’s not automatically comforting.
For those navigating small-town Italy with a remote contract from New York. For those testing coliving in a half-empty borgo. For those convinced that buying a €20,000 house will fix an internal restlessness.
Movement changes you. Geography accelerates it.
The real question isn’t whether you should move abroad. Or go back. Or stay put.
It’s whether you’re ready to accept that identity is not a fixed asset class. It’s dynamic. Volatile. Occasionally illiquid.
Reverse culture shock is simply the moment you realise that “home” is no longer a place you return to unchanged.
And maybe that’s not a problem.
Maybe that’s growth.
Just don’t expect it to come with a filter.