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Aid Workers Exchange
Guest
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 06, 2003 - 09:05 am: | |
Aid Workers Exchange - August 6, 2003
Re Entry Syndrome
By Moira McCreesh
Re-Entry Syndrome (RES), or Reverse Culture Shock, is a psychological response experienced by many people returning home from field work in a different culture. A study of returned aid workers revealed that 60% reported feeling predominantly negative emotions on their return. The most common experiences reported were feelings of disorientation, confusion and bereavement [read full article] [version française]
Do you have a story that you would like to share about your own experiences? Any tips about how you, your family or friends coped when you returned? |
Jacqui Richards
Guest
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 06, 2003 - 12:26 pm: | |
As an returned aid worker I have had psychiatric help and support for four years following re-entry syndrome - unfortunately as well as feeling that no-one understood, I experienced quite a lot of bullying from people, who friends said were jealous of the places I had been and things I had done with my life - but their criticism hurt - I thought everyone would be interested to know about my projects and work but it seemed that I could please no-one !! I made a lot of friends overseas and they too have sent their warmest wishes and respects and that has helped a lot - I get flashbacks but just try to concentrate on the good memories.
I hope this helps some others in similar positions
Jacqui Richards |
Dina M. Aloi
Member
Username: Dina
Post Number: 1
Registered: 08-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 06, 2003 - 02:35 pm: | |
I remember once struggling through the potato chip aisle in the grocery store - why on earth would anyone need so many choices of potato chips! I also dealt with what I considered completely inane conversations with friends about the latest mini vans, the latest shops, and recipes. I was very judgemental, thinking there are so many more important things to discuss. People tended to focus on how nice it must be to be home, how the kids must be so happy now, etc. As if I had finally come to my senses and settled down. When people did ask about my experiences, I found that interest trailed off quickly and the conversation moved on to a different topic. Most comments about my work were either tinged with jealousy or pity. I never did find an appropriate comment to, “Oh, I wish I could do something like that. It would be so much more meaningful than accounting or computer work.” Or, “I could never do that!” Then there was the , “It must have been so depressing.” To the first two, I would usually reply something like, “You could do it, too. Anyone can if they want,” trying to counter the implication that I was being grandiose. To the latter I would reply that working with people in difficult circumstances was uplifting – especially with children. The resilience, hope and determination were buoying. Although I was supposed to be “retired,” I found myself doing a lot of pro bono work via the internet. Former colleagues in various countries would send me documents to review and comment on; I wrote a few final reports based on interim reports that were emailed to me. This may have been a good thing. I finally arrived at a point where I said “No” and decided I needed to find something locally based that would interest and challenge me. My choices were to work for a small international NGO or go back to university. I wasn’t keen on returning to work in a job removed from the field. I thought that would make me miss it even more. Like smelling the chocolate, but not being able to taste it. And since my financial situation allowed it, I decide to return to school. After some research, I decided on social anthropology (versus law, political science, public health, etc.) because it would allow me to study what I had worked on and what I plan to return to when I do eventually go back to the field – children affected by war and child soldiers. I was extremely sceptical about being fulfilled and challenged. However, what I found was time to finally think rather than do. I could analysis root causes, explore different cases and experiences, and develop arguments. This was very different from situations of spending the money within the time limit the donor offered or send it back! Academia has its politics and foibles and after two years, I felt ready to accept a programme manager position locally dealing with reports rather than actual children in the field. I decided I could handle a finger in aid work, if not both feet. Leaving people living in conflict situations is not easy; there is guilt about the fact that you could leave and they are still there facing the challenges. It makes it even more important to find your own personal challenge at home. |
Juan Ignacio De Andres
Guest
| | Posted on Thursday, August 07, 2003 - 07:23 am: | |
I find this topic very valuable for aid workers. I had never came accross that this was considered a subject of study.
However, I do recognise that I have experienced some of the synthoms mentioned in the article. A tip for my re-inserction from a long assignment has been to re-initiate some of my previous hobbies, in particular, those which defined myself before my departure. Normally, you stop many of your hobbies when you are in a mission because of job pressures and security concerns.
In particular, I found practising sport with others is a very valuable and fast way to catch up with your old environment and friends. It will help to start up new common subjects of conversation on the basis of your defeats/beats. Only one thing to consider: take it easy, you are probably not as fit as you think! |
alain PEYRÉ
Guest
| | Posted on Thursday, August 07, 2003 - 02:37 pm: | |
Hello everybody,
I would like to extend Moira contribution by 3 thoughts on the issue, based on personal situation and experience. I have been expatriated for long periods, and now working as a free-lance consultant, out 7 months a year, I have often enjoyed all the range of torments described in Moira article- and overcome them.
- I was wondering if the re-entry syndrome could have a little sister called outing syndrome. Personally I get much more depressed before leaving. My stress and anxiety levels raise significantly, triggering a decrease in effectiveness, and delaying in departure-related tasks (luggage, booking, gathering info and documents for the job...) in favor of family related ones. I believe that this state differs from the ordinary stress in front of a difficult task, as actually I do not know how much the task will be difficult. This phase is brief as it lasts for the 2 days before actual date of departure. This state stops immediately and completely once the plane takes off.
- As for RES, here is how I have balanced it. During my first stay overseas, I was entrapped in both pitfall of disregarding my own culture, and trying to keep alive the memory and a link with "there". But, having stayed in Asia for years, I had to integrate some of the mental maps of Asian people. Specifically different is the relationship to time/duration, and the way it affects social relations. "Past is dead, Future is not yet born, we are in the present". This "immediateness" culture leads to specific interpretation of relationships in the family, with friends or at work. Planning here is difficult, as it does not refer to concrete objectives (so much may happen...who knows); on another hand people may act decisively and with utmost efficiency to solve today's immediate problem. At the end of the day, things are getting done, projects are progressing smoothly, and you may get better results than pushing hard your log-frame, or urging the team for planning and strategy. While you are here, exchanges and relations may be very deep, commitment very strong, and partnership very demanding. Once you are away, it seems you have disappeared from the "real" world, and all your attempts to keep the link alive will remain unanswered. So after years, I get fitted with the two mindsets. Trying to balance European speed and efficiency madness by using some Asian distance, is sometimes really a funny game.
- Regarding the symptoms, what about the particular case of bi-cultural families? My Nepali wife and I are living with 3 kids in the Himalayan kingdom, outside my mother country. Coming back to my home thus means leaving "there", but not exactly returning "home". After some time under this regime, the connections with motherland have been loosening. Having a "intermediate home" or "second mother home" helps me greatly in managing the inbound/outbound jumps. Actually, my homeland still represents an anchor and it imparts to me many values, even if the need for a close relation has decreased (one stay every 2 years is enough).
alain PEYRÉ |
Carl-David Fraser
Guest
| | Posted on Thursday, August 07, 2003 - 03:11 pm: | |
I enjoyed reading Ms. McCreesh article and I genuinely agree with her that it is very important to take RES into consideration and prepare oneself as much as possible for the return home, be it temporary or permanent return.
In addition to all the "emotional" symptoms Ms. McCreesh listed in her article. I would also like to add that after several long term missions overseas over the past fifteen years, and as many re-entries, I found out that material considerations also have quite a negative effect when you get back home.
When working overseas I often had a higher standard of living than I would have at home. Most of the time, I had a comparatively "luxurious" lifestyle with a lot of social activities with expats & locals, free vehicles & fuel, R & R
and locals staff catering to my every needs (i.e.: driver, translator, cook, cleaning lady & night guard). When you get back home and end up looking at your dirty clothes twirling in the washing machine at the local Laundromat, it is quite a shock.
Simple things like going to a food market overseas (i.e.; even in war zones), is often interesting if not outright exciting. But going to the local supermarket back home is quite dull in comparison, if not frustrating given the opulent selection of goods displayed on the shelves.
Unless one has a job waiting for him/her when returning back home, sooner or later you end up in the unemployment line-up, or worse the welfare one, since very often overseas work with NGO's does not entitle you to unemployment benefits* Needless to say that one's savings melt like snow in the sun. These are only a few very real " material frustrations" that one must live with when coming back home. Now just add to this landscape a wife and two kids, it's quite a gloomy picture if one is the only breadwinner.
In many cases, the only light at the end of the tunnel is another posting overseas ASAP. Basically, I have reached a point of "no-return" where I prefer to live / work overseas rather than being back home in Canada. Basically I prefer dodging sniper bullets and leading relief convoys, rather than dealing with our pathetic Canadian politics such as the color of margarine or pushing a lawnmower. Not to mention the thrill of dealing with our overpaid and unionized bureaucrats*
Mr. Carl-David Fraser, Logistics Coordinator
Emergency Operations Support Center (EOSC)
Canadian Red Cross - National Office
170 Metcalf Street - Suite 300
Ottawa / Ontario / Canada
K2P 2P2 |
Annie Hargrave
Guest
| | Posted on Thursday, August 14, 2003 - 08:07 pm: | |
Thank you to Moira McCreesh for your bulletin on the pitfalls of re-entry to the home culture after working overseas. It hits just the right note.
For aid workers and volunteers returning to UK InterHealth offers a Confidential Review where people are invited to reflect back, consider what is happening for them now, in the period of transition, and to look forward to what might come next. Of course, everyone has their own issues to think about, but the re-entry syndrome is always central, the pivot around which the discussions move.
The Confidential Review is not like a Critical Incident Debrief at all. It provides a forum for anyone, whether they have experienced any particular problems or not, to pay specific attention to their re-entry. A kind of bridge. We try to keep up to date with what is going on in different parts of the world so that we can engage in meaningful conversation about people's recent experience. But it is also helpful not to know everything! It reminds people that those of us 'at home' cannot fully envisage or understand what it's like. When it comes up within the Review it provides the opportunity to talk about when people don't understand or can't even appear interested!
Many NGOs in UK now offer some kind of review to returning aid workers, either in-house or through InterHealth or in some other way. Homecoming seminars, group reunions also play their part. This is different from operational debriefing and different from addressing major difficulties. It is just routine, just normal, to address the transition experiences, practicalities, feelings, finances, all manner of things. Normal, but acknowledging that it can be felt to be painful and isolating, that it is a moment when people are more vulnerable than usual.
The aim, of course, in addressing re-entry syndrome, is to minimise difficulties, to allow space for the process without panicking and to enable people as much as possible to enjoy coming home and recharge their batteries. So they can move on to whatever comes next with a reasonable amount of confidence and without unnecessary anxiety or over tiredness.
Annie Hargrave
UKCP Registered Psychotherapist
BACP Registered Practitioner
InterHealth
157 Waterloo Road
London SE1 8US
020 7902 9000
psychservices@interhealth.org.uk |
Matt Bolton
Guest
| | Posted on Friday, August 15, 2003 - 03:47 pm: | |
I too have had similar experiences to those described by the people above. The incident that sticks out in my mind was returning from Kenya to the US and going to a supermarket and seeing one of those singing plastic fish.
It struck me as so incredibly absurd that that singing plastic fish cost about the average monthly salary of a Kenyan civil servant.
It seemed like such a waste.
I think though, that re-entry does become easier when you expect and understand the problems and know they are normal. Problems are less scary when they have a name. |
Till Bruckner
Guest
| | Posted on Wednesday, October 15, 2003 - 10:29 am: | |
I've never worked in a conflict zone, but have experienced RES after living abroad for longish periods of time. Here some tips from my (very limited) viewpoint:
First, you have to realize that for people who have never been outside affluent countries, it is simply not possible to imagine what life is like "out there". Just remember how surprised you yourself were the first time you went to a vastly different culture and society. Most people in the rich world rely on the media for their view of the outside world - and what else do they have to go by? Of course nobody understands you, stupid. It's not like the people in the place where you've just arrived from could really imagine life in Europe either, is it? So be fair, be tolerant, and be culturally sensitive ;)
Second, you might have been gone for half a year or a year. To you that's a long time, but for someone who has stayed at home, it's just a couple of hundred incidences of "same shit, different day", as a colleague at a factory in Wales aptly put it to me. So they don't expect you to come back and babble that much about such a short space of time. Oh yeah, you disappeared, now you're back, nothing has changed in the meantime has it?
Third, remember that there's no obligation for people to deeply care about poverty, or be interested in different cultures and societies. Maybe they care about other things, like the motorway slicing through the forest where they played as kids. So don't expect them to be any more interested in corruption in Sudan than you are in the effect of motorways on local badger populations! Try to talk about shared interests, where your experiences overlap. Maybe you have a good story on how a dirt road in Peru accelerated logging in the area? Take your old friends' interests as a starting point for the stories you tell.
My personal way of coping is to go and visit a lot of friends, spending only a little time which each until I've calmed down and am no longer prone to overtaxing their attention spans. Also, I love to go on long hikes - it gives you time to think things over, get your priorities right, it's fun and it even saves money.
Walk down a street in your home town and look at the immigrants there. They spent not a couple of years but their whole youth in a different world, yet most of them cope. So take it easy, and take your time.
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Toireasa McCann
Guest
| | Posted on Saturday, October 25, 2003 - 01:07 pm: | |
The article is full of great advice that I find even the most seasoned people on mission can happily be reminded of.
We've had requests from DFID colleagues currently in the field in Baghdad asking for it. It is my repeated impression that experienced people have been returning from Iraq so physically and psychologically affected by their time there that advance preparation is needed for their return home in addition to the service that we normally offer.
Many thanks again for this.
Best wishes
Toireasa McCann
Toireasa McCann
Project Coordinator
Operations Team
Conflict and Humanitarian Affairs Department
DFID
20 Victoria Street
London SW1H 0NB
Tel (+44) 20 7023 1454
Fax (+44) 20 7023 1461
Mob 07787 516068 |
Linda Poteat
Guest
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 28, 2004 - 07:20 pm: | |
bling-bling
Just found this website, which I could really have used when I first returned to the States and had no idea what "bling-bling" was.
http://www.wordspy.com/words/bling-bling.asp
Enjoy - Linda |
Linda Poteat
Member
Username: Linda_p
Post Number: 1
Registered: 01-2004
| | Posted on Thursday, January 29, 2004 - 07:48 pm: | |
Hi, all! Just to clarify the above posting - it seems that every time I come home to the States, I have to get someone to translate popular slang for me. Having spent a lot of time in insecure areas, "You're the bomb" sounds like a bad thing, not a good thing. Anyway, this is an entertaining website, no matter where you are.
All the best - Linda |
Graham Wood
Member
Username: Grw
Post Number: 18
Registered: 12-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, January 29, 2004 - 09:15 pm: | |
Some very intersting points above.I think it is important that agencies give more help in this respect. It is important also to recognise that it is different for everyone and that reactions change over time.
In my case I am moving back to the UK after 18 years in Africa and the Middle East. The best suggestion I have had (apart from wondering who will do the ironing) is to treat it as a new foreign posting and to recognise that I dont really belong and that all sorts of things will be allien. But also that it is a real opportunity to learn about my own country. |
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