Taking care of your mental health abroad is at the precipice of today's psychological research. In an expanding, globalized world, more people than ever are moving abroad and working in a multicultural environment.
HR departments are suddenly being trained to handle cultural differences - but is their training sufficient? Have they been instructed on how to guide employees through cultural fatigue?
Expats and immigrants flood to social media resources, like TikTok and Instagram, to express their dissatisfaction at the new culture they've suddenly found themselves in. The victims of cultural shock, leading to cultural fatigue, cause these teens and adults to publicly rant about the injustices and inequalities of their new country.
What these people remain unaware of is "Cultural Fatigue" - when cultural shock turns into mental illness.
These words of vitriol are not indicative of a person's true nature. Instead, they are the result of untreated mental illness.
Cultural fatigue is when cultural shock tips into the realm of illness. It can affect every part of a victim's wellbeing. It attacks the body, the mind, and the soul.
It can present as full-body fatigure due to cultural differences. The victim may experience increased irritation and agitation at minor cultural differences. Major depressive disorder can also arise from the culmination of "forced adjustments."
Symptoms typically appear about 5 months into living in a new cultural environment. Following the cultural shock timeline, it occurs when the "rosey lenses" of everything is great!! wears off.
However, cultural fatigue is underreported to mental health professionals due to its largely unheard-of nature. Meaning - expats, immigrants, and multicultural workers have never even heard of cultural fatigue.
So, when a worker in a multicultural environment expresses a work conflict to HR, the trained HR employee might be able to pinpoint the issue as a cultural difference, but they do not go further. Cultural fatigue remains unexplained, unexplored, and the culturally burnt-out worker has no access to mental health services.
Allow me to tell you my own journey with cultural fatigue. Hi! I'm Marie, and if you didn't know, I lived in Japan for nearly five years and worked at 12 schools. I study psycholinguistics - the psychological science of how people learn foreign languages.
In 2018, I rocked up to my school for the day ready to teach the adorable elementary schoolers. I gave my normal "ohayou gozaimasu!" to the staffroom, only to be greeted back with a "good morning!" in English. Irritation flooded me. I felt my blood boil. Do they think I don't understand Japanese? Why do they insist on telling me good morning in English?
You, dear reader, can already see the problem with this, right? I was the school's English teacher. People telling me "good morning" in English was the natural, obvious morning greeting. So, why was I so agitated? Cultural fatigue.
By that point, I had been living in Japan for about six months and spoke conversationally fluent Japanese. However, the teeny tiny cultural differences were beginning to chip away at my health. Because, seriously, who gets angry at being told "good morning"?
Me, apparently.
It went beyond that. But, that's a story for another day.
One night I had to take a good hard look at myself in the mirror and ask myself, "what in the world is wrong with me? I'm in the wrong for reacting this way."
Luckily, a research article from my undergrad in psychology popped into mind. Cultural Fatigue. I was sick with cultural fatigue. From there on out, I was able to catch these moments of irritation and depression and stop the symptoms in their tracks. Simply knowing what cultural fatigue was and being able to apply it to moments of the understood illness helped tremendously!
Now you, lovely reader, know what cultural fatigue can present as. Do any of these symptoms register? Do you recognize these actions within yourself?
Be it a conflict in a multicultural workplace or irritation at a new country's customs, cultural fatigue can affect everyone.
These are all signs that it's time to seek mental health services. If you're wondering about the concept, feel free to schedule an English session with me here! Let's talk about it together and craft a plan together to get you the proper services.
Know that there's nothing wrong with you. The same way that we don't judge someone for getting the flu, we don't judge someone for experiencing cultural fatigue.
Realize that there is help for you! I'm cheering you on :)
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