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When my husband and I moved our family from San Diego to Dubai, I expected a challenge, but I didn’t expect to feel completely unmoored.
I’d lived abroad before. I thought I was prepared. But culture shock, I quickly learned, doesn’t care how worldly you are. It doesn’t politely announce itself. It just hits you. Quietly. Repeatedly.
At first, everything felt new and exciting.
There’s a name for this: the honeymoon phase.
I laughed at my failed attempts to navigate Dubai’s looping road system and delighted in deciphering the offerings at local markets. But it didn’t take long before the novelty gave way to a kind of internal erosion. I couldn’t buy a bottle of wine without a license. I felt intimidated by WhatsApp groups where every mom seemed to know what form was due, what uniform was required, what invisible social codes everyone else had somehow absorbed. I began to feel disoriented in a way that crept under my skin and stayed there.
Culture shock, as psychologists describe it, unfolds in stages: honeymoon, frustration, adjustment, and adaptation. I hit stage two hard.
One of the first times I felt completely undone was trying to run errands that would’ve taken 30 minutes back in California. Here, it took hours and still I wasn’t sure if I had done it right. I started to feel small, incapable, even ashamed. Why couldn’t I figure this out?
But as someone who teaches emotional resilience, I started turning to the tools I share with others. I had to.
I began with cognitive reframing, a practice where you catch your self-defeating thoughts and challenge them. I would hear myself thinking, “You can’t handle this,” and I would respond (sometimes out loud), “You are handling this.”
I had taken a two-week solo canoe trip through the Boundary Waters the year after we moved to Dubai, and even though it came later, I found myself drawing on the same skills, especially the internal dialogue. The way I spoke to myself on that trip became a template for the way I began speaking to myself during difficult moments in our first year.
I also leaned into mindfulness. I started journaling more intentionally. I set reminders to pause and breathe. When I felt overwhelmed, I would sit quietly with a cup of tea or step outside and feel the desert heat. Just noticing. Just being. It didn’t solve anything immediately, but it anchored me when nothing else could.
Most importantly, I learned to practice self-compassion. Kristin Neff defines it as treating ourselves with the same kindness we would offer a friend. And as expat women, we often hold ourselves to impossible standards. We want to thrive, parent well, support our partners, and soak up this bold new adventure without stumbling. But stumbling is human. And in a foreign country, it’s almost guaranteed.
There were days I felt like I failed my daughters. When they struggled to adapt, I questioned if we had made the right choice. But I also let them see me trying.
I let them see me be imperfect.
I let them see me cry sometimes and then get back up and try again.
And that, I hope, is the legacy they remember.
If you are in the throes of culture shock or any kind of seismic life shift, here is what I want you to know:
You are not broken. This is a part of it.
You are growing into a new version of yourself, one that holds more than one truth, one that can be both grateful and overwhelmed, adventurous and homesick. This doesn’t make you weak. It makes you whole.
Here are a few things that helped me:
Reframe the fear. Don’t fight the discomfort. Get curious about it. What is it showing you about your identity, your values, your resilience?
Anchor in the now. Mindfulness isn’t a trend. It’s a lifeline. One breath at a time.
Speak gently to yourself. You don’t have to earn rest. You don’t have to impress anyone. You don’t have to have it all figured out.
Let others in. Even if it’s messy. Especially if it’s messy.
I used to think strength meant holding it all together. Now I know strength sometimes looks like sitting on the floor, unsure of what to do next, and choosing not to run away from that moment.
Culture shock cracked something open in me. And in the space that followed, I found deeper compassion—for myself, for others, for the quiet courage it takes to start over in a new place.
Every time I step into the heat, every time I misread a social cue and still show up again the next day, I remember:
This isn’t failing. This is becoming.
~
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