Culture Shock Through an Emotional Lens

Diversity creates difference

Margarita Gokin Silver talks about how to use emotional lens to describe responding to another culture. Her cultural coaching focuses on understand how you feel and why not to use the step-by-step approach of stages to manage your emotional journey.

Listen to Margarita talk about her cultural tools on Expat Radio.



Here’s my culture lens based on Margarita’s cultural-lens tool.

Emotional Reaction	Expat Journey
Wonderful	I find that I like to cook and I like city life. When I move to a new place I instantly try to find the best place to eat and the coolest bar to hang out in. It’s a fun and exciting time that makes me feel that I am part of the new culture and that it embraces me back.
Frustration	My personal frustration is civil and political isolation. I think that if I was at home and this was a problem I would be able to work for change. In another country I don’t have an outlet for this side of my personality.
Doable	I find that dealing with being an outsider, when I don’t feel like one, is doable -- but not nice. I’ve become more capable of deflecting, coping, and sometimes changing this situation.
Enjoyable	Most of this comes once everything you do isn’t new -- once you can get a bus or take a car, choose somewhere to eat close to home or the office. Once you know the city and the culture you can enjoy your life more.
Longing	When I returned to the UK from an expat experience, I did experience longing for the city I had left and I also experienced longing for my home town.