(Note: This transcript has been edited for readability.)
Expert 1: Culture shock is really powerful. And it will shake you to the bone. So, yeah, how do you manage it? Exposure, and then talking. It’s a very important dynamic. It needs to be understood. It needs to be dealt with. And the same is true with coming home. Reverse culture shock, reintegrating back into your family, back into the American culture. So, both sides of the coin, the shock of entering into a new culture, and the reverse shock of re-entering into your culture. Oftentimes, early on in my career, the big issue was, dad’s been gone eight months on a cruise, on a float, and he’d come home, and mama has already got new rules in the house, and the kids are doing certain things. Dad comes home and he wants to reassert himself. Same issues. You’ve got to take a second, and recalibrate and take that time to think about it, and just don’t react. So, yeah. Culture shock is huge.

Expert 2: In the social sciences, there’s this thing called “The U-Curve of adaptation.” So, maybe a soldier arrives somewhere and they go through that honeymoon phase. “Hey, everything here is really cool. And this is unique, and I just love it.” Then they start getting frustrated because it’s different and they’re having a hard time communicating and maybe even they’re homesick when they’re young soldiers. So they get very frustrated, so they get down kind of in the bottom of the curve. But when they’ve been there a little while then they begin to adjust. They kind of figure out, “Hey, I’m here, and I’ve got to learn this thing whether I like it or not.” And they start to adjust, and then at some point they actually adapt. So the curve looks different for all of us, but to be sure, every one of us rides that curve.