Content introduction

§1.2 Phases of culture shock
The following phases of cultural shock are passed by anyone who finds himself outside his native expanses.
Phase 1. "Honeymoon".
Most people start their life abroad with a positive attitude, even with euphoria: everything that is new is exotic and attractive. During the first few weeks, most are fascinated by the new. At the honeymoon stage, a person notices the most obvious differences: differences in language, climate, cuisine, geography, etc. these are specific differences and they are easy to assess. The fact that they are concrete and visible makes them fearless. You can see and evaluate, thereby you can adapt to them. People stay at the hotel and communicate with those who speak their language, who are polite and friendly to foreigners. This honeymoon can last from a few days to 6 months, depending on the circumstances. But this mood is usually short-lived if the "visitor" decides to stay and meet with the real conditions of life in the country. Then the second stage begins, characterized by aggressiveness and hostility towards the "receiving" side.
Phase 2. "Anxiety and hostility".
Just like in marriage, a honeymoon cannot last forever. After a few weeks or months, a person realizes the problems that arise with communication, at work, in the store and at home. There are problems with housing, problems with movement, with "shopping", and the fact that others are mostly indifferent to them. They help, but they don't understand your huge dependence on these problems. Therefore, they seem to be callous and indifferent towards you and your worries. Result: "I don't like them."
But at the stage of alienation, you fall under the influence of not so obvious differences. Alien are not only tangible, "rough aspects, but also people's relationships with each other, ways of making decisions and expressing their feelings and emotions. These differences create more difficulties and are the cause of most misunderstandings and disappointments, after which you feel stressed and uncomfortable. Many familiar things simply do not exist. A person suddenly realizes that an emu will have to live with these differences not for a couple of days, but for months and years.
In any case, this period of cultural shock is not only inevitable, but also useful. If you get out of it, you stay. If not, you leave before you reach the stage of a nervous breakdown.
Phase 3. Final addiction.
If a visitor is successful in acquiring some knowledge of the language and begins to move independently, he begins to open the way to a new social environment. Usually at this stage, visitors acquire a sense of superiority in relation to the inhabitants of the country. Their sense of humor shows itself. Instead of criticizing, they joke about the inhabitants of this country and even gossip about their difficulties. Now they are on the road to recovery.
Phase 4. Adjustment/Acculturation
This last phase represents a person's ability to freely "function" in two cultures – his own and the adopted one. He really comes into contact with the new culture, not superficially and artificially, like a tourist, but deeply, and embracing it. Only with a complete "grasp" of all the signs of social relations will these elements go away. For a long time, a person will understand what the aborigine says, but will not understand what he means. He will begin to understand and appreciate local traditions and customs, even adopt some "codes of behavior" and generally feel "like a fish in water" with both aborigines and "his own". The lucky ones who have fallen into this phase enjoy all the benefits of civilization, have a wide circle of friends, easily settle their official and personal affairs, at the same time without losing their self-esteem and being proud of their origin. When they go home on vacation, they can take things with them. And if they leave with good, they usually miss the country and the people they are used to.
It turns out that the adapted person is, as it were, divided: there is his own, native bad, but his own way of life and another, alien, but good. Of these two evaluative dimensions, "friend – foe", "bad – good", the first is more important than the second, which is subordinate to it. For some people, these constructs apparently become independent. That is, a person thinks: "So what, what is someone else's. But, for example, it is more comfortable, more money, more opportunities," etc. The problem is that "what is your own" does not go away simply by definition. You can't throw away, forget your life story, no matter how bad it is. As A. S. Pushkin said .: "Respect for the past is the trait that distinguishes education from savagery." As a result, you are an eternal stranger. Of course, you can fall in love with this culture, literally, otherwise a less strong feeling will not overcome the gap of alienness, and then someone else will become your own.
The model of intercultural adaptation is also well known, taking into account three psychological components: orientation clarity, behavioral relevance and the minimum level of personal claims. In this model, by analogy with K. Oberg's variant, the acculturation process is divided into four phases. At the first stage of contact with a foreign cultural reality, the canons of one's own culture are still strong in the individual's consciousness. Only repeated misunderstandings make us think about their relativity and the doubtfulness of familiar landmarks within the new environment.
The second phase is characterized by loss of orientation clarity and even disorientation. The learned cognitive structures do not correspond to current events, and behavioral relevance does not satisfy the minimum level of claim. Only gradually does a person begin, "making his way through the wilds of a new culture," to realize the context of this culture and build a different orientation system and behavioral strategies. This marks the third phase of being "among strangers".
At the final, fourth, stage of adaptation, subjective stability of the personality is restored, orientation clarity and behavioral relevance clearly exceed the level of minimum claims.
However, most often the problems that arise in the course of mastering someone else's culture are considered by researchers in the context of the "curve of intercultural adaptation" model.
This concept, including all the phases of adaptation to a new environment already mentioned, represents the course or course of acculturation in the form of a W-shaped diagram that conveys the reaction of a person to an unfamiliar reality. At the same time, the wave-like line model also takes into account the period of preadaptation, when visitors who have successfully adapted to a new cultural space, often experience a "return shock" or a reverse cultural shock when returning to their homeland.
Thus, a good adaptation is the ability to operate with the signs of another culture on a par with their own. This requires certain abilities, such as memory, and a strong human ability to resist being "dragged away" by a hostile environment, emotional self-reliance. That is why children adapt well, they grasp everything quickly, talented people who live by their creativity, and they do not care about pressing problems, and, strange as it may seem, housewives, "protected" from the environment by taking care of their children and home, and not caring about themselves.