The Juggling ActDaily Coronavirus Check-in: Dealing with reverse culture shock anxiety
Thinking back to the first week we went into isolation and I thought I’d never get used to working from home, having the kids around, and just generally adjusting to the new normal we found ourselves in, with little warning. I was stressing about hand sanitiser, children’s Panadol and yup, the great toilet paper shortage. Now, nearly three months later, and I’m feeling anxious about the kids being back in school full time, using public transport again and heading back to the office. Turns out there’s a name for that anxiety. Psychologists call this feeling reverse culture shock, or re-entry syndrome. It's the same as the feeling you might have when you’ve been living overseas for a while and you return home. Unfortunately, we can’t just click our fingers and pick up where we left off. So I reached out to psychologist Belinda Williams from The Bumpy Road to find out a bit more about it and what we can do to help our families adjust.
