Repatriation: Why returning home after living abroad can cause reverse culture shock

Repatriation is the phase no one prepares you for!

To begin with, the emotional and psychological aspects of expatriate life are finally receiving the attention they deserve. Today, many organisations recognise that international assignments succeed not only because of the employee’s performance, but because partners and children are able to build meaningful lives abroad.

Yet one phase is still consistently underestimated: namely, coming home!

Returning is expected to be easy. Psychologically, it is often anything but.

I remember one of my own returns vividly. Everything looked familiar, the streets, the language, the social codes, and yet, I moved through it with a quiet sense of disorientation. I looked the part, I sounded the part – and yet, it was as if life had continued without me, and I was no longer entirely fluent in the place that was supposed to be mine.

And how could I be – after time abroad, you are not the same person who left. When we move abroad, we anticipate change. And ironically, when we return, we expect familiarity.

This means that many people are taken by surprise when they instead experience:

• a loss of belonging

• a shift in identity

• distance in relationships that once felt effortless

• a sense of being in between worlds

This is often called reverse culture shock – but to compare, the real challenge is not cultural, it is psychological.

Because while your passport tells you that you are home, your internal world tells a more complex story.

In my own process, I became aware that I no longer reacted in the same ways, valued the same things, or fitted into conversations as effortlessly as before. It wasn’t dramatic – rather just a quiet, persistent awareness that I had changed.

I realized that repatriation is not a practical relocation. It is an identity transition.

This blogpost will explore the psychological consequences of repatriation and why returning home after living abroad can cause reverse culture shock

My own experience of coming home - more than once

Having repatriated several times, I have lived through very different emotional landscapes.

The first times I returned, I felt grief more than relief. I was not finished with my life abroad, and coming back felt like closing a door too early. I carried a strong sense of restlessness and a longing to leave again. Not because something was wrong where I was, but because something in me had not yet found its place.

Next, let’s explore what changed.

My most recent return was shaped by different circumstances and a deep need for stability. That changed the emotional tone. Instead of measuring my present life against what I had lost, I began, slowly, to ask:

How can the person I became abroad live here too?

And, that question marked a turning point.

This means that my sense of home today is no longer tied to one country.It is tied to the experience of being able to live as a whole person.

The hidden grief of repatriation

Repatriation often involves losses that are difficult to name. For instance:

• the loss of your daily life abroad

• the loss of an identity that felt expansive and alive

• the loss of being seen in a particular way

• the loss of effortless belonging

At the same time, there may be genuine gratitude for what you are returning to.

I remember feeling both at once, a deep appreciation for stability and closeness to family, and at the same time a quiet grief for the version of myself that only seemed to exist in my international life.

Holding both is not confusion. It is psychological growth.

Repatriation as a developmental process

From a therapeutic perspective, the task is not to go back to who you were.

Most importantly, the task is to create space for a more complex identity – one that can hold multiple cultural references, expanded perspectives, and new ways of relating to yourself and others.

This takes time. And it requires the same intentionality as moving abroad did.

In my own journey, integration began when I stopped asking“Where do I belong?” and started asking “How can I belong to my own life as it is now?”

Psychological strategies for navigating repatriation

Just as expatriation requires preparation, so does coming home.

You can support yourself by:

• creating conscious goodbyes to your life abroad

• lowering expectations of immediate adjustment

• approaching your home culture with curiosity

• speaking openly about your internal transition

• maintaining meaningful elements from your international life

• allowing your identity to be both/and rather than either/or

In my own repatriation, small things made a big difference: continuing certain routines, keeping international friendships active, allowing my professional identity to reflect my global experiences.

Perhaps, most importantly, permit yourself not to feel fully at home yet. Belonging after an international life is something that is created, not something you simply return to.

From returning to integrating

When repatriation is understood as a process of integration rather than a task of going back, something shifts.

This is also what I see in my clinical work with internationally mobile clients. When there is space to explore:

• identity integration

• loss and grief in transition

• meaning and direction

• relationships after returning

the experience changes from silent disorientation to personal development.

This means that repatriation becomes not an ending, but a new phase.

Support for your repatriation journey

If you recognise yourself in this process, you are not alone.

Professionally, this is the heart of my work.

Personally, it is a transition I have walked through myself.

If you would like more structured guidance, you can find it in my guide on mental health as an expat:

“How to take care of your mental health as an expat” - a guide that psychologically supports all phases of the expat cycle, including repatriation. You will find the guide here: https://www.thegoodexpatlife.com/guides.

And, if you would like a space to explore your own process in depth, you are very welcome to get in touch for a free 25-minute consultation. You can contact me via my contact form here https://www.thegoodexpatlife.com/

In short, repatriation is not about returning to who you were.

It is about integrating everything you have become.

Finally, for me, home is no longer one place. It is the experience of being able to live with all the versions of myself that different countries have brought forward.

And, that is when repatriation stops being a loss – and becomes a quiet form of wholeness!