Identity Crisis and Cultural Clash — How Can I Find Help?
Written by Marci Renée
Moroccan Henna Photo by Vitaliy Lyubezhanin on Unsplash
Round 1:
I remember this happening before. I remember feeling this way before. I was only nineteen years old, a foreign exchange student in France, lost culturally, and trying to figure out who I was.
It was more of an identity crisis, I think.
Having left my home country, culture, and language for the first time, I flew to the other side of the world, trying to figure out my life.
Instead, I came face-to-face with myself . . . for the first time.
I looked at myself in the mirror, and I saw me. At the age of 19, it seems that I would have known who I was. However, I wasn’t sure who I was anymore, even though I thought I did before I boarded that international flight.
Who was that girl staring back at me in the mirror?
She was American. That much I knew. But I suddenly didn’t know what that meant.
When I went to the immigration office for my student visa, I was identified as an “American.” When I pulled out my passport, there it was again, that gold eagle emblem stamped on the front cover. When I registered for my classes at the university, they labeled me as an “American student.”
Everyone else seemed to know who I was and what that meant, but I sure didn’t.
I kept trying so hard to integrate into the local host culture, pouring out what seemed to be blood, sweat, and tears to learn the language fluently and speak like the nationals, without a hint of an accent, spending more time and energy than I could muster up to develop relationships with others in the community . . .
Lost in Myself
I felt lost, more than ever.
Confronted with my own culture, for the first time, as it clashed with a foreign culture . . . I didn’t know how to navigate this identity crisis I was facing.
Survival mode, that’s what we enter in crises. Buck up, push forward, march on!
I got through that year somehow, but I don’t think I figured out who I was culturally, as an American, as a foreigner living abroad.
Now, here I am again . . .
Round 2:
Jump thirty years forward, I’m in Morocco, living once again as an expat in a strange land. This time, with my husband and kids.
I’m no longer facing the cultural barriers of French baguettes, berets, chic fashion, and rolled “Rs” in a foreign language. Rather, I’m struggling with learning how to write “backwards,” trying to eat couscous with my hands, being acceptably late by two hours, and driving without rules.
Once again, as my own American culture confronts this new, foreign culture, I feel the wrestling and struggle deep inside.
Aït Benhaddou, Morocco Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash
Needing Help in the Battle
I need help. It’s not just culture shock that I’m in. It’s not just cultural adjustment and understanding that I need.
Rather, it’s a deeper battle—an identity battle. It’s a deeper crisis—an identity crisis. I’m suddenly realizing that I am on a journey of discovery, a path to learning more about who I am, walking a road to find myself.
I honestly don’t even know where to begin. I’m not sure that I can figure this out on my own. Maybe some of my other expat friends who have been here longer than I have can help me. They can perhaps be cultural insiders for me, along with my new local friends.
Needing Something More
However, it seems that I may need something else, something more. Maybe one of those Personalized Care providers who have lived in North Africa before could help me, someone who has walked this cultural road before, a person who has successfully arrived on the other side of this identity crisis.
That could give me hope, talking to someone who has made it to the other side, someone who has survived.
This process is lonely, and it’s not one I can go through alone. It’s not one that I want to walk alone.
Perhaps someone like that could come alongside me and ask questions, questions that can help me discover what I’m going through, where I’ve been, where I am today, and where I’m going.
Debriefing some of these cultural experiences and clashes with my own culture could be helpful. Just having someone in my life who could listen and care about me and what I’m going through would be wonderful.
I could really use someone to talk to, to tell my story to.
Then perhaps my Personalized Care provider can help me learn more about myself and this American culture that I keep packing in my suitcase unknowingly. It’s coming out in ugly ways as it butts up against my Moroccan host culture so violently. I better get to know who I am as a person, culturally, so I can calm this storm inside of me. It may become a journey of acceptance, too—acceptance of myself, acceptance of others.
And coaching . . . yes, I want and need to move forward. I certainly don’t want to stay stuck where I am. I want to change, improve, and progress. Coaching could help me begin to see new paths forward and identify steps to take to get to where I want to be.
Mentoring? Personalized Care can include mentoring, too. Having conversations with someone who has walked this road ahead of me and can pass on some of the lessons they learned could be really beneficial.
Help Tailored to Me
I guess that Personalized Care can be what I want it to be. It’s personal, tailored to me. It’s unique, not a “one-size-fits-all.”
I just signed up. I’m ready to get started on this journey to better know myself. That will, in turn, help me to better know my own culture and the culture around me. Sounds like I’m setting myself up for success here in North Africa. If it can help me “do better and stay longer,” I’m all in.
What about you? Where are you at in your personal journey of identity and cultural adjustment?
Guest author, Marci Renée, along with her French husband and four boys, is a global nomad who has traveled to more than 30 countries and has lived in the United States, France, Morocco, and Spain. She loves to travel, speak foreign languages, experience different cultures, eat ethnic foods, meet people from faraway lands, and of course, write and tell stories. She is a published author of children's picture books, memoirs, short stories, and poetry.
You can find Marci and her books on her website.
"The Cultural Story-Weaver," at www.culturalstoryweaver.com