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My story begins from starting with a place where I got lost in myself, and I was searching for my own identity and a place to call home. ‘Nepantla’ is a Nahuatl word meaning ‘tierra entre medio’ or in-between spaces. Nepantla is the idea of the liminal space, and finding places between different identities – the transformation and confusion from one world to another. The major question for me was who I am between two different identities, especially, and the key was to find my character in a different world. Immigration made me have immense confusion in terms of who I am between the two cultures and which culture to stick to. I was constantly trying to keep my old morals in a different country, therefore, I had to develop my own way of culture in order to adapt. At first, I realized an exceptional culture stun while subsiding into another country. This procedure of cultural assimilation created two precise issues with matter to personality for me. I had, firstly, to preserve, and secondly, to maintain my culture, but not lose it. I needed to find myself in my new language, new home, new people, new country, and new life. Social and cultural transformations in my character were distressing, which brought up issues with confidence and mental wellness for me.
By moving to the United States, my well-being started to be corrupt. I began to develop high anxiety and low self-esteem in this new environment, which caused an eating disorder for me. Cultural adaptation and acculturation have a huge impact on biological adaptation and can change a person’s mental and physical tremendously. This is called a culture-bound syndrome, which is a combination of somatic and psychiatric symptoms that can lead to an actual disease in a specific new culture, society, and region (Lock & Nguyen, 2018). Maybe you feel adapted to a place, but your mind is not. Consequently, I had to develop my mind and body to adapt to my new nature. Personally, due to the significant stress that I was having, I became overweight and I was diagnosed with bulimia nervosa and binge eating. My eating disorder was the perception of my own body image, where at one point I couldn’t even recognize myself. This is not only because I was new to the environment, but the separation made everything more extreme. The capacity to conquer separation and keep up a feeling of social pride is essential to effective cultural assimilation.
Nevertheless, I found a way to overcome my negative feelings associated with the process of acculturation. After the emergence of being in-between space, not knowing who I am, and having both mental and health problems, I chose to either ‘fight or flight’. Culture shock is a reason for my identity confusion type of experience in terms of Nepantla, and the cause of the culture-bound syndrome. The point of ‘flight or fight’ is when a person is situated in an unfamiliar position. “The ‘flight’ approach is being afraid, stepping back, and seeing how things work before taking the plunge and joining in. The second preference, the ‘fight’ approach, is to join and contribute. A substitute to fight or flight is the flex method, in which the migrant uses a combination of productive fight or flight behaviors” (Lisha, 2010). I chose to fight for myself. Consequently, by way of a social adjustment to this new condition, I accepted the flight strategy to manage all the new things around me. I would, above all else, see how things are jumping on and how different individuals manage them, and afterward, I would process the target perception and my abstract decisions before I took the last actions. As an example to my field notes, it took a while for me to love myself and take care of my health, then when I was 17 I decided to change my lifestyle; this is when running became my therapy. I focused on my mind and body and overcame my depression and confusion by running. Therefore, I was able to find myself again, maintain my ideal weight, and overcome my low self-esteem. While, I still tend to feel that my current experience is reflective of the concept of Nepantla, due to the fact that I still sometimes feel I don’t belong here.
In correlation to my field notes, immigration had changed my well-being and my lifestyle. Acculturation is the process by which an individual moves to another place, which is not theirs, and wants to generate a new life. It was not easy to live with the confusion of own identity, having an eating disorder, depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem as a culture-bound syndrome. I believe cultural adaptation is a biological concept, in terms of adaptation to new alterations, structures, and people. It was not easy to maintain my well-being. It took a while for me to start taking care of myself and my own body, but I did it. Personally, the cultural change created a behavioral and psychological change for me to adapt myself to my surroundings. Yet I had to either fight or run away and give my life up.
In conclusion, I have discussed how my time of immigration and adaptation to the new culture caused my identity confusion in terms of Nepantla, diverse worldviews, a culturally-bound syndrome, and how I chose to either fight or flight. Personally, acculturation played an important role in my life and changed me completely. During this time, my mind and body gradually scattered throughout the new situation. Every immigrant might experience and overcome acculturation differently. Some may not even have any difficulties. Cultural adjustment has some particular points of interest over natural adjustment.
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