Culture shock is real, predictable, and weirdly reassuring once you know its shape. It typically moves through phases: an initial honeymoon where everything is exciting, then a frustration stage where small differences, bureaucracy, food, language fatigue, suddenly feel unbearable, then gradual adjustment, and finally a settled adaptation where the new country simply becomes life. The frustration phase often arrives around the second or third month, exactly when friends back home assume you are past the hard part, which is why so many people suffer it silently.
It shows up as irritability, homesickness, sleep changes, idealizing home, and withdrawing from locals. None of that means you made a mistake moving; it means your brain is renegotiating hundreds of automatic habits at once.
What genuinely helps: keep a routine, exercise, and sleep properly; learn the language actively, since helplessness feeds the spiral; build a mixed social circle, your own community for comfort plus locals for belonging; explore deliberately rather than hiding at home; and limit doom-scrolling home media.