Travel Anxiety Tips

Today's episode is all about travel anxiety. I'm a nervous traveler, and in this episode I lay out my best tips for making travel fun! I cover how to manage anticipatory anxiety, feeling stuck, social anxiety, the fear of flying, and separation anxiety (and, of course, how to use the fear to overcome our anxiety disorders). Enjoy! 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:24

Welcome to the 18 Minutes Podcast and happy Friday. I'm glad you're here today. I'm very excited because I am going on a trip this weekend. I'm gonna be gone for a little while, and today's episode is all about travel anxiety. So if you find this episode helpful, I'm actually going to be kind of documenting my travel experience and the process that I use to move through anxiety while traveling. I am recovered from panic disorder, but traveling still makes me anxious. Traveling makes a lot of people anxious. So whether you're someone who gets a little nervous traveling or someone who is full on avoiding it, agoraphobic, has panic attacks thinking about traveling, this episode will be helpful to you. So if you find this podcast helpful or interesting, you can follow me on TikTok or Instagram or YouTube and get even more travel tips and maybe just find some things that are relatable to you. And um, I know for me it's helpful to know that I'm not alone in my experiences, so maybe you'll get some of that from those videos as well. Also, I have a couple really good episodes coming up, so make sure you follow the podcast to get notified of every new episode that comes out. So travel is something that's important to a lot of people for a lot of different reasons. For me, travel has somewhat recently become really important, um, particularly because I love art and architecture, and seeing art from other cultures has really expanded my perspective on the world and other people's experiences. Learning about other cultures through travel can really help us grow in empathy and understanding for different types of people. Travel is also really important if you have loved ones who live far away. Being able to visit family and friends is a goal for a lot of anxious people and a big motivator for a lot of people who have panic disorder and are avoiding traveling, and something we can absolutely work towards being able to do more easily. Traveling can also be stress-relieving. If you live in a climate where it's cold and dark for part of the year, traveling somewhere where there's lots of sun and it's warm can be good for your mental health. So there's lots of reasons why traveling away from home is beneficial to us, and having that desire to do that is totally valid. I avoided travel altogether for most of my life. And now that I'm recovered from panic disorder and I'm traveling again, I want to share with you the ways that I gradually overcame a lot of my fears and how I still manage nervousness around traveling today. I still get anxious being far away from home or being away from home for long periods of time, but I do it anyway. So I have lots of suggestions and recommendations for how to make this process easier and more enjoyable. As a reminder, I'm not a therapist or medical professional, and the information in this podcast is based on my personal experience with anxiety disorders. This is not a replacement for therapy, so please take only what's helpful to you, leave what isn't, and heed any advice you get from your medical and mental health professionals. In this episode, I'm going to touch on some of the most common fears around travel and how to manage them and also work to overcome them. As with many, if not all, anxiety triggers, uh, fear around travel has a lot to do with a lack of control. Being away from our safe space really highlights our lack of control in life, especially if we're traveling somewhere with a different culture or different language, even. Quick reminder that practicing accepting anxiety and allowing the feelings to sit within us is how we overcome anxiety. And so these tips are meant to help you manage anxiety around traveling, but if you're using them constantly to avoid all feelings of anxiousness or nervousness, that's going to make you more anxious in the long term. Expect to feel some anxiety. And also, traveling is a great opportunity to overcome a lot of our deep-rooted fears. So let's get into some of those. The first thing I want to cover is the first kind of fear that shows up when we make plans to travel, and that is anticipatory anxiety. If you have experienced panic disorder and have also planned a trip, you have almost definitely experienced anticipatory anxiety. Oftentimes, this is the most intense part of the travel anxiety experience. Anticipatory anxiety is the fear leading up to the event. So typically, what we're doing is catastrophizing and think of every worst possible case scenario before we ever even leave the house. If you get this kind of anxiety before traveling, I have great news for you. Every anxious feeling you get before the trip can be used as an opportunity to mitigate a lot of anxiety on your trip. When I feel anticipatory anxiety about an upcoming trip, I use the practices that I've learned through exposure and response prevention to practice accepting that I'm feeling nervous and I'm feeling anxious about a part of the trip that I'm imagining could go poorly. I know that being anxious about the trip doesn't change anything about the trip or my experience of it in the future because I'm just imagining things and I'm only adding unnecessary suffering and I'm not actually solving any problems. So using that anticipatory anxiety when you're imagining that you have a panic attack in the car ride or on the plane or in the hotel or when you're walking around, you can use that moment to practice accepting that you're having anxiety. If you haven't listened to my episode on how to practice acceptance, that's a great one for this. And you can be teaching your survivalist fear-centered part of your brain that anxiety is not dangerous. And that is going to be huge for your trip. Even if you have one week until you leave, you can literally make progress right now. So, as weird as it is to say, I kind of love anticipatory anxiety because we can expose ourselves to the bodily sensations we're afraid of long before we ever actually go on our trip, and we can make so much progress before we leave. The next most common fear around traveling is being stuck. Feeling stuck is a really, really common experience among people with all different types of anxiety disorders, and being away from home can be a major trigger of the feeling of being stuck. We might feel stuck on an airplane, on a train, in the car, um, in a restaurant, at a hotel, or even feel stuck in another country because we're so far away from home. When I plan longer trips, especially, at some point, my anxious brain will come up with the thought, wow, I'm gonna be stuck there for a whole week. Unless something statistically ridiculous happens to you, you are not stuck. You're choosing to go on the trip in the first place. And even if you feel stuck while you're there, you always have the option to leave. You could decide to leave early and drive back home or even switch your flight or your train ticket. Challenging your anxious thoughts when you have the thought I'm going to be stuck can be really helpful for this specific fear. So when you think I'm going to be stuck, respond to that thought by saying, I'm feeling anxious right now, and that's okay, but I'm not going to be stuck. I can leave whenever I want. And just keep doing that over and over again as many times as it takes. Maybe it's a hundred times a day that you think I'm going to be stuck there. Just keep responding to it by saying, I'm feeling anxious about it right now. That doesn't mean I'm going to be stuck. I'm just scared that I'm going to feel that way when I'm gone. Another thing that has really helped me with this specific feeling of being stuck is thinking about the people who live in the place where I'm traveling to. If you're not traveling to a desert island, there will be people where you're going who call that place their home. If those people don't feel stuck there, I don't have to either. And in fact, if anyone's stuck, it's them because if they wanted to leave, they've got like a whole life they've got to resituate. I'm just gonna be here for a little bit, I'm pop in in and out, and I'm gonna go back home. So I'm really not stuck. And that has really helped ground me and rooted me in the reality of the situation. Lastly, you will probably feel a lot less stuck than you're imagining you'll feel once you get there. Once you're hearing the sounds and smelling the smells and moving around freely, you'll probably find that you don't feel quite as stuck as you were imagining when you were back at home and picturing, feeling anxiety and having panic attacks. The next most common fear I want to talk about is social anxiety when traveling. There are two different dynamics I want to get into, one being people you're traveling with and wanting to people please and not rock the boat, and the other one is social dynamics between the people who live where you're going. Navigating a new culture and new people can be really overwhelming. So, my first and most important tip is to plan time to do things that recharge you. If you're on a trip where there's going to be activities happening constantly, plan some time to do your own thing and to say no to some of those activities. Bring a book or a project with you so that you can really easily say, oh, while I'm on this trip, I'm I'm really wanting to finish this book, so I'm gonna go spend some time reading. So you don't have to come up with something on the fly. This is a really big deal, especially if you're introverted, and giving yourself that space to decompress alone can actually help you have a better time with the group the rest of the time you're doing activities together. Managing dynamics within your travel group might be stressful. The people that you're traveling with might have really different ideas about how they want to spend their time while they're on a trip. I think it's great to push our limits sometimes and to get out of our comfort zone, but don't spend your entire trip doing this. It's totally okay to say no to things or even suggest an alternative. Even better, plan something that you want to do ahead of time and make the suggestion before somebody else makes a suggestion on how to spend your time. I find that as people with anxiety disorders, we're often white knuckling through a situation and we're not allowing ourselves to be proactive. I know that I'm going on this trip and that I'm going to be stressed. What can I do ahead of time to make this easier for myself so that I can be a part of the group and that I can push my limits sometimes? It's okay to take some ownership of this experience because you're anxious about it and you want to make it a positive experience. I also find it really helpful to tell the people I'm traveling with that I get nervous about traveling and that I am planning to push myself out of my comfort zone, but that I'm also gonna need time to rest and chill so that I can do the fun activities that make me a little nervous. Most people are very understanding of that, and they can even help support you in how you want to be pushed out of your comfort zone or when you want to just be left alone. They can have a better uh context and understanding for your situation. Okay, big one fear of flying. Before I get into my tips, I went to an incredible event last weekend at the MSP airport with Jenny and Justin Matthews from State of Mind Therapy in the Twin Cities area. This event is specifically for people with flying anxiety. A group of us met at the airport, talked to a TSA agent, went through security together, and then sat on a real plane inside the airport as a group. It was amazing to be able to practice accepting anxiety in the context of an actual airport experience. So if you're in the Twin Cities area, I highly recommend this event. You can go to stateofmindtherapy.com and look for the I think it's called Fearful Flyers program. They do it roughly every other month. So you'll have an opportunity to go to that if you missed this last one. If you are nervous about flying at all, I cannot recommend this program enough. Also, I did a podcast with Jenny about a month ago. So if flying is specifically one of your fears around travel, I highly recommend listening to that episode. We focused solely on the fear of flying. Jenny is a licensed therapist in the Twin Cities and she specializes in the fear of flying. So she has absolutely priceless information and suggestions for people who are nervous. And I recommend listening to that episode if you relate to that. I do just want to mention a couple of additional tips that make the flying experience easier for me. First, give yourself plenty of time. Rushing around is anxiety-inducing. So plan ahead, make your packing list, start packing early, get to the airport with way more time than you think you need. Which gets me to my second tip, which is to literally walk slowly. Rushing actually signals to our brain that danger might be present. Moving slowly and calmly has the opposite effect. So if you give yourself plenty of time and you can, from the moment you get out of the car, you can be moving slowly, walking slowly, being very casual about the airport experience. You can actually send the message to your brain that things are not dangerous, there's nothing scary happening, and you don't need the help of adrenaline today. And again, for other specific tips about flying, I recommend listening to my episode with Jenny Matthews about the fear of flying. The last fear I want to get into is kind of twofold. It's being in an unfamiliar environment and separation anxiety. There are a lot of what-ifs that come up around traveling. What if I get sick? What if I need help and I don't know where to get it? What if I get lost? What if I lose my baggage? What if something happens to the plane? There's all of these what-if thoughts happening to us, especially in that anticipatory anxiety phase. Being in an unfamiliar environment naturally makes us feel more anxious because we're really good at imagining the worst possible outcomes. First thing I remind myself of when I start having these feelings is that unplanned things will probably happen. And it's okay. That happens to everyone on trips. There's almost always a solution for everything. If one person isn't helpful to you, another person will be. If you miss a flight, you get on another one. If you hate it there, you can leave. Sometimes part of the anxiety experience being in unfamiliar places is not having familiar things with us, and it creates this additional feeling of separation anxiety. The good news is we bring things with us that are familiar. Bringing your favorite t-shirt, a blanket you really love, or even FaceTime people who you love while you're on the trip to share your experience with them. Every vacation I go on, I FaceTime my mom because I want her to see what I'm doing, what I've got going on, what adventure I'm participating in. And it makes me feel closer to home and like we're not that far away. So a lot of things might be unfamiliar to you, but not everything is going to be unfamiliar to you. Wearing your favorite PJs or a piece of jewelry someone gave you can make you feel more connected to the people and places that you are familiar with. Remember that these things can also be safety behaviors. If you can manage it, allow yourself to feel the anxiety without needing to bring your favorite pajamas or FaceTime your mom. Allowing yourself to feel anxious and noticing it without responding to it actually helps us overcome disordered anxiety as a whole. But knowing that there are so many small ways we can make traveling easier makes the thought of traveling a little easier itself. Having panic attacks away from home is just as safe as having panic attacks when we're at home. Something that Jenny mentioned this weekend that I love that I want to end with is reframing our language from having a panic attack to experiencing an adrenaline surge or a cortisol wave because nothing is attacking us. Changing our language from I hope I don't have a panic attack while I'm gone to I will probably have some adrenaline surges while I'm away makes the whole experience seem a lot less scary. Feeling nervous about a trip is okay. There are a lot of changes, a lot of unknowns, and it's natural to feel nervous about traveling. But I hope this episode has helped you realize that there are a lot of ways we can help mitigate our stress while traveling and use our experiences as an opportunity to overcome disordered anxiety altogether. If you experience any specific fears around traveling that I missed, let me know. You can message me on any of my social channels or send me an email at amandathe18minutes.com. I would love to hear from you. Or you can pop into my TikTok live every Thursday at 3 p.m. Central Time, and I would love to chat with you there as well. Thanks so much for being here, and we'll see you next time.