I get this question a lot from well-meaning people who see two opposite truths in me: I get anxious when I travel, and travel brings me a lot of joy.
When I write about anxiety, I’m talking about a short-lived experience, that creeps into an ever-present feeling if I’m not careful. After all, anxiety is an emotion, and emotions are normal. It’s normal to feel anxious when you’re in a situation or environment that’s new or unfamiliar.
Travel is usually these exact situations: unfamiliar and new. And there are a lot of signals our brain can mistake for unfriendly or dangerous in these scenarios. Not understanding cultural stigmas or common behaviours. Hearing an unfamiliar language around us. Not knowing what’s in the food we eat. All of these things can create an atmosphere where anxiety is the natural reaction.
I’m making a special effort here to point out reasonable examples where anxiety would be the natural reaction. But I know that there are some situations where our reactions are not in line with what’s reasonable.
Have you ever come back from a day at work where everything’s gone wrong—coffee was cold, you got a stain on your shirt, stepped in a puddle and your sock was wet all day. Then when you come home, something mundane happens like tripping over a rug, and you find yourself exploding? I get like that when I’m anxious; there’s only so much buildup that I can take before I shut down.
So how does it work, being so prone to anxiety, and putting myself in situations where it’s bound to come up? Why do I do it, and what can I do to stop feeling anxious when I travel?
I put myself in situations like these for two reasons: first and foremost, I love travel. I love exploration; I love the excitement of seeing something new. I’ve always wanted to see the world, and now that I’m an adult with adult money, nothing is going to stop me (including my own mental hinderances).
The second reason I travel with anxiety is that it makes it better. Think about it like going to the gym to work out: if you lift weights, you’ll build muscle. If you avoid the gym because lifting weights is difficult, your muscles will get smaller, until eventually you can’t lift anything up.
This is how I feel about dealing with anxiety. My options are to either avoid all situations where it might come up (not possible, I’m afraid!) or get my reps in and, in dealing with it more often, get better at how I handle it. When you’ve done one hundred bicep curls, it’s easy to do the next one. My bicep curls are dealing with my anxiety when it comes up.
I’m sorry that there’s not an easier answer here, like “take this pill to stop feeling anxious when you travel!”. But anxiety is just an emotion. We don’t ask “how do I stop feeling sad when I travel”, because we know that sometimes, sadness just happens. It’s not a problem that we can get rid of; it’s just a feeling.
The same is true of anxiety. The way to stop feeling anxious when travelling is, ironically, travel more. An additional side effect of this is that you’ll build confidence that you can handle more than you think. You’ll not only build tools for dealing with anxiety—you’ll also build awareness that anxiety is less needed the more you travel, because the problem you might get anxious about will seem more trivial.
If you’re looking for tools for dealing with anxiety in the moment, I’d suggest my piece on all the exercises I do to calm my brain when anxiety hits. Let me know if they help below in the comments; and as always, happy travels!
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