Coping with Travel Anxiety
Following on from my previous post Travelling With Anxiety, I thought it would be a good idea to share some tips on how to cope with anxiety whilst travelling.
Actually, these tips can be applied to any situation in life and although they won’t work for everyone, I believe they can certainly help you make the first step.
I’ll be using my own experiences as examples.
Know Your Triggers
Before we can even begin to work on ourselves, we first need to identify what it is that actually triggers our anxiety. It can come in many different ways and in many different forms but it's important to discover why.
I’ll give you an example - I love to swim. I absolutely adore the water.
So much so that every birthday growing up I’d wish to miraculously turn into a mermaid! Surely I can’t be the only one that did that?
Anyway, whilst in Thailand, I lived in a condo complex that had a communal swimming pool. It was very large and quite well kept. Sounds perfect, right?
Well, I couldn’t see the pool from my block which made me incredibly nervous. Sounds strange, I know but the fact that I couldn’t see the pool made it very difficult for me to pluck up the courage to go down and swim.
What if there were people down there? What if I got there and it was too busy? What if they stared at me? Even worse, what if they tried to talk to me? What if they thought I was fat? What if they laughed at me?
All these ridiculous (trust me, I know they’re ridiculous) thoughts would circulate in my brain until eventually I gave in and decided that I wouldn’t go down that day and instead, I’d try again the next day. That right there was my trigger - other people and what they might be thinking about me.
See if you can try and decipher yours.
Shut Your Ego Up
We all have an ego. Sometimes it’s an encouraging ego that will triumph and champion you but often (as it is in my case) it’s an extremely discouraging and self-sabotaging ego.
In a way, your ego is there to protect you and keep you safe from harm, but sometimes it can be to your own detriment.
In the above example about the swimming pool, you can see how my ego gets in the way. By automatically jumping straight to the negative, my ego makes sure to overpower what I actually want. It’s saying I can’t go and swim because something bad will happen.
It does sound a little crazy but those little niggling thoughts that tell you ‘no’ or that you can’t do something - that's your ego. Same as the voice that tells you ‘yes you can’.
If your ego is similar to mine, learn to shut it up!
Try not to let those dream-crushing thoughts in. I’m not going to lie to you, it can be very difficult but once you are able to do it once, you’ll find it gets easier and easier.
How do you shut it up though? Simple, tell it!
You only get one chance at this life, so tell your ego to shut up and don’t let it interfere with what you actually want to achieve.
Organise & Prepare Yourself
Another thing I do that helps is to plan for the moment.
For example, I want to go swimming in the morning. So what do I do? I set out my costume, my towel etc and pack it all in a bag so it’s ready and waiting for me to walk out the door.
For me, opening the door is the worst part of all. I’ll faff about for as long as it takes until I can talk myself out of going down there at all, even though I really want to. Even though I know I’ll feel bloody brilliant afterwards for doing so.
Once I pluck up the courage to open the door, I’m ok. I walk to the stairs and I don’t look back but it’s just getting me to the door.
I find it best to prepare yourself in whatever way that you need, organise yourself so that you have no choice but to just… do it!
Discover New Techniques
I think this one is the most encouraging tip that I have and I was so happy when I found something that worked for me.
When I’m alone and want to go out for a walk or I need to force myself out to the shops, I will usually have my earphones in.
I’ll play my favourite podcasts or listen to emotive music. I do this before I have a chance to talk myself out of it and I find that the distraction really helps. I feel like I’m the only one in the world although there may be other people around me.
No matter what your situation is, there might just be a technique waiting to be discovered that will work for you!
Accept The Situation
My friend and I were talking about social anxiety within the workplace recently and it felt so good to talk to someone that understood how I felt.
Lunch breaks were always a huge trigger for me in the office. I would usually skip them altogether and continue working but my friend, who works in a school, can’t do that. She is encouraged to take her breaks in the staff room with her colleagues but this fills her with anxiety as it means having to share the space with others.
It’s not that these people are mean or anything, quite the contrary! But it’s the unnerving feeling of walking into a room where there’s already people there. It’s having to prepare your lunch in the same space, eating in the same space, making small talk etc. It doesn’t come easily or naturally to some. It doesn’t to me and it doesn’t to my friend.
The only way to really move forward with it though is to just breathe and accept the situation for what it is. The staff room for instance, if it can’t be changed, if going elsewhere is not an option then you simply have to learn to embrace it instead.
See the situation for what it really is - one moment in time. It’s half an hour to an hour out of your day. Then it’ll be over. And you would have made it through to the other side.
Ok, that’s it for this one! I do understand it can be quite a raw subject to discuss but the truth is, anxiety exists all around us and it’s important to at least try to understand it.
You never know who could be struggling!
