Holidays and vacations are supposed to be a time for relaxation, aren’t they? Yes, but all things considered, they can also be overwhelming in a way that leaves our minds clouded with doubt and our stomachs churning with anxiety.
To explore the truth behind why you may feel anxious while going on holiday, Days to Come sat down with Tanya Adam Khan. Picture a female Freud with a mahogany tobacco pipe and the soothing voice of an angel.
Khan is a psychotherapist who regularly runs group sessions for people that struggle with different forms of anxiety. We sat down to pick her brain about why we get vacation anxiety, travelling in a tour group, feeling stressed while away from work, and jitters about flying.
So why do you think people feel anxious while travelling in the first place?
I think it has a lot to do with the kind of personality you have.
Some people absolutely love the prospect of travelling and look forward to meeting different kinds of people, coming across different ways of life, new languages and culture. Then there are other people who need to know absolutely everything about a place before they go. It doesn’t matter what kind of traveller you are, there are people who can be fluid and people who cannot.
The level of anxiety you have as a person in your general day-to-day at home will correlate with the level of anxiety you experience while travelling.
So in some cases, the anxious feelings people experience while travelling could be rooted in something deeper?
It’s rooted in whether you struggle with anxiety in your day-to-day life.
I know many people who don’t get anxious while travelling because they can adapt to different situations and environments whether at home or while travelling.
People that do get anxious about travelling aren’t always able to adapt and get triggered while travelling. They have very little room for fluidity in their plans, so you will see their anxiety manifesting in different ways. For example, over what time they are getting to the airport, they plan out their itinerary meticulously and then every last detail must be adhered to. From where they are going, to what they are doing and what they will eat.
Can you explain what you mean by ‘fluidity in the context of travel’?
Okay, so from a personal experience, in my day-to-day, I’m generally not an early riser. I don’t enjoy waking up early under any circumstances, least of all when I’m travelling. So when I travel I don’t cram my early morning with things to do because I know that’s going to make me anxious. I’ll probably spoil my entire evening the night before because I’m thinking about having to wake up early the next morning.
So I’m very fluid in that regard, I’ll enjoy my evenings, wake up and get dressed whenever, and make sure to do the stuff that I like that day. There’s no set agenda in mind. Of course, when going to a new place, I have an idea of certain things I want to experience and that’s absolutely fine, but by and large, I try to stay fluid and just go with my own flow as I would in my normal life.
What if someone doesn’t realise they are struggling with anxiety, but something about travel brings that out. What can they do to make things easier for themselves?
Generally speaking, if you’re the kind of person who doesn’t adapt very well to new situations or change – you need to stick to the things that you enjoy best on holiday.
My tip for someone who gets anxious about travelling would be to reflect on the kind of things you love doing at home and focus on doing those while on vacation.
Maybe you don’t want to run around checking off all the sights and attractions that we feel obligated to see when travelling because that’s what we’re supposed to do. Maybe you just want to find a place where you can meditate or a place that’s very culturally rooted. It’s important to make sure you have a vacation that means something to you, all of that can help manage anxiety.
Have you ever felt anxious while travelling?
If I’m travelling with a lot of people and there’s a lot of stuff that needs to be arranged and managed like hotels, bookings and just commuting between different places, I do tend to get a bit anxious.
I prefer to travel with like-minded people, who enjoy my style of travel. I suppose that’s why tours are great because they take care of a lot of those things.
What advice would you give to people that are nervous about travelling in a tour group?
Try to get to know the people you are travelling with on a personal level. You might not always like what you get but that’s fine, you’ll find your comfort zone. Even if you are nervous about travelling as part of a group, you will always find two or three people that you really hit it off with.
Some people are more shy or introverted whereas others are very comfortable in group situations. Any tips for what people can do when they meet a tour group for the first time?
There’s a very interesting comparison between what you’re asking me and what I do. When I sit down in group therapy sessions there are about 12 people coming together. Regardless of the activity or the purpose of them coming together, it’s still a new group, a new set of people going on a journey of sorts. So I put them in small groups, and give them suggestions about the kind of questions they can ask each other, and after 20 minutes, I switch the groups around.
If you’re naturally shy — when you meet your new tour group — don’t spend the entire first evening talking to just one person. It’s very tempting to do that but if you can meet more people, it will help you. So the first time you meet your new travel companions, try to talk to as many people as you can, and have some questions in your back pocket.
So is there a way to stop anxiety from getting in the way of enjoying a trip?
You can’t over simplify it. I don’t think that anxiety is purely related to just travel. It’s coming from somewhere else, it’s part of your personality and day-to-day management of things. You can’t really help that without doing deeper work on your anxiety at home.
That being said, there are some things you can start introducing into your routine today, that will contribute to your peace of mind tomorrow.
Giving yourself 20 or 30 minutes just to breathe through your anxiety will really help. There are techniques you can research that will show you how to breathe through your anxiety so you can move on to the next thing you’re about to do. You can’t get rid of anxiety completely, but it can be contained.
If you’re someone who has dealt with anxiety for a while you probably have ways of coping already, so bring whatever it is along on your travels. Don’t leave your coping methods at home, you may need them in case your anxiety gets triggered.
If that does happen, take care of yourself. If you’re travelling with others, maybe you need to connect with people, find one or two people to talk to, or maybe you need to get away from the group entirely for a while.
A lot of people experience “the stress” of travelling – getting from point a to b – are these just milder forms of anxiety?
There are many things that are simply part of going on vacation, your passport anxiety, the security line, your tickets, your arrangements and the like. It’s fine to be anxious about these things, in fact it’s to be expected.
It’s when you get so overwhelmed by these things and they start to get in the way of you enjoying yourself that it really needs to be addressed. Experiencing a mild form of anxiety over these things is okay, actually let’s call it bouts of stress, that’s just part of travelling. It’s going to happen when you’re trying to get from point a and b.
And what about a fear of flying?
That’s a completely different phobia. It needs proper clinical treatment, you need to be in sessions and some sort of therapy before you fly because you can’t breathe through that or sit through turbulence if you’re about to have a severe panic attack. You will eventually be able to breathe through it, but that’s after you’ve had therapy for it.
If therapy is too intimidating or too big of an investment for you right now, just get started by picking up some books and familiarizing yourself with the strategies that already work for other aviophobia sufferers. But nothing replaces professional and personalised care!
What about people who experience a milder form of it? The ones who get the jitters as opposed to having a full-blown phobia?
With the kind of news we get from time to time, I don’t know many people in this day and age who don’t get a little nervous or can sit through turbulence calmly! Keep breathing, keep your seatbelt on, keep reading, or watching something. Just keep doing whatever you are doing, and try not to think of the worst!
What do you recommend for people that feel anxious away from work – even though they are probably the ones who need the breather the most?
That’s a different form of anxiety, it’s performance anxiety. High functioning or performance anxiety is a real thing that needs to be worked on in your day-to-day life as well, and not just while travelling. Self-care is so important and I think a lot of us in the 21st century are neglecting that and when we do take measures or attempt it, it’s done in ways that we think it should be done. Things like travel, meditation and yoga, these are all great ways to take care of yourself, but unless you’re really connecting to it, you’re just going through the motions and you should find activities that better cater to your actual self-care needs.
So for people that just get stressed out while they’re away from work – is there anything they can do other than things like switching off their emails or mobiles for the time they’re away?
So hear me out. I think that might actually cause more anxiety and stress. In the 21st century, we are a performance-driven generation for sure. Hence the anxiety while travelling.
So you have this high performing individual at work and then they go on their travels and between these two scenarios there can be no connect? And somehow, on vacation, they should be able to unhook themselves completely? How do you do that?
How do put yourself in a completely different situation for a week and promise yourself you’re not going to think about work? Your brain is wired a certain way for all the work that you do throughout the year – there are real neurological connections involved.
You can’t just suddenly rewire it for one or two weeks. It’s perfectly understandable that you will feel anxious or stressed, so you have to manage it in a way that works for you. If keeping in touch or taking out fifteen minutes a day to look at emails helps to calm you, then maybe you need to do that. That’s fine. The whole point is for you to be able to enjoy the rest of your time.
But let’s not hold ourselves up to the standard we have to be completely disconnected on vacation or we’re not having a good time. We are not robots. It’s the same thing as saying I wake up at 6 am every morning and on holiday, I’m going to sleep in until noon. You won’t be able to do that, you have an internal clock, you can’t rewire that for a week.
So it’s about taking affirmative actions to take care of your presenting issue? An email or something that’s playing on your mind so you can enjoy the rest of your day?
Yeah, I think it’s a better way to do it than just trying to ignore it and have it play on your mind all day. Just deal with whatever and let it slide back into the background after. If it’s emerging and it’s urgent, just deal with it.
But I say this with a lot of caution. If you’re taking care of something that’s happening to you at that very moment, fine. However, if that fifteen-minute email turns into you working compulsively for the rest of the day, then that’s when it needs to be addressed, right? If you’re a workaholic and you’re going on vacation and carrying all that work and stress with you, that’s not healthy at all.
In what situation would travel be an antidote to anxiety?
If it’s experienced in a certain way. It’s about the emotions you associate with it. For some people, even something as wonderful as travel has become performance-driven. If you’re doing it because you have a list of countries and you’re simply checking off the boxes one destination after the other, are you travelling for the right reasons?
Travelling isn’t just about going somewhere for the heck of it. It connects us in so many ways to the world, for the fear of sounding too spiritual, it’s also about oneness. There are some people that explore the world without checking boxes, they simply do it because they have a need to feel oneness with the world, they’re fluid, adapt easily and genuinely enjoy travel because of that.
And finally, we always ask everyone this question, if you could take a tour anywhere in the world, where would you go and what would you do?
I love old architecture and I’m a big fan of Europe. I would love to go to Germany to see the Black Forest and visit all the castles. It’s one place at the top of my list right now for sure, if there’s one thing that makes me feel calm, it’s nature and old-world charm.
If you or someone you know is struggling with anxiety, you can find more information here.
