Adventures in Anxiety: How to travel when you have an anxiety disorder? Part I
“I’m not afraid to fly anymore. If anything, travel is an antidote to my anxiety. Anxiety shrinks my world, but travel expands it. The heightened sensations of travel, the extremes in colors and tastes, can sometimes drown out the worries and obsessions.” Andrea Peterson in On Edge: A Journey Through Anxiety
For most of my childhood I was very attached to home and family. I was not a kid who enjoyed sleepovers with friends, I cried my way through outdoor camp, and moving out of the house to attend college was a huge shock. When I look back, this was just another way that my anxiety manifested itself. But as I reflect upon it more, I now recognize that I never built the resiliency that I needed to deal with changing circumstances. I spent many a night my freshman year of college shaking and crying in my bed, angry and upset that my hallmates were making so. much. damn. noise. when other people had to get up early for class! When my college roommate became very passive-aggressive during junior year I didn’t know how to talk to her about it, so, again, I cried in my bedroom and dealt with the uncomfortable silences.
I arrived at The Company post-college very curious about the world and eager to explore it. We did some travel when I was growing up (mainly road trips rather than plane trips) but suddenly I was a working profession who got to travel for work on the Company’s dime! I loved it!
Three or four years into The Company I started traveling more frequently. And then even more — and internationally too! I shudder to think some of the trips that I took when I look back on them now (Seattle → Sydney → Tokyo was particularly brutal). And it wasn’t just because I had to because I spent my free time traveling or planning trips, driven by my love to learn and experience new things.
Then — anxiety meltdown. And even thinking about being trapped on a plane sent me into an anxiety attack. And the unpredictability that travel almost certainly guarantees made me shut down entirely.
When Sergio drove me to the airport for my work trips I lost it. Here I was, a 30-something professional woman, sobbing in the car about getting on a flight that was taking me to work. It wasn’t a fear of flying, per se — I used to have that fear, but not anymore (I’ve traveled enough that now I can sleep through takeoff ). The chaos of the airport, the overwhelm of things that felt beyond my control, the fear that I would have an anxiety attack on the plane or get sick or die or humiliate myself or or or.
All the bad things. And I wasn’t handling it well.
I still get an aftershock of those feelings from time to time, even though I’ve had hundreds of flights in the last 4.5 years, and survived them all. Not only survived — the worst that happened was a minor panic attack. My husband sometimes reminds me of my stellar track record when I feel down about a trip, and it reminds me that yes, I can do this because I have done this.
Anxiety shrinks the world — at least, it has for me. I’ve written before about self-limiting behaviors. And I’ve talked with many other folks who have “given things up” to create a smaller world where they feel more confident (or at least less afraid). For some time, I had thought about giving up on travel.
But I’ve found the motivation to keep going.
For my work life, I know my opportunities would be limited if I wasn’t open to travel and, furthermore, I enjoy connecting with colleagues around the world. From a personal standpoint, my travel quests have given me the motivation and structure to keep going. This positive mindset helps me choose to see travel as an opportunity instead of something necessary or overwhelming.
See, the way that I master my anxiety is reframing and recognizing my agency. Whenever a trip comes up, I can think about how this contributes to goals, or even aligns with things I value (learning, understanding people different than me, etc.).
How in the world is that possible? It’s through both taking actions and reflecting on what I can do to build my own resilience. How do I stay the hero of my life instead of a victim of a disease? Next week I’ll talk about the travel tips and hacks that keep me in the right mindset, those behaviors that get me through even the roughest of travel days.
Cheers, Sarah
