Sunday 27 January 2019

My Pre Travel Anxiety and Me!


Hi, I am Ron and I have Pre Travel Anxiety. Right now, I am in the middle of it with a 2-day business trip coming up next week. It is really no big deal, but to me, it feels like there’s a big black wall coming up, blocking all views of everything else. And I am headed right into it.
As far as I can tell, I have always felt a certain tension and a bit of anxiety about upcoming travel, also as a child. I also think that my father had to deal with this, and that may have been a bit contagious. Let me tell you briefly what happens to me.

Usually, this things starts about one month before the actual travel date. I’m beginning to realize that something is afoot, but, as I then tell myself, it is still safely far away in time. No need to worry yet, but the feeling is there. 

As the date approaches, I start a mental count down: so many days of work, so many weekends, so many workouts and so on, and my tension increases as these numbers increase. It means that the last few days before the trip are difficult as there is nothing anymore to put between me and that wall.   

Then there is the mental preparation, where I start playing all kinds of ‘disaster scenarios’ in my head, usually as “what can I do if so and so happens?”. To give an example, this morning I was checking if there are hotels near the airport where I am flying into, in case my return flight gets cancelled: do I travel back into town or can I just walk over for a place to stay? That kind of thing (and yes, that has happened to me in the past!).

There is also a heightened awareness of everything and anything that has the potential of becoming a ‘disaster’ with me being absent. A strange noise in the car, a different behaviour of our pets, a strange feeling in my left foot, things that you normally don’t think about but that may break during my trip: my glasses, my shoes and what am I going to do if that happens?

In the days before the trip these all increase in intensity until my mind is fully occupied with it. If I let that happened, that is, and I usually donlt, seeking all kinds of distractions: workouts, walks, games, movies, going out. This helps a lot, but there are times when this is getting overwhelming which leads to full-blown anxiety attacks.  The best thing I can do is ‘ride that wave’ when it comes. It usually lasts a few minutes before petering out, but it is annoying, to say the least. There’s  one bit of comfort in all this: when I am finally on my way, this all disappears and I actually enjoy the trip and wonder what all the fuzz was all about. Until the next one….

If you google “pre travel anxiety’ , one of the first things you find out is that this is a lot more common than you might think. Indeed, when talking to people,  many will admit they have a usually milder version of this. But genuine pretravel anxiety is also quite common and you will find a lot of tips on how to deal with it: find relaxation and distractions, prepare your trip well, and maybe most important of all: don’t fight it. Most writers also agree that it will never go away completely, but it can be brought back to manageable levels.

I am currently  I the position where I –reluctantly, I admit- have to accept that I have this condition and that it will not go away, no matter what I try. So far, I have been fighting it, both consciously and subconsciously, I have been seeing it as a sign of weakness (though it never stopped me from actually traveling!), I have been denying its existence, until that was no longer tenable and I have been exploring various traumas in my past as possible causes of this. Some of that helped a bit, buit now it is time to accept that which I cannot change and that is that I have this condition called Pre Travel Anxiety.  
It means that for my next trip, I need to be prepared to face this as soon as it manifests itself instead of going into denial until I can sustain that no longer. I also need to learn how to work with it, instead of against it, and maybe, who knows , I can turn it into an asset instead of an impediment. After all, nobody goes on a trip as prepared for anything as I am!     

Sunday 13 January 2019

One week after leaving Facebook: happy or sad?

So, one week has passed since I deleted my Facebook account. How am I doing, “cut off from the rest of the world” as FB wants me to believe?
Surprisingly well, I must admit! I was expecting some severe withdrawal symptoms, like sitting in front of the Facebook login screen , with my fingers itching to go back in, but nothing of the kind has happened…so far. Granted, I miss quite a few things, but on average it has been easy to stay away. I also feel much more relaxed about what’s happening around me in the world at large, as I am no longer exposed to all the outrage that often runs rampant on social media. So, in short this has been a happy week!

Here’s a few tips I found very helpful last week:
1)    Prepare your leave, just don’t delete your account in an emotional state or on a whim. Make sure you have a download of all your stuff somewhere on your computer or backup system. It is also a good idea to scroll through that once before leaving, so that you see that all your FB efforts are still available to you.

2)    I might be helpful to a include a  mild ‘aversion therapy’ into your preparation to leave. I do not advocate physically punishing yourself each time you visit Facebook, but reinforcing the belief that this is no longer in your interest will make it easier for you to stay away. While scrolling through your timeline, ask yourself questions like: Am I really interested in what this person has to say? Is what he.she/they share really something that I enjoy seeing? Are these ‘friends’ really that important to me to stay in touch with in this way? Is this group page a source of pleasure or toxicity? Since you’re already made up your mind (somewhat) to leave it all behind, you’ll be surprised how often you will answer such questions in the negative.

3)    Find something else to do –maybe temporarily- for those times to get the urge to go online for social media use. I have restarted learning Welsh on Duolingo in those moments, which in my case happen on a daily basis, so I can really make some progress there! There are all kinds of useful and fun things to do and learn online, other than ‘zombieing’ on social media!

4)    Beware of peer pressure! You know, people who are trying to convince you to stay or come back, because they ‘ will miss you so much’. If that is true, try to find another way to stay in touch. In my case, I opened a WhatsApp group as a substitute for the Messenger function of Facebook. Don’t be surprised, however, if all those who ‘are going to miss you’ will not take the effort to join such a group (or read this blog). That is also the nature of social media contacts: pleasant but ephemeral.

5)    Tell as many people as you can that you quit Facebook and why. This will make it more difficult for you to ‘fall back’ as that might be seen as a sign of weakness, also by yourself. You will find out that many people around you never had Facebook and they are still happily living their lives.

I don’t know if I ever posted my tips to quit smoking, but those are similar and to me quitting smoking and quitting social media are very much alike: getting rid of an addictive behaviour. Next report on this will be in a month, after my account has been deleted permanently. But don’t worry, I’ll write about other things in the meantime!      

Saturday 5 January 2019

Why I have left Facebook


I just left Facebook. Downloaded all the stuff I put on there over the years. Wrote a statement to inform my friends. And then I pressed the Delete Account button…And now I have thirty days to control myself not to reopen my account.

As I said before, I have many reasons to quit Facebook. Simply put: from a pleasure it has become a burden in various ways. Lets start with the easiest one: the time.


My Facebook usage has been time consuming, to say the least. And that was non-productive time as well. I spent many many hours just scrolling mindlessly to see if something had happened that I could Like, could Respond to or could read.  It is as mind numbing as just sitting in front of a TV set and let program after program pass you by. On top of that, it is addictive. And I don’t care to admit it: I have been addicted to Facebook. It explains why I am suffering through some withdrawal symptoms. That alone should be reason enough to leave. I also have found some better uses for my time than this. But for that I need FB to be gone.

What other things did I do with Facebook? 
Well, there was the social media aspect: stay in touch with family, friends, acquaintances or follow some celebrities. All very nice and great… if it works. 
And I gradually became aware that it actually does not work.
 “Social” implies ‘interaction” and I started noticing that with the exception of preciously few people, interactions were very few and  far between. On holidays or birthdays, you’re showered with well wishes, which is very nice, but very often I posted or shared something with little or no reaction from my 200+ ‘friends’.  When that happens too often you start wondering why you are actually bothering. And that eventually added up to the decision to leave.

There is another aspect of the social media  that I need to address here and that is what I call the “Too Much Information” issue. That happens when people post or share things like extreme right wing views, racist, homophobic, misogynistic (or misandrist), islamophobic or antisemitic posts, commentaries or “jokes”. Things that probably would not have popped up in an everyday conversation or during real life occasions, but that have a serious impact on your view of such a person. Unfortunately, that has happened on quite a few occasions and it is also a reason for me to quit, cause I don’t want social media to further impede the normal social interactions I have with friends and family.

The word “racism” has fallen and that leads me to another reason: growing “toxicity”.
There is a lot of ugly stuff going around in our world and  much of that enters our social media. In fact, a lot of that has to do with the functioning of our media  and our social media themselves. Part of that I willfully sought out myself: the various antiracism platforms, for instance but many others simply enter my timeline from others sharing them or  lately, due to one of Facebook’s algorithms that deems it of interest to me. At some point I had enough of all this poison flowing my way as it started to affect my sense of well being. Also, time to leave.

What really consolidated my decision to leave, however,  happened when I inspected the Archive file I had downloaded  some time ago and noticed how many parties are in possession of my information. It is really mind boggling to realize that-without me ever realizing this- there are now hundreds of companies that know who I am and what my preferences are. And with some very few exceptions, I know nothing about them. That’s quite scary, folks.

So, here you have a few reasons why I wanted-no, needed!- to leave Facebook. It has not been an easy decision. But what also helps is the realization that for the largest part of my life, there was nothing like FB or social media. And I think I was happier then….