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!