{Miami Beach, Florida}
With the summer season fast approaching, many have upcoming plans for vacation, which may trigger high levels of anxiety related to travel. Several of my patients request medications to alleviate anxiety to have on hand for their upcoming trips (mostly a small supply of anxiolytics such as benzodiazepines or sleep aids). Though I travel often, I also experience feeling anxious with each trip and have a routine that I religiously perform a few days before in effort to minimize my anxiety. My routine seems pretty standard to me, but I’ve traveled with several people who are either much more last-minute and disorganized or plan everything months in advance and arrive at the airport 2-3 hours early. Long story short — everyone’s different, so find out which techniques/strategies work best for you.
In effort to find the most common causes of anxiety related to travel, I performed a literature search (the number of studies are limited and all of them pretty old before the year 2000) and discovered a research article titled “Anxiety and Health Problems Related to Air Travel,” a study led by Dr. Iain McIntosh which identified frequency of perceived anxiety at certain stages of travel and use of strategies to reduce the anxiety. The results are summarized as follows:
- Stages of air travel with highest frequency of perceived anxiety:
- Take-off and landing
- Flight delays
- Customs and baggage reclaim
- Strong relationship between overall anxiety and frequency of reported health problems
- Women have slightly more health problems related to air travel than men
- Most frequently used anxiety-reduction methods:
- Alcohol use (one third of the surveyed participants)
- Distraction or relaxation techniques
- Doctor-prescribed or over-the-counter medication (5%)
Since I’m always on the lookout for resources to provide my patients, I found the following links useful:
- Articles on tips to cope with travel anxiety: “10 Tips For Nervous Flyers,” “How to Relieve Flying Anxiety,” “10 Foolproof Tricks to Beat Flight Anxiety.”
- Apps specifically for anxiety: 5 Apps To Help You Cope With Anxiety
- Travel Apps: App For That!, Best Travel Apps for 2015
- I personally use the following apps, which decrease my anxiety about traveling to new places: specific airline carrier apps (to check flight status, etc), Uber, Yelp, Instagram (several travel bloggers have accounts & may even respond to any questions you post to their account), Skype, Kayak, Hotel Tonight
And, in conclusion, I personally recommend the following techniques to make sure your anxiety doesn’t get the best of you:
- Don’t put too much pressure on yourself to have the PERFECT trip. I used to be guilty of this and would feel bummed if I forgot to do something on my “must-see/must-do” list. Putting too much pressure on yourself creates more stress rather than being present and fully enjoying each moment of your vacation.
- Take some time-out to re-energize yourself. Especially to the introverts out there — visiting the most touristy places means LOTS of people and crowds, which can be manageable, yet in small doses. If you find yourself feeling exhausted after being around hoards of people, then give yourself permission to take some time for a solo activity right after (ie, chill and watch tv or do some reading once you get back to your hotel, etc).
Thought of the Day: Does travel make you anxious? And if so, which strategies help relieve your anxiety/stress?