Is Travel a Band-Aid for difficult feelings?
Hello friends! Welcome back! I’m glad you’re here with me today. Right now, I’m writing to you from a lovely new spot for me, but definitely not new for locals to Los Angeles, Lake Arrowhead! I moved to Los Angeles 5 years ago and this is my first time out to this lovely summer destination. A friend of mine from work has a cabin and I figured I would invest my hard earned money to helping a friend’s vrbo and get a vacation too. It was the best decision! I’ve just woken up from a nap next to my dog and now I’m sitting out on a wonderfully shaded deck, listening to some very chatty birds and sipping on a hot mug of summer peach tea with aforementioned dog snuggled up to my side. It’s idyllic and a slice of heaven and I wanted to take a moment and share this beautiful and rare peaceful moment. There will be a future post about this location but I wanted to give you a taste of the delight I feel here.
A glimpse into the moment.
So, I am a part of some travel groups online, and over the years I have noticed quite a few posts where the original poster mentions a challenging life event like a break-up or divorce right before a big trip with questions about where to go to deal with it “Eat, Pray, Love” style. It got me wondering, is travel being used as a band-aid by so many people as a distraction from their feelings? I read many stories in the comments with people telling their stories about how they “found themselves” on the road or how they take a big trip whenever they feel depressed. As a person who avoided dealing with feelings for a long time before going through therapy, I found it pretty concerning. I saw a cycle repeating itself in all of the comments and so much troubling advice for the original poster.
I can see the appeal of it all though. It’s constantly romanticized in rom-coms and I even used to do it myself. I traveled all the time for work and because I was always away and always interacting with new people everywhere, I never had to deal with the issues I faced in my own relationships and was always “too busy” to deal with the fact that I felt completely disconnected and that if I suddenly disappeared that no one would care. Instead, I distracted myself with beautiful sights like the Sistine Chapel and Trevi Fountain and merely hoped that I would one day be able to see it again with my partner. It’s easy to distract and distract and distract when there is so much amazingness out there to see.
The danger of constantly distracting is that it eventually starts to lose potency. Eventually, you get tired of seeing sights by yourself and you start to wish you had someone to share the memories with. Because when you get home and tell people about your travels, it becomes clearer that your audience isn’t interested in your stories and is only listening politely. The fear that no one would care if you vanished becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. You’re always away on your own and the person who always listens to your stories grows apart from you and bonds with the people who are around them more consistently. This is the danger of that kind of travel-distraction cycle.
The advice I would love to give every person who posts about their break-up feelings and their depression travel would be this: Go to therapy. It’s not fun, and it’s not glamorous in the way that a cool travel story is. But it helps more in the long run so that you can better enjoy your future travels. Therapy is hard work and even after you’ve finished with therapy meetings you might still be working on yourself for long after, but you’ll be able to enjoy your life and your adventures more deeply when you don’t have that depression monster on your shoulder making you feel hollow inside.
Overall you don’t want to rob yourself of the true enjoyment of expanding your world and viewpoint by using travel as a depression distraction. Everyone should enjoy traveling in their own way but make sure you’re spending your hard-earned money in a way that brings deep joy, love, and satisfaction to your travels. You deserve to experience the best that travel has to offer and being present and whole during those experiences will only enrich you more. You deserve love and life and abundance. Give yourself the option of having that by doing the hard stuff that you know will make you better. You can do it.
Resources:
From the National Institute of Mental Health:
The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline's 24 hour toll-free crisis hotline, 1.800.273.TALK (1.800.273.8255) can put you into contact with your local crisis center that can tell you where to seek immediate help in your area.
Those who are uncomfortable with speaking on the phone can text "MHA" to 741-741 to speak with a trained crisis counselor at Crisis Text Line.
More resources available at:
https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/find-help
Mental Health America:
https://www.mhanational.org/finding-therapy
If therapy is unafforadble, you may still be able to get therapy through your state’s government assistance or health programs. Please check your state website to see what they have available to you
