How to Manage Anxiety When You’re Traveling
Going on a trip can exacerbate your symptoms, but these strategies can help
When Mechi Annaís Estévez Cruz gets on a plane to leave her home in Cabarete, a small town in the Dominican Republic where she runs a Spanish-language school, she immediately begins “catastrophizing.” Reflexively, she imagines all the different things that could go wrong. Maybe a tire will blow out on her way to the airport. Maybe a bird will fly into the aircraft’s engine and bring the plane down.
Estévez Cruz, who was in New York on 9/11 and has post-traumatic stress disorder and generalized anxiety, knows the actual chance of being in a plane crash is low. Still, she says, that doesn’t stop these worst-case scenarios from flooding her brain. She can barely sleep for an entire week before she even gets on a plane, she says.
According to the National Institute of Mental Health, an estimated 31% of adults in the United States will experience an anxiety disorder at some point in their lives. For many of them, going away can make that anxiety worse, a phenomenon that’s different and often more severe than simply being a nervous traveler. The novelty of travel — the ability to see new things, try new foods, and shake up tired old routines — is one of its biggest draws, but leaving our familiar…
