Travelling with anxiety – the extra waight in my baggage

A little disclaimer: this is not a post with quick and easy tips to help you deal with anxiety, but I hope you will find a different outlook on this condition by the end of the post.

And yes, I said "condition" because in my case -and for many people I know- anxiety is not just an occasional problem, it's something that occurs regularly in my day-to-day life, wether I am flying to another country or just being late to an appointment.

This not only causes me a lot of suffering but also stops me from doing things I would love to do, like a trip, or that I really should do like attending an exam at university or making a work phonecall.

Fortunately, not all the areas of my life are affected by this, and through the years I learned how to cope or even how to completely avoid anxious feelings in certain circumstances, like social or romantic interactions, dance classes or public speaking, all things that now I really enjoy.

But in other areas... well, it has made me put on hold so many incredible opportunities that it hurts to even think about it. I guess a lot of you can relate.

But let's focus on travelling.

In the last five or six years I have purchased many airplane tickets to a couple of destinations I desperately wanted to see. For example, I bought 3 flights to Barcelona in 12 months, how many of them do you think I actually took?

The answer is "none".

Another time I had even booked the hotel, when I was supposed to go to Amsterdam with a couple of friends. Needless to say; I never made it to the airport.

And each time I convinced myself that I had a genuine reason for not going or that it wasn't my fault.

It was terrorism alerts, it was the weather, it was my health or the fact that I didn't want to spend extra money that month, you name it.

I have a whole arsenal of alibis and excuses for every occasion.

And this is not just a fear of airplanes and flights but even going to the airport and following all of the steps you need to get onto the plane, makes me incredibly uncomfortable.

But there's a light in the darkness: in fact there is one aspect of travelling that not only does not cause me anxiety but instead excites me: trains. During the last 10 years I have taken hundreds of train rides both inside and outside Italian borders. Places like Switzerland, Austria or Slovenia are easy to reach in a few hours from Pisa - where I live - so until I could satisfy my wanderlust by sitting by the window and watching the world go by in a safe, steady and linear motion, I told myself that in reality, I had no problems.

Sure, but maybe the fact that the night before a trip,however short, I never sleep, as well as the fact that I always arrive at the station too early, sometimes hours before my departure could have been a wake-up call - no pun intended.

Not to mention that for many years I have dreamt of disastrous train rides every single night. My nightmares included me being too late, train crashes, ending up on the wrong train, explosions, supernatural events, basically my brain was able to find new ways to make my imaginary trip go wrong in more than a thousand ways.

Should I see this as the sign of a vivid imagination?

But the good thing is that no matter how disastrous my nightmare trip was, the next morning I would wake up six hours too early, take the bag that I had packed 10 days earlier, and go get my train. 

So, why can't I do it with all the other things that scare me?

Well, I think I cracked the code.

The thing is... you must want to get to the other end of your journey so bad that the journey itself doesn't matter anymore.

Yes, it's that simple.

Of course, it's not a therapy, it doesn't cure your anxiety nor it's 100% effective but that's the only thing that helps.

In every aspect of my life, my anxiety kicks in when I don't see a clear purpose in what I'm doing.

That's when all the demons come out and I doubt everything.

Is it worth it?

Do I really want to subject myself to this stress just to get there?

If the answer is „no“ I may have to adjust my trajectory.

But if the answer is „yes“, then things start going my way.

This happened to me this summer when, after years of panic attacks I took two flights in one day – just to give myself a shock treatment- and went to Austria for almost a month.

I stayed at two hotels and then got my own studio apartment, met amazing people, attended German classes, walked and photographed and danced and fell in love with Vienna.

Now I know it is worth it.

The pleasure to experience and to learn is so much greater than my fear, that I decided to focus on that instead. And I know it's not going to be easy, but it will get easier.

To be fair, when I was in Vienna I had a panic attack in an underground station at rush hour. I felt like the world was spinning too fast and I could hardly stand, I had to sit on the ground and breathe deeply for 10 minutes before I could take the train and go home.

But when I got home, I was proud of the way I handled it.

You see, this could have happened anywhere, it has happened before in my own house, in my own bedroom for no reason at all. 

That's when I realised that not even my own gilded cage will keep me safe and protected.

Then why not fly?