Need tips for travelling anxiety & coping in a different place

@MDT @Owlunar @outlander

thanks guys, teddy & me made it to Darwin! Teddy made sure not to make any noises 😂 bit overwhelmed but hopefully all will be better tomorrow. Now I’ll have to ge through the social anxiety and not being home :face_with_rolling_eyes: but I’ve made some plans so I can take breaks.

That's great @Former-Member

The social stuff can be rough too but you can take breaks - you are right - and the time will pass quickly and you will be going home again and this will be an experience you can enjoy as a memory

I'm so glad you made it there - and Teddy behaved himself -

Well done

Dec

@MDT

Ill be happy when I’m back home and that sounds really horrible 😕 and ungrateful 😕

Hi @Former-Member ,

Hope you don't mind me posting as we haven't met before. It's just that I know the feeling of being away from everything that is familiar. Recently I was being driven home from hospital by a social worker to pick up some stuff for my hospital stay. I am totally unfamiliar with the road and am used to catching the train everywhere. It was completely surreal being in the car with her and we were only like 10 minutes away from my house! I had no bearings. I had nothing I could rely on to keep me sane. My social worker is talking to me and I'm like "wow, that's amazing... Wow, wow (not being able to relate to anything she's saying). Then we get home to my place and we're in there for like 5 minutes and EVERYTHING came into focus. I was strong, in command of my thoughts, I knew what I needed to do. I had everything back. It was like stepping back into my thought life when I got back into my room. Such a good feeling. But I know how you feel. I went to the airport one day intending to catch a domestic flight. I had to shut down to the world because I couldn't cope with any of it. I think I went and slept in a corner with some travellers for a few hours instead of try and get where I wanted to go. Without anything familiar around you, you can lose your mind really easily but I imagine that if you had a lot of your own stuff on you, like stuff your really familiar with, you can focus on that and sit with it and stay sane. They teach in child psychology that you can get kids to sleep in beds that are unfamiliar to them if they have like their favorites blanket or something they can base their security on. Pet psychology is the same.

Hi @MDT

thanks for your support mate. I don’t feel as alone being able to stay in touch here. My anxiety has been through the roof today, but I’ve tried deep breathing (and meds) to stay calm. Lost Teddy last night, but thankfully found him in the morning!

Hi @Late

nice to meet you 😊

It’s awful when we’re feeling so lost outside our familiar settings. I’m sorry you were so upset during your hospital stay and that you didn’t make your flight. I’ve had a few times when I couldn’t go through with travel. When I was still working I had to travel a lot and towards the end I couldn’t cope being away and needed to talk to helplines to help me get back home. It was terrrible and I’m only starting to build up confidence to get away from home now. But it’s tough. Having familiar things with me is what I do pretty much every time I leave the house. I have little Teddy’s for my handbag and have a ‘soothing bag’ with me. I don’t know how I would cope without it.

Stay in touch, it’s lovely to have you on the forum 😊

Hi @Former-Member ,

Sounds like you had a great job being able to travel everywhere for a living but totally understandable how amazingly difficult for someone with MI to be in such a role. It's funny how much I feel I can do things like that until I am actually doing it and facing the stress of it all. I could not do it when I remember how many times I've stepped up to do something and been totalled by the situation I put myself in.

Music would really work for me as a familiar thing. Just throw on my head phones and drown everything out until I feel better. I find the clothes I'm wearing helpful as well. I don't know how you would handle coping with the crowds if you were in a hurry though. I would love to understand more about mental illness and coping mechanisms or methods of coping that would allow a sufferer to properly manage flying around the country. Familiar things are great but I guess you would need people to connect to on arrival that you could ground yourself with. That's so opposite to what a sufferer would naturally do though having a tendency to avoid conversation. I think that an online version of connecting to people via text message would be something. I'm not sure if it would work but I know I find dealing with people via text is a whole lot easier than in person. I know that if it were

not for technology and we were all face to face that I would have little or nothing to say. But yeah, I could definitely imagine someone sitting in departures at Sydney airport, hovering over their phone and organising all their social connections at say Melbourne before the leave and then connecting to everybody when they get there.