A little while ago, one of the members of our Travelettes Facebook Group asked whether anyone had tips for dealing with the bottomless despair she was feeling upon her return from an amazing trip. In the preceding months she had been discovering new places, sharing rides with strangers, living in a big collective house with like-minded folks, and gotten swept off her feet by a new love who she had little hope to ever see again.
Indeed, parting with the excitement of life on the road can feel very much like getting your heart broken. Suddenly an abyss opens up under your feet: the discovering and the adventuring and the agitation which had become your world for these magical few weeks/months are gone, and all you’re left with is an uncomfortable stillness and a newfound distance with the life you are coming back to.
So, how do you mend a travel-broken heart? Numerous fellow group members advised the above Travelette to try to distract herself from sadness by planning her next trip. Sounds comforting, right?
Well I don’t think so. I started typing a 100+ word answer in the Facebook comments before deciding this matter called for proper argumentation — hence this blogpost. The thing is — when coming home from a great trip feels painful, I don’t think you should try to get away from that pain. Actually, I think you should embrace it and roll yourself in it and nest there for a little while. Here is why you should travel break your heart.
How travelling gets you high
Do you know why you enjoy travelling so much? Because it makes you feel high. It does! Everything is new and unfamiliar and a bit scary, so you’re incapable of relying on habits and automated responses. Which means your brain is in a constant state of urgency: sounds! smells! a new alphabet! what-the-hell-is-this? Your eyes are wide open and all your senses are mobilised and new connections are made in your mind.
This is why being on the road feels like living life to the fullest: because having all your captors in high alert brings a sense of excitement and drama and really strong feelings. And this sensory overload gets you high.
Feeling low
The thing is, your body can’t stay in that state forever. Even if you never had to stop travelling, you would eventually get used to it and grow numb. What, another tuk tuk ride? Another beach? Another 12-course curry? Sigh. With the novelty factor gone, travelling is just another form of routine. (This is why, if you’re going to travel long-term, you need to go SLOW and stop often. But that’s material for another blogpost.)
Like any good high, a great trip will be followed by a terrible low. It just will: it’s a law of nature. So if you’re painfully reading these lines through your puffed-up eyes because you haven’t stopped crying since you got off the plane, I’m very happy for you: feeling that low now means you must have had a hell of a good time while you were away.
The down phase
Now, what’s our instinctive reaction to feeling low? We try to get out of it. Feeling low sucks. Nobody wants to feel low. Except if there’s one thing I learnt out of doing meditation, it is this: you can’t leave a place you’ve never been. i.e. hurtful feelings can’t go away if you refuse to go through them. You can try to distract yourself from them, but in the back of your mind you’ll know that they’re there, lurking in the dark. Fun fact: if you actually focus on those feelings, give them space, hug them and pet them, they end up looking a lot less intimidating. Negative feelings really just want to be loved. Try it.
But this is not a blogpost about oriental philosophy, so I’ll get to my main point: if you want to learn something out of your trip, if you want to grow from experiencing the world, if you want to actually travel and not just go on holidays – then you need (let me repeat that: need) the down phase that comes after a trip. The down phase is actually just as important as the trip itself. Possibly more.
Digesting experiences
While you’re living your trip, you stock up on new experiences and are too busy to make anything out of them. For these experiences to positively alter you, you need to digest them. As in – find the nutrients within all the raw material and break them into assimilable pieces, so you can let them nourish you.
This is a slow process, which requires quiet and stillness. It requires you to reflect on what has happened. Maybe consciously — writing about them, singing about them, printing out a zine to send to the friends you miss —, maybe just nursing them like you would with a bad hangover. But if you don’t let the feelings of sadness get to you, if you try to dodge them by hurrying into booking your next holiday, then sure — you will immediately feel more comfortable. But you’ll just be buying holidays and consuming them. Enjoying immediate satisfaction, then discarding the experience when you’re done with it. What a shame! It’s so beautiful to let an experience move you.
Be ready
So, dear heartbroken Travelette, I have no immediate solution to relieve you of your pain. All I can say to you is: as excruciating as it feels, if you accept it and go through it instead of around, it will eventually go away. Not just because time has passed or because you’ve mindlessly thrown yourself into another trip, but because you have processed what you had to process out of this adventure. Then, and only then, will you be ready – ready to let the next one break your heart all over again.
All photos by Marie Colinet, taken in Sri Lanka.
Thank you Sara for inspiring this post.
Marie Colinet was part of the Travelettes team from 2013 to 2015. Originally from Toulouse, France, two years lived in Australia left her speaking English with an awkward Fraussie accent. In September 2015, Marie is starting the epic 6-month-or-who-knows-how-long road-trip along the Panamerican Highway that she’s been dreaming of since her teenage years — all the way from the U.S. to the very tip of South-America. You can follow her on Instagram @mariecolinet!
I do agree with you actually and if you travel frequently you also loose that build-up. There's so much research to show that the build to up to a holiday/travel/the baby being born/a pay raise makes us equally if not more happy!
... And lest we forget, what a champagne problem - I'm sad from exercising my freedom to see such amazing things and meet such inspiring people. What a blessing :)
Beanie
www.blogofbeanie.co.uk
I found this post very enlightening. I'm about to go on a 17 day trip to Europe and I know when I get back I will be going through post-trip depression. You offered a different, insightful perspective to just let the pain soak in because that's part of the process of soaking in all your experiences. Good read!
Great post! I've written about this too, having done a few long term trips and they resulting post travel depression that has gone with them.
I definitely agree that you need the down time to digest, it makes the experiences all the more wonderful. I know when I've been on the road for 6 months or so, I tend to feel complacent and less excited by things. A pause is needed to revive the wonder! Post trip is a perfect way to do this.
The second/third time around the heartbreak is no less, but at least you know what to expect and you can deal with it better!
I love the post-trip blues. I take about 2 weeks to write out trip recaps, sort through photos, order prints of the best ones, share them on Facebook, and talk with anyone and everyone who has ever been to the same place. Then one day, the foreign candy supply runs out, you get more and more annoyed by the wrong currency in your wallet, and your trip photos are more applicable for #TBT. Then it is time to start planning the next one!
I love that you wrote about this because it is such a real issue when you return from a good trip!
Thanks so much for writing and posting this! You gave me a reason to force myself out of bed this morning--and also confirmed that I am not crazy for getting post-holiday depression :)
THANK YOU for this post ! I'm currently experiencing this low phase as I've been back from a 5 months long trip around Asia and Oceania for a month now. I sometimes feel so disconnected with my family and totally unable to explain that feeling to anyone, even to my boyfriend who was travelling with me. He took back his job right after our return so I guess it's easier for him than for me, as I'm looking for a new job. This article made me feel a little better !
I loved your thoughts in this post and how you wrote about travel breaking your heart. Coming off from a great adventure is like breaking up with someone. It stings, but it's important to give yourself time to heal and reflect on your experiences. As you mentioned, living and staying where you traveled will eventually wear it's novelty. If you want to move somewhere, you should stay and visit several times before you make a decision.
Oh man! This is so damn true... and happens every time with with me. What an honor to feel such raw and pure emotions, even if they do hurt. I find blogging/writing help so much with capturing those moments from travel, and allows me to share with others in a succinct manner. I also find that drinking a bottle of wine with friends and swapping travel stories works well, too!
Cheers,
Thank you, thank you, thank you!! I have been home from Southeast Asia for 4 months and I'm still feeling the low. This post helped motivate me to embrace it and be moved by my amazing experiences. Love and light to you fellow travelette!
I always get post-travel depression--it is very real! I have trouble with too much down time, and not traveling feels like nothing but down time (even if I'm staying busy). I am just starting to come out of my most recent post-trip blues. I have to shake myself back into reality sometimes and remember to appreciate every aspect of life, whether I'm traveling or not. But I agree wholeheartedly that one should take the time to reflect on their travels before rushing into another trip, otherwise you just become exhausted.
The post I needed right now, still not got other the blues of coming back after 8 months in South America
I would had a couple of additional tips:
get back to work as quickly as you can but not in your old job! I started a new job almost right away after the trip. Difficult to get back to the routine of an office but it is nice to get busy. I could not have go back to my old job upon my return now that I feel I changed. Just getting into a new environment, new colleagues and a new job makes the routine a bit more exciting. And you have so much to do and think when you start a new job that it doesn't leave too much time for nostalgic thoughts...
Though, I found out that weekends were actually harder and it's usually when I feel a bit depressed...
But I tell myself, ok 2 more months and you will be adjusted again!
Also, plan your next trip... Somewhere really lose to home. How about a weekend just a couple of hours away? A good way to also see the beauty of the world just lying in front of your door!
This is an interesting perspective and as I generally suffer from post-trip-blues after every trip, it's something I'm going to try to keep in mind next time I'm feeling woe some!
theadventuresofkatiee.blogspot.co.nz
So true. I am a traveling addict, for sure. But since I travel so much, unfortunately I've lost a bit of the high I experienced when traveling for the first time. Still exciting though :)
www.adventurousappetite.com
This is exactly what I needed to read today. Sat in the office after a whirlwind trip to Borneo and a few places in Indonesia, thinking there has to be more to life than this. I do have to admit that the initial sense of wonder I felt when I did my first 'big trip' has numbed though!
Thank you for the perspective ... I'm currently heartbroken from my last trip to Italy almost a year ago and deperately in need of travel again. I cope by trawling through my thousands of photographs from each trip, uploading and sharing, reviewing, editing and designing coffee table books for myself. Everytime I look at these photographs of incredible places, experiences and people, I relive those magical moments.
Oops, got my own web address wrong ... see updated
Getting over an amazing trip always takes time. You are so right, you have to digest what happened to you before you can move on. It's tough, but it'll just inspire you to get out again sooner :)
Julia
ExploresMore.com
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