How Travel Helped Me Deal With Stress & Anger

My aim for this blog is to to inspire travel in it’s readers, not because I think everyone should see the same sights or picture the same views, but because I believe travel is a different experience for each person that dedicates themselves to it, and that it can create positive changes in areas of your life that you may struggle with. A particular struggle of mine is stress and anger.

What is Stress?

Stress is a build up of emotional pressure that triggers a fight or flight response in your body through the release of adrenaline and cortisol. Some stress is fine, and actually acts as a motivator in daily life, but prolonged stress can affect you emotionally and physically in a negative way. The release of adrenaline and cortisol acts to increase our alertness, get your muscles prepared for action, and increase your heart rate, in order to aid the fight or flight response. My issue is that stress mentally prepares me to fight, which is why I struggle with anger and not anxiety.

The Effects of Stress

I wholly disapprove with the way in which symptoms published on the internet can inadvertently lead to worries about your mental health that you may not have considered before. The following list is by no means exhaustive or intended as a diagnosis, but is a list of the ways in which stress affects me personally and I’m posting it because understanding how stress affects you can help when figuring out ways to deal with it.

• headaches
• muscle tiredness
• indecisiveness
• being irritable and hyper-sensitive
• trouble sleeping
• turning to coping methods such as drinking or smoking

Identifying the Triggers

As with anything that affects you mentally, figuring out what triggers a stressful or angry reaction in my life has always helped calm me or at least understand why I’m feel so frustrated. By identifying triggers of stress, you have the option to bring them to the front of your mind when you’re having a stressful reaction, and combining this with the knowledge that my body is releasing chemicals to deal with a situation and therefore heightening my feelings, helps me cool off.

Once you identify your stress triggers, you can then use them to identify suitable actions to take to help you get through them, or even reduce them. The main trigger for me is lack of control. As a teenager, stress would manifest at stupid situations; deciding what to wear to college, or forgetting a piece of homework. At school, I set extremely high standards on my education, something I naturally excelled at anyway, which is why I assume my lack of control in other areas such as fashion frustrated me so much. When situations occurred in which I felt overwhelmed by decision making or lack of control, I would physically tense up and over time this is how the anger would build up. With little release, except for tightening up my muscles and letting myself tremble just to feel some physical exertion, any frustration would build up and form anger.

Another trigger of mine is when I feel someone is talking about my family or friends in a negative way. Especially family. Again I think it has to do with control, and possibly protectiveness.  When someone does or says something to hurt them, I often feel extremely angry, but I rarely cause angry confrontations and it’s not in my nature to fight, so the stress builds as I don’t have a way to match up my anger with a physical outlet.

How Travel Helped Me

Travelling had negative and positive effects for my stress. The negative mostly came down to feeling even less control when a family member was in a difficult situation and I didn’t have a way to help them. But the positive was that it made me consider what I would actually do with my anger if I had been in the same country; and the answer was the same as always, very little. Travel confirmed a method which I had always tried to use when stressed, and that was that supporting the person in the situation is a lot better than feeling anger towards the other person.

Travel also gave me the right balance of control that I needed to keep my stress level down, whilst still feeding that little bit of need I had for control. I had control over where I was going, what I was doing, who I would talk to, when I would do what. At the same time, I could see that, unlike at home where a high-powered career and a big income seemed the only route to success, travel in itself was success for me. Controlling my successful future became less about getting a decent desk job and a high-rent flat, and more about just being on the road, or experiencing life in a different country. Travel became my new life to control, and I was already travelling, so what was there to stress about?

The highlight of travelling for me has always been meeting other people and learning about new cultures and new ways of life. It is cliche to try and remind yourself when stressed that your life is not that bad compared to the lives of others, but it is a cliche with a lot of truth. Don’t get me wrong, trying to think “my life could be worse” whilst I’m reacting in anger to something that stresses me never helps, especially when it comes from others trying to calm me down. If anything it frustrates me more. But by actually experiencing different cultures you slowly build up a mental library of the way other live with less, or in more trying situations, and I think this has create a small buffer in my mind that I don’t consciously consider, but that reminds me that there is always a solution, or a way through, even if you can’t see it at the time.

Since returning to the UK, and effectively halting my travels, the stress has creeped back a little, so by writing this post I wanted to help you guys and remind myself that there are ways that can help reduce stress. Whilst returning to travel isn’t in my reach right at this very moment, I am working hard to realise the dream again, and in the meantime I have a few other coping methods.

• swimming – I am lucky enough to live by the sea and it is without a doubt the number one coping method that helps me relax. Any physical activity will help reduce stress and definitely helps me cope with anger, and I also promote working out or going for long walks
• working towards what I love – I had enjoyed the blossoming Psychology career I had tried to built up at University, but I didn’t love it. I do love travel, and whilst being home I have made every decision in a way that will eventually get me back on the road again. Doing what I love definitely helps me get through boring days at work, and it has helped make decision making less stressful
• time management – trying to work smarter, instead of harder, leaves you with more time to pursue hobbies and activities you enjoy

Finally, I just wanted to acknowledge that understanding stress and anger is the first step to reducing it, but unless you actively make changes in your life you will end up stuck in a rut feeling helpless. This has happened to me many times, most recently last night. When it does happen, I make active decisions to make changes, and see that I follow them through. I hope that this reaches a few of you who feel trapped in stress or anger. Travel really did help me find other ways to deal with stress, and if you can, get on the road and push your boundaries.

 Lots of love,