When a woman decides to go on a travel journey abroad and she invests 100% of her attention, the country, the culture, the people, this can be overwhelming! I truly feel you, babe! Especially, when you are heading over to a completely new and different country, travel stress arises easily and makes your anxiety freaking out sometimes. The so-called culture shock gives those overwhelming negative emotions a name. How you feel is always ok, remember that, and how your mind and body responds to these feelings, this is up to you and can get trained!
Honestly, for many travels I’ve been on, the overwhelming impressions of a new culture caused fear and stress. It often made me feel weak and unable to take a reasonable action because my mind seemed to process all the new information first. In the recent years of traveling the globe solo I became more and more relaxed regarding the handling of new and overwhelming situations. In this blog post, I will share my preferred methods that have helped me to get calmer and turn myself from a stressed scared tourist into a calmer world traveller who embraces new experiences to the fullest.
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Story Contents
Establish travel routines
Besides exploring new countries and cultures, traveling comes with the ultimate cut of your daily routines. I often feel totally disconnected to the day before traveling, even to my life prior to a travel trip. It’s like someone literally cut the umbilical cord between me and my daily life. Where do such feelings arise from? This comes often along with the mind that has to handle and process all the new impressions right away, so that processing previous aspects or thoughts have no longer priority. So beautiful this might sound as a true escape from daily life while traveling, humans need their routines to feel safe and secure!
In this sense, you could establish your own routines while traveling and allow yourself to take some me time for your own self, some time to relax, and some time to calm your mind. Maybe you have a fitness routine that you could follow or a routine after getting up or before bed. You could also set up new routines only for your travels. For instance, I love both breakfast and dinner times while traveling. I usually start my travel days with a long relaxing breakfast in the morning that allows me to plan the day, arrange a few things, and offers a healthy start into the day. Dinners are perfect to recap the day, think about exceptional experiences, while enjoying yummy food.
Interested in working out while traveling? Here are my tips and tricks to engage in your fitness routine even abroad!
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Engage in self-reflection
Dealing with your emotions due to a culture shock is a great first step to accept them, but not to engage with them once they appear. Besides the travel routines, what helps me, is to engage stronger in self-reflection. Thinking and recapturing the situations when my emotions drove me insane caused by the culture shock. Digging deeper into such situations let you allow to find your emotion triggers, girl. Maybe something went wrong during your travels, the emotion of helplessness might become even more prominent. Or imagine you step out of the airport and find yourself on a crowded street in India, with so many people and vehicles on the road, and a cow in between. This can definitely be overwhelming for a first-time visitor from the Western countries. And it’s absolutely ok!
Fear or anxiety might evoke, but they are ok to get felt. This is when your mind and body just shows you “Hey attention, there’s something new to get explored!”. I can recommend you to start writing a travel diary and write down all the impressions, feelings, and beautiful experiences you have made during the day. As you will see, the more you engage in self-reflection and the more you understand what caused your emotions, this will make you more able to handle them and of course enjoy your beautiful travels.
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Perform meditation techniques
Whether meditation is already part of your daily routines, or you are a newbie. Meditations can be so diverse as are the people performing them. In any case, sitting down, relax, and clearing your mind through meditation, can help to handle travel stress and overwhelming emotions much better. What is a great effect of meditation is that you can restore the connection to your inner world. Especially doing a body scan in your mind can help you to listen to yourself more closely. How does your body feel? What thoughts are most prominent in your mind?
In general, a clear and calm mind is more willing to explore and see new things. And in consequence, the five senses are so definitely ready to get stimulated while traveling to a new country or place. Anyways, if impressions might get too overwhelming throughout traveling, allow yourself to take a break of the culture shock. Everything is perfect that allows for some time without much happening, e.g. rest in the hotel, grab some coffee and sit down in a café, or enjoy a beach day.
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Start talking it out
Another great way to handle overwhelming negative emotions is to talk, talk, and talk. This is absolutely one of my preferred actions when I can’t handle stress my own way or to help me with interpretation of situations You can talk to your travel companion next to you or a good friend at home when traveling solo. You could prearrange a call already with a friend at home to establish some kind of routine. Talking about things is a very good way to process the new impressions and your emotions following a culture shock.
When things aren’t easy to talk through, reach out to find like-minded travelers. This works perfectly with facebook communities or local associations or groups that you can join. I am also a member of several communities and happy to find people that can feel me, understand how experiences have an impact on us, and are happy to help.
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Embrace the beauty of travel
What is your most-liked activity? What are the places and things to do that you love, girl? When following your happy places this is exactly when you can relax, enjoy and just be happy. So don’t allow traveling to scare you and better make one step forward instead of moving backwards into overwhelming emotions. I mean this is what you are here for and why you decided to go on this epic trip! As the trip will be epic anyways, so make the ultimate best out of your travel time. Literally embrace the beauty of travel!
Traveling will help you to grow personally, develop your mind, and shape your personality in the very best way. Want to learn more about the true benefits of traveling? Click here to find out how you can profit as a gorgeous woman roaming the planet in her own shoes!
Want to become more aware of cultures? This is my helping hand for you to better understand cultural diversity as a traveller.
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// Disclaimer // I was not paid for my reviews and recommendations mentioned in this blog post. The views and opinions expressed in this blog post are purely my own and can be considered as honest evaluations.
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What is your favorite way to handle travel stress? Please leave your comments and thoughts below or share them on social media @storiesoutofthesuitcase. Happy traveling ♥
