I’ve talked about anxiety in adults and children before, these have always been in the context of getting help thereafter and finding the triggers.
Today’s I’ll walk you through a recent episode I experienced and my thought process through a complicated series of hurdles and the snippets of panic that ensued.
This past school holiday was an interesting one for me, I was nervous & excited to take a trip.
Let me take it back to more than 2years before the trip. There had been a pending invitation to visit a friend and it was just never the right timing for it. 2020 was supposed to be the year I finally made the solo trip but Covid had other plans for my passport plans.
Fast forward to dec 2021, my mind was finally made up and I set my mind into the forward gear. I told myself it’s time to actually do it! I researched, applied and booked all the necessary things beforehand. I waited until just before the trip to to even get excited about it.
Am I the only one who doesn’t allow myself to get excited about trips until just before my actual departure date? I always feel like if I get too excited there will be the sudden feeling of impending doom. It’s an anxiety thing that terrifies me and has terrified for years before an important event.
Anyway, a week before the trip, I was doing some last minute shopping and it suddenly hit me, I’m actually doing this. It’s actually happening!!!
Two days before my actual flight I start to panic! This is the furthest I have ever travelled and my prior trips have always been in the company of family or friends. How was I going to know where to go? What do I do when? Will I be able to sleep or will I miss my flight?
The day of my flight was filled with a million plans to make myself so tired that I had to sleep before the actual trip, this did not work. I stayed up for about 36hours doing last minute packing and fighting the butterflies swimming within.
A few hours later I was all set, checked in, waiting to board, and thoughts about in-flight cleanliness start to come up. Did I pack my wet wipes, sanitizer spray, face mask? These thoughts probably seem passive to anyone else but when you’ve already been sleep deprived they begin to irritate you. I checked my hand laggage about ten times making sure I packed everything, and the answer was the same each time, you were well prepared.
Then comes the part that made me the most nervous…transit. I’ve heard too many stories of people missing their connecting flights because of large airports. I was running between gates early so I didn’t have any slip ups. I didn’t want to find anything causing me to rush through the boarding gate with seconds to spare. It felt like a scene from a movie, crazy panic!
One of the things I was scared of is landing in a foreign country and no one is there to pick me up. So days before traveling I maped out my route, pinned every location I’d need to get to and watched videos on what to do on arrival at my final destination. I researched where to go, what you need, how much time it takes from touch down to actually leaving the airport & who to ask incase you require assistance. All this did come in handy because I arrived and had to get my laggage, purchase a transport ticket, load it and take a tube into town on my own (thank God for my preparedness).
This was the first hurdle of my long trip that went relatively smoothly partly because of all the research I did prior to traveling. Not all of these always go as planned though, all the planning in the world could still be thrown off by outside forces, weather, loss of property, delayed flights.
I had finally arrived at my destination!
Most of this happened in the span of 14hours but on the inside it fell like 30hours in slow motion.
My only relief from all these swirling emotions was inflight wine and the soul music that calmed my nerves for the duration of the flight.
Let me know if you’ve ever had such intense anxiety and what you do/did when you feel/felt like that.
IS YOUR NET WORTH!
That Nicte' 