Travel Anxiety is Real: Here’s How I Fight It

This recap of my travel anxiety strategies is brought to you in partnership with Good Day Chocolate. As always opinions are 100 percent my own. Thank you for supporting the brands that make this site possible! Use code CBDPHOEBE for 20% off your order.

I am not a bad flyer, but that doesn’t mean I find traveling—by plane, train or automobile—a calming experience. Quite the opposite.

I suffer from all types of anxiety, but I’d say the anticipatory kind is one of the worst for me. It’s not a specific script that triggers something, rather, the general weight of the blank slate—all the good things and bad that might come out of the woodwork to fill in the experience. Naturally, periods of transition and transit—even if it’s only a few hours long—have the tendency to plant an anvil on my chest.

Charlie, on the other hand, is afflicted with the doom and gloom variety of anxiety. The kind that whispers in your ear “what if the plane goes down” or “what if I’ve left the oven on and the house burns to the ground while we’re away.”

As you can tell, we are an absolute joy to travel with!

And travel we do. In December and January alone we will be on a minimum of 7 planes. (Sorry, Mother Earth…we will work to repay you somehow)

Luckily, over the years I’ve honed my strategies for keeping my travel anxiety on track and making sure it doesn’t derail the journey. Here are some of the ways I pause, reset and prepare on the way to my destination.

With health and hedonism,

Phoebe

p.s. if you’re struggling with anxiety, considering joining this next session of 4 Weeks to Wellness! Enrollment closes tomorrow and we begin January 20th.

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1. Lock and load your suitcase the night before. I used to scramble to get my last few items in order, from toiletries to my laptop. Since most of our flights are in the early morning—and we have a 6am one coming up (eek)—I make an effort now to pack every last thing the night before. I have specific toiletries now I just keep in my dopp kit and that also cuts down on the time I panic about what I’m forgetting.

2. Pack snacks to prevent hanger. Sometimes I mistake hunger for anxiety. Or, rather, my undercurrent of anticipatory panic is being ridden like a jockey by an empty stomach. Charlie and I have gotten a lot better about packing nuts and bars to make sure we always have something to nosh on during long flights and it also gives me something to fixate on instead of whatever reason the captain gives for why we are still sitting on the tarmac.

3. Hydrate hydrate hydrate. On travel days, I rarely get to drink my usual 16 ounces of water first thing in the morning. For one thing, bladder anxiety is also a real thing and I don’t want to have to pee the second I step into my Uber to head to the airport. And yet, dehydration can cause more anxiety, and anxiety can cause dehydration. Since the adrenals sit just above your kidneys, their other main function is to control your water levels. The more stress and anxiety you have, the more hormones and salt they send out to circulate in the body. When your anxiety levels fall, all that sodium needs to be evacuated. Just think of a nervous puppy that has to pee all the time. That’s the anxious travel you, constantly flushing fluids, along with sodium, down the toilet. Make sure to bring an empty reusable water bottle to the airport with you and fill it up immediately after you get through security. I usually will drink the whole thing before takeoff and make sure the flight attendant refills it during their first pass through the cabin.

4. Pop some CBD when you hit the road. I’m not opposed to getting a little help from my supplement pouch, especially once on the plane. As I talk about in this post, CBD has become a key component of my gut health and anxiety routine. At home, I will use a mix of oils, topicals and edibles. But on the road, it’s always easier to travel without liquids. One of my favorite ways to get my hemp on during travel days is Good Day Chocolate. Their bites are made with the highest quality fair trade chocolate and contain 10mg of organically sourced CBD in each piece. Dosing is easy and streamlined (even if the chocolate is so good I would rather just eat the whole bottle in one sitting) and comes in handy in the moment when I need a sense of ease. They even have a Calm line that includes a small dose of L-Theanine, an amino acid that might provide an increase in mental focus. I’ll also eat one ball of the regular dark chocolate every day to continue getting the benefits of CBD during my trip.

5. Meditate during takeoff and landing. When I took up meditation a few years ago, my teacher told us the best way to deal with the way travel interrupts our ordinary habits is to meditate casually during takeoff and landing. It usually means you fall immediately asleep once the plan is in the air, which, if the moments of zen don’t work, can’t hurt either.

What are some of the ways you cut down on your travel anxiety? I’d love to know in the comments!

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This recap of my travel anxiety strategies is brought to you in partnership with Good Day Chocolate. As always opinions are 100 percent my own. Thank you for supporting the brands that make this site possible! Use code CBDPHOEBE for 20% off your order.