I’ve had an anxiety disorder for a pretty long time. It’s not an easy problem to solve, but most articles mention things like breathing exercises and positive affirmations. When you have severe, debilitating anxiety, that can feel like suggesting a Band-Aid for a broken leg.

Anxiety can hold you back, especially when you throw traveling into the mix, with all its triggers: it’s uncomfortable, sometimes risky, and often full of unwelcome surprises. And it doesn’t help to see folks on social media travel the world, seemingly with ease, in situations that you know would leave you ill. 

This is my story about how I learned to balance anxiety with an incessant need to explore, with some tips at the end for conquering these struggles yourself.

So, you’ve got an anxiety disorder. 

The first time I had a panic attack, I didn’t understand what it was.

My dad and I had been planning to drive out into the California desert to see Salvation Mountain, the psychedelic painted monument that marks the entrance to the hippie haven of Slab City. I was into both artsy hippie stuff and the desert as a teenager, so this was a holy grail location for me.

But rather than being excited to finally make it out to Slab City, I was laying on my bedroom floor, wondering if I was about to die. 

If you’ve never had a panic attack, it’s hard to understand how it feels. It’s like drowning. The first sign is a blood rush to my ears, and then I lose my hearing. My face and hands go numb. Usually I feel nauseous; always I feel faint.

When this happens to me now, I can think myself through it. You’re having a panic attack. It’s okay. It will pass. 

But for the first half dozen panic attacks or so, I didn’t know what was happening. I actually thought I was having a severe medical emergency. I also thought it was triggered by fear, so I found it embarrassing and impossible to admit.

So when I had a panic attack that morning before going to Salvation Mountain, I didn’t really know how to explain myself to my dad. I just told him I didn’t feel well. He was obviously frustrated, but agreed we could go another time. (We never did.)

It wasn’t until college that I realized that these were panic attacks, and that I had an anxiety disorder. An actual disorder. A diagnosed chemical imbalance in my brain was causing this to happen. Not some random bout of cowardice.

Categorizing this problem as a disorder made it easier to deal with. Where I used to wallow in self-loathing at my inability to cope, now I said, “Okay, you have this disorder. What are you going to do about it?”

Pushing through the pain.

I didn’t travel very far from home prior to working for Jack’s Flight Club, but when I did travel, the anxiety traveled with me. It followed me through hotel rooms all across the western US. I panicked in Sedona, in Idaho, in Salem, Oregon. All over Washington state. In nice hotels and not-so-nice hotels. 

For the first half of my twenties, sleeping in a hotel room meant spending hours on the bathroom floor, feeling like I was dying. And that was a trade I was willing to make, over and over and over again if it meant I could visit somewhere new.

I eventually started to make peace with these panic attacks, more or less. I learned that getting angry with myself, or being upset that I was ruining my trip, or worrying that I might have a panic attack, all made it worse. It was better to just accept it. I’d be on edge, and then I’d feel the sickness in my stomach and the blood rush in my ears, and I’d think Well, here we go. Let’s get this over with. 

By the time I turned 25, I could spend all night panicking, and then get up the next morning like everything was normal. I had it down to a science.

I needed to travel. Even if it wasn’t far. I didn’t want to have panic attacks, but I couldn’t stand to stay at home. What’s a rough night or two, compared to the benefit of seeing the country?

I could cope with it. I learned some of the triggers and the tricks to getting around them. Food has always been a big trigger for me. If I am in a hotel room in an unfamiliar place and I don’t have access to bland, digestible foods that I can eat with an unsettled stomach, I am practically guaranteed to spiral. 

Thus entered the emotional support tortillas: they’re cheap, don’t need refrigeration, and can slide flat into my bag. Best of all, I can eat them even if my stomach’s upset. I have not gone on an overnight trip without tortillas in years, and they have kept my typical anxiety from ballooning into panic more times than I can count. 

If it works, it’s not stupid. 

So after having panic attacks in several of western America’s finest motel rooms, what does an inexperienced traveler with a panic disorder decide to do? 

Go to Alaska. Alone.

Naturally, I brought multiple packs of tortillas. 

Maybe my anxiety ISN’T some horrible curse?

This part of the story ought to see me hyperventilating in the Alaskan wilderness somewhere. It ought to end in disaster. 

But it didn’t. And contrary to what I’d feared, it was my anxiety that saved me.

I didn’t panic on that trip, but I sure did panic beforehand. I had several sleepless nights in the days leading up to it. I memorized not only the address of where I was staying, but the entire layout of the area. You could have dropped me anywhere within two miles and I could have walked home. I memorized the locations of hospitals and police stations. The address and phone number of where I was staying. All the bus routes. Anything that could have helped in a crisis.

This was, I thought, “crazy person behavior.” It was driven by pure panic. I planned for every possible contingency, and I berated myself the entire time. You’re insane. No one else would need to do this. Normal people don’t memorize entire neighborhoods before a trip.

It seemed crazy riiiiiight until my phone died on the way back from a hike. I couldn’t get a taxi, so I would need to take the bus. It was raining. It was dark. I had no phone. I was not staying in an area with stores that were open late. It’s not like there were payphones, or hordes of other folks around to give me directions. I was completely alone, in Alaska, in the dark and the rain, with no cell phone or car or map and no one in a 500-mile radius who knew that I was there. 

So I just… went home. I knew the way. I knew where the closest bus stop was, and I knew how to get back to my room from my own bus stop. And I only knew these things because I was “crazy” enough to prepare for such a situation.

This was the first time I thought of my anxiety as anything other than a burden. It had saved me. This thing that I had spent the last twenty years HATING myself over, with which I was getting into constant mental arguments. The thorn in my side. My cross to bear. It saved me.

This situation made me see my anxiety differently. It was always just the thing that was holding me back from fully enjoying traveling, and it offered nothing in return. But that trip to Alaska made it click for me — my anxiety is the part of my brain that wants me to stay safe.

It’s sort of like an overzealous parent. You might resent them. They might be wrong. They might even be harmful sometimes. You can’t listen to it every time, or even most of the time. It’s wrong more often than it’s right. But… at the end of the day, it just wants to keep you safe.

Understanding that my anxiety was a survival reflex and not a character flaw changed how I approach it. We’re less combative now, me and it. 

I was already learning how to live with my anxiety, but now I was beginning to accept it too. 

So… now what?

Like any normal person with an anxiety disorder triggered by travel, I began traveling full time as a digital nomad. 

And believe me, there are times when I want to shriek about the little personal hell I have created for myself. Every single time I go anywhere — a day trip, a move to my next apartment, a flight, a train, you name it — there is a little voice in my head screaming at me: I can’t do this.

A few years ago, I would have gotten angry with that voice. I would have let it drown out my own thoughts until I was ill. But now I just say, “Yes, you can. You’ve done it a dozen times. And we’re going to do it again, and it’s going to be fine.” 

And every single time, I am glad I did not listen to that little voice. I sometimes take its advice, and plan a little more or take some extra precautions. I can always use those reminders. But I refuse to listen to it when it wants me to just run and hide. I am happy to say that since that panic attack before Slab City, I have not bailed on a single trip due to anxiety. 

I eventually did get to Salvation Mountain, having been haunted for years by the fact that I’d missed out on it the first time. So I drove there by myself and stood in front of it, ten years later. I was waiting for some kind of epiphany, I guess, but that epiphany never came. It’s a lovely place maintained by some fascinating people, and I had a great time in Slab City. But that sort of cosmic, now-the-balance-has-been-restored feeling didn’t come. It was just a nice day.

Sometimes you simply grow beyond the need for that feeling. I am not the same kid who broke down over a day trip to the desert. 

I promise I wrote all of this for a reason.

You can't sugarcoat the psychological effect that a disorder like this can have on you, even when you’re not actively experiencing an episode. It colors your world, and wreaks havoc on the way you perceive yourself.

But here’s what I actually came here to say: If you’re reading this, and any of that tedious description of my various panic attacks sounds familiar, then I’m talking to you. I could have just written a list of advice for traveling with anxiety, but I know it’s more complicated than that. This is a full-on internal battle for some of us, and winning it goes deeper than just checking off tips in a listicle.

So I want you to know that I get it. You’re not alone, even if it seems like everyone else around you can “handle” more than you can. 

I’m not gonna lie and say that “anxiety is a gift!” or “focus on the positives!” because that’s empty and flat. But I will throw at least one motivational quote at you: you are probably tougher than you think you are.

If you really, truly want to travel and anxiety is all that holds you back, you can overcome it. It might suck a lot of the time. It might be harder for you than it is for your loved ones. It might limit the sort of trips you can take and dictate what you need to bring. But it doesn’t have to stop you. 

I went from being on the floor, incapacitated, over a day trip, to successfully traveling through a good chunk of North America and Europe. It took me ten years, but I did it. And so long as that infectious “travel bug” is worse than your disorder, so can you.

Some actual, concrete tips for travel anxiety.

Start small. Your comfort zone is expanded in baby steps. Spend a weekend just a few hours’ drive or train ride away, then a few hours flight away, and THEN go bigger. Don’t jump straight into Indiana Jones-esque adventuring. Book tour groups, and stay in safe and comfortable places. You can work yourself up to more daring stuff later if you really want to.

Get to the root of your triggers. Mine are mostly food and sleep, so I tackle those needs individually (with safe snacks and white noise apps, mostly). Don’t try to pack light if you need comfort items to assuage your anxiety. That extra money for a checked bag is a small price to pay if everything in there goes towards keeping your head together. I know some people pride themselves on packing light, but you don’t need to be one of them.

Let yourself go a little nuts before the trip. Make that massive list. Make that spreadsheet. Do that research. And for the love of all that is good — buy whatever travel insurance or free-cancelation upgrades you need to calm yourself down.

At the same time, do your best not to overbook. Schedule in rest days, which is good advice for anyone anyway, but especially important if you might be out of commission for a day or two and still want to see everything. 

Make peace with the fact that it’s going to be uncomfortable. You will probably never become a light and breezy traveler, and that’s okay. What you can do is get lighter and breezier about the fact that you’re internally freaking out. You’re gonna be nervous, possibly even ill for part of the time. And that is okay. Even for all my horrible motel experiences, I still remember the incredible things I did on those trips more than I remember how hard those nights were.

But… you can take all this advice, and you might still end up hyperventilating on the floor. So what? It’ll pass. 

And in the midst of your panic, I hope you look back and remember that it used to take much less to put you there.