Overcoming Travel Anxiety

How our very own Amelia Girl faced a daunting new situation and overcame fears of traveling abroad.

Contributed by: Caroline Breitbach | I’m a naturally nervous person. New environments and situations scare me and so it would seem like traveling would be a stressful thing for me to do. Despite knowing this about myself, I wanted to do it. I wanted to travel abroad and go to unrecognizable places to study and learn.

My mom was the only member of my family who has traveled of the country. She went to Canada and Mexico in college, before you needed a passport to cross the borders. I was always a little jealous of her, since the farthest my sisters and I ever went from home was Alabama. So I signed up to go to London, and when I was preparing to go abroad, I found things to be very different from when my mother took her trips. There were some things I had to plan almost a year in advance. I had to go to Walgreens to take a horrible passport photo, order pounds from the bank, find luggage, prepare for the weather, buy sturdier shoes, and save up money. I had to ask my sisters what they wanted and talk about it enough to make them sufficiently jealous of the trip before my flight.

“I had to go to Walgreens to take a horrible passport photo, order pounds from the bank, find luggage, prepare for the weather, buy sturdier shoes, and save up money.”

I’d only flown once before to Florida for my uncle’s wedding. My sister sat in the middle seat and would try and scare our younger sister Mary, telling her the plane was falling out of the sky with every bout of turbulence. Though the plane trip to Florida was barely two hours, it felt like an eternity; nothing could have prepared me for the seven-to-eight hour flight to London and back, but when the time came around, surprisingly, I enjoyed every second of it. I got two ice cream cups on the way and watched so much television my eyes hurt.

At first, I thought flying would be the biggest fear I had to get over, but as soon as we landed, I felt even more scared. Though filled with excitement as our plane circled Heathrow, the city lights visible in the early morning darkness, a part of me was nervous. What if I got lost? What if my debit card didn’t work? What if I got locked out of the hotel? What if a crowd of people literally ate me alive?

"What if I got lost? What if my debit card didn’t work? What if I got locked out of the hotel? What if a crowd of people literally ate me alive?"

Luckily, I was eased into London; it was not busy in the early morning, and I had time to acquaint myself with the city before the people swarmed it. As the day went I got more comfortable. I found places I wanted to go back to later and discovered what I was most excited about visiting again.

The nerves didn’t leave during the trip. There were always things that made me nervous or that I couldn’t understand, but working through those feelings made the experience even more rewarding. I tried new types of food, stayed out late, explored, and I’m glad I pushed myself out of my comfort zone. If I hadn’t pushed back against my nerves, I wouldn’t have gone abroad. I would have missed out on experiencing something new and different from anything I’ve known before.