Mental Health

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Struggling around the globe: travel with anxiety

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Struggling around the globe: travel with anxiety

I suffer from anxiety, which for me is always accompanied by depression and after having been a victim of a violent crime I added PTSD to my mental health plate. It has become a fun little mix.

None of those mental health issues usually prepare you well for solo travelling. In fact, they are great at blocking it all. Adventure and anxiety? Just the thought of taking a leap of faith into the unknown used to send me into a mental abyss.

With many of my peers suffering from similar issues, I have been asked a lot about how I manage this journey. How do I not fall apart in every new place?

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The frequency of L.A.

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The frequency of L.A.

Right now I am sat on a plane to Vancouver. I have never been to Canada. I don’t know anyone there. And in all honesty I don’t even remember why I was determined to make it one of my stops in the first place.

After packing my bags in London and embarking on a floating-around-the-globe adventure, I spent a month in Los Angeles, with a pit stop in Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon. 

My mental health wake-up call: A cuppa with the cops

My mental health wake-up call: A cuppa with the cops

Over the past decade I have pretty much read every self-help book this planet has to offer. I have fallen deeply for Oprah and Tony, I have turned spiritual to ask the universe for help, I have tapped into various religions and I tried a tonne of goal-setting journals. It would be a lie to say that nothing has worked. A lot of things stuck with me but I learned that my depressed and anxious feelings will always find me. There have been temporary victories at times but everything started to change more fundamentally when I asked others for help, and by that I mean actual people - not youtube videos.