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They do not dream of wandering and are indifferent to tempting pictures from travel agency catalogs. And if sometimes they go on a journey, then in a very short one. Why are they not attracted by new horizons?
“I often have to go on business trips – Rome, Paris, Tokyo, but I don’t get pleasure from these trips,” says 38-year-old Elena. “Every time I pack my suitcase, I have a panic attack, and the night before I leave, I can’t sleep.” Elena spends her holidays in Moscow: “I like to wander around the lanes, visit friends or go to the cinema. Why should I go to distant lands, if I have everything at hand here – both rest and entertainment?
And 25-year-old Nikolai does not have the opportunity to go somewhere at all: “As soon as I find myself in another area, it’s as if I cross an invisible border – and I feel uncomfortable. I feel safe only in well-known places.
When a person has no desire to travel, when he invariably prefers to remain in his familiar environment, psychological problems may be hidden behind this. It is not a disease, like, for example, aviophobia (fear of flying) or agoraphobia (fear of open spaces). However, this behavior causes serious inconvenience and deprives many of the pleasures. What are its reasons?
Difficulties with adaptation
“People who do not like to travel have a great need for a sense of security,” says psychoanalyst Natalia Kigai. Difficulties with adaptation may be the result of experiences in childhood. For example, too early separation from the mother.
In order to develop and mature, the child needs to feel secure, but he cannot create it for himself. And he gets used to relying on external landmarks, including his usual place of residence, which helps to maintain peace of mind.
It happens that parents create obstacles for the independence of the child. “Strict upbringing can suppress curiosity and create a strong unconscious connection between research, cognitive activity and anxiety, shame, guilt,” says Natalia Kigay. “Then, at the thought of a long trip, a person experiences a vague anxiety, for which he finds many “rational” explanations.”
Marina, 41, insurance agent: “They were afraid for me for too long”
“A trip to some foreign resort has always seemed to me like this: insects, dirt, heat, poor food, a different language … And why is this necessary ?! But, listening to the stories of friends, I longingly thought that I would spend a week of vacation in the country with my mother, and the rest of the time I would sit at home. And then I signed up for a course of body-oriented therapy.
I understood why it is so difficult for me to travel far. The only daughter, I grew up without a father, my mother was always very afraid for me. She first let me ride the subway with my friends when I was 15! Now I am learning relaxation techniques and I hope that soon I will be able to go south with my friends – they have been calling me for a long time.
Memory of the past
It is more difficult to get ready for a long journey for someone who has grown up among closed people, wary of the outside world. Travel anxiety can come from more than just your personal past. “The source can be intergenerational trauma,” emphasizes Natalya Kigai, “such as the experience of refugee or exile, forced resettlement or voluntary emigration.
Or the experience of loss: departed, killed or missing ancestors. Another source of fear is the psychological trauma (for example, an accident) that a person has experienced during a trip and is consciously or not afraid to repeat the negative experience.
What to do?
Understand your feelings
“Love for comfort, constancy and peace is not a disease in itself,” says Natalya Kigai. “The problem comes when we feel that something is limiting our lives. Usually, during psychotherapy, anxiety decreases or disappears. It does not look like something remarkable, it is realized gradually. At some point, a person remarks with surprise: “It seemed like it always hurt, but now it doesn’t hurt.”
Prepare the first step
No need to commit violence against yourself, wait until you can try to take the first step. Start traveling with someone who doesn’t have this anxiety and is safe and interesting with you.
Make a travel plan
So you can know in advance where and what you want to do and what to see. Learn more about the history and culture of the places you are visiting. And take care of good roaming.
Reluctance to grow up
The concept of “home” from the point of view of psychoanalysis directly correlates with the image of the mother’s womb. The word “motherland” is the same root as the word “birth”, besides, let us recall the expression “motherland”. “Language emphasizes the connection that exists for us between the place where we live and the image of maternal protection,” says psychoanalyst Pascal Neveu. “Refusing to travel far from home means wanting to stay in the symbolic mother’s cocoon or, more broadly, in one’s family unit.” Homebodies try to maintain an unchanged picture of the world, denying themselves development. However, once they dare to discover the unknown, they discover something new in themselves.
To the one who is near
If you are a real travel lover, you will surely have something to tell someone who has never been to the places you love. The words of a serious and organized person will surely inspire confidence in your interlocutor, and your curiosity can inspire him. Your example and experience, perhaps, will awaken in him the desire to travel. And this will help him see those sides of himself that he had not noticed before.
Arriving in a new place, help him look at everything around him through the eyes of a child. Having discarded stereotypes, continue to evaluate new landscapes, tastes, sounds. He likes? I do not like? So he learns a lot about himself.