We love summer for the opportunity to relax in nature, relieve fatigue and stress. But a complete separation from the urban environment is not useful for everyone, psychologists say. What to consider when planning your next trip out of town?
Life in the city is exhausting. The brain constantly keeps us in suspense: it has to monitor the movement of cars on the road, listen to the phone or radio, process information from billboards (even if unnecessary). Psychologists and doctors advise getting out into nature more often to recover from sensory overload. But how radical must be the separation from civilization in order to be useful? Is it necessary to go for a week to a deep forest, where the mobile phone does not catch? Or is the weekend spent at the dacha in the suburbs enough?
The answer to this question is not as simple as it seems. Psychologists Kevin Newman and Merrie Brucks found that the calming effect of wildlife does not apply to everyone. Those who were born and raised in the city can also experience stress from severe sensory deprivation. — in a situation where the level of noise around is lower than usual, and the eyes cannot focus on familiar images.
The researchers asked volunteers to complete the Eysenck test, a twelve-item questionnaire that is widely used to measure the degree of neuroticism. He assesses the presence in a person of such qualities as anxiety, a tendency to overanalyze, envy, and loneliness. Before the start of the test, some participants were shown pictures of a rural landscape, while others were shown urban landscapes.
Contrary to expectations, it turned out that situations associated with increased anxiety seemed more calming to people with a high degree of neuroticism. Newman and Brooks decided to test this conjecture and invited the participants in the experiment to listen to the sound of the surf, which was replaced by car horns. It turned out that the subjects did not find the sounds of beeps annoying. For some, they even had a calming effect.1.
Does this mean that each of us is a prisoner of his environment and can only comfortably exist in familiar conditions? “It is true that we feel good when we are surrounded by familiar sounds and images,” Newman explains. — But not always and not for everyone the city is associated with endless noise and bustle, just like village life — with silence and slowness. A person with a high degree of neuroticism may enjoy being in nature. But for him, the ideal holiday should include more familiar elements.”
How can you get the most out of your vacation? First of all, evaluate your character, your habits. Find a balance between noise and silence that is right for you. A resident of a metropolis does not have to travel miles from the city, settle in a lonely hut in the mountains or wander through the forest. It will be useful for someone to just go to the park near the bustling highways. And someone will find peace in a small bookstore or a cozy cafe, where you can slowly watch the cars flickering outside the window.
1 Journal of Consumer Psychology, online publication dated March 11, 2016.