What Comes After Travelling?

Post-travel depression exists.. Or not?

It was weird.. Instead of being happy, reloaded with beautiful experiences and good emotions you got so down. Your mood and psychological state of mind is way worse after your ever-dreamed experience than before. Is that a phenomenon? Apparently you are not the only one who feels this way. Ask those fellows you met during your trip, those that are back home. How do they feel? You will be surprised that majority feels the same. No need to be psychologist to understand the reasons: coming back to routine, that often people name as „grey“, you are changed but your friends and family are all the same, they just don’t understand you and often you come back to less comfortable climate with less sun.

Intuition sends us a message

Do you understand that if you were unhappy in the place where you came back why should you stay there? Why all articles that give us tips how to overcome this difficult period advice us to kill the feeling. But wait! Why? I say: listen to yourself and challenge yourself. Do you still want to travel? Travel! Do you want to stay abroad? Go abroad! Search yourself. Change your environment, job, people that are surrounding you. Easy math: you were happy when you were away, you are unhappy when yo​u are back. Well, “no-brainer”, you have an answer.

The first push to move was during my studies after the exchange program. I came back from 6 months living abroad and I realized I have to go again, challenge was needed. Since then I live abroad already for 6 years. I didn’t kill the feeling, I listened to the message my intuition had sent. The last example is recent: after a short vacation in Bali. I came back to Amsterdam and after few days of euphoria my moods went so down. I was getting close to depression. I bought one way ticket to Asia again. It was spontaneous and most of my friends saw it as irresponsible way to deal with the situation. Now I see, it was another great decision I made just listening to myself. I had spent incredible two months in three countries with less expenses than staying at home, meeting inspiring same minded people, getting inspiration for my art, learning plenty about people, history, geography, cultures.

You can find many reasons that will not let you go: shortage in finance, responsibility at home, social pressure. That’s wrong, find the reasons to go and make it happen!​

Will we call this „phenomenon“ as post-travel depression or a message coming from our intuition. In the end it’s up to us what decisions we make but my favorite quote of Walt Disney speaks for itself: “It’t kind of fun to do The Impossible”. And sky is the limit.

#travel #Postvacationblues #posttraveldepression #ptd #Thailand #SEA #Bali