How to Cope with Travel Anxiety and Pre-Trip Stress

Travel is often framed as something you’re supposed to look forward to. You get time away, new experiences, and a supposed break from daily stress. However, for many young adults, the anticipation of a trip brings anxiety instead of excitement.

Travel anxiety can show up long before the plane takes off or the car gets packed. You might overthink what to bring, worry about forgetting something important, or replay worst-case scenarios about what could go wrong.

Add on disrupted routines, unfamiliar places, unknowns, social dynamics, or work responsibilities, and traveling anxiety can start to feel exhausting before the journey even begins.

While it’s normal to feel nervous about visiting new places, travel anxiety can become serious. It can stop you from enjoying vacations and add stress to your life.

What You’ll Learn

• What is travel anxiety?
• What are the common types of travel anxiety?
• How can you overcome anxiety while traveling?
• When do you need treatment for travel anxiety?

What Is Travel Anxiety?

Travel anxiety refers to persistent worry, fear, or physical symptoms related to traveling. For young adults, anxiety about traveling can show up mentally (racing thoughts, irritability, catastrophizing) and physically (tight chest, nausea, headaches, fatigue).

You might notice it more during:

• Spring break travel, when trips are crowded and fast paced
• Holiday travel with disrupted habits, tense family dynamics, external expectations, and strong emotions that can arise that time of year
• Summer travel, which might include longer trips or international travel
• Work travel, which can also trigger workplace anxiety

For some people, traveling anxiety is mild and manageable. For others, it can escalate into panic attacks, anxiety spirals, or avoidance that interferes with daily life.

Causes and Types of Travel Anxiety

There’s no single cause of travel anxiety, and triggers vary from person to person. Some people have experienced anxiety about traveling for as long as they can remember.

Others develop it after a stressful or negative travel experience, or seemingly out of nowhere. Below are some of the most common ways travel anxiety shows up.

Pre-Travel Anxiety

Pre-travel anxiety involves worrying about the trip and the travel days or even weeks before a trip. You may find yourself stuck in planning mode: making endless lists, double-checking reservations, or feeling frozen because everything feels overwhelming. Instead of excitement, you just feel tense and edgy.

Work Travel Anxiety

Work can be stressful for young adults navigating early careers or developing work relationships, and travel can complicate things even further. Spending long stretches of time with coworkers or supervisors can be anxiety producing.

Having to give a report or presentation can also trigger anxiety. The pressure to perform or mask behaviors or symptoms, especially when you’re tired or overstimulated, can make work travel feel more draining than rewarding.

Packing Anxiety

Packing anxiety is a common trigger and can become a symbol of everything that feels uncertain about the trip. It often includes fears and obsessive thinking about forgetting something essential, losing luggage, or not being prepared for the weather or the activities.

Anxiety About Disrupted Routines

If you rely on structure to feel grounded, which many people do, travel can be especially unsettling. Being out of your routine with sleep schedules, foods, and movement can increase stress and anxiety.

Anxiety About Who You’re Traveling With

Group trips, family vacations, or spring break travel with friends can bring social stress. You might worry about conflict, lack of boundaries, or not having enough alone time to recharge. In environments like spring break trips, you might be immersed in an unfamiliar environment with a group of people you don’t know very well.

Anxiety About the Unknown

Being in an unfamiliar place comes with countless unknowns: navigation, safety, language barriers, travel restrictions, or simply not knowing where to go if something goes wrong. Uncertainty feels especially threatening for anxious brains.

Health Anxiety

Being away from home can be particularly triggering for people with health anxiety, or hypochondria. They may fear getting food poisoning from food they don’t usually eat, being exposed to germs on planes and in crowded spaces, or getting sick while they’re away from trusted doctors or hospitals.

Fear of Flying

Fear of flying is one of the most common contributors to travel anxiety. Triggers may include turbulence, takeoff and landing, claustrophobia, or fears of losing control. Long drives or bus trips can also induce similar worries.

Travel Anxiety About Spring Break

Young adults often spend spring break with groups of friends or acquaintances in locations known for their partying atmosphere. Day drinking and casual drug use are common, along with staying up late and spending lots of time by the pool.

Each of these activities can trigger anxiety or make an existing anxiety disorder worse.

• Body image issues: Being around water where everyone is wearing swimsuits can bring up food anxiety, amplify eating disorders, and increase body dysmorphia and body image comparison.
• Substance use: Along with the inherent risks of substance use, intoxication lowers the ability to perceive danger or environmental threats. This can be particularly risky in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people. Substance use can also increase anxiety.
• Limited regulation time: Getting enough sleep and alone time is harder when you’re in unfamiliar environments, sharing lodging, or attending busy festivals or events.

How to Cope with Traveling Anxiety

Travel anxiety can get in the way of enjoying your life. Here are some approaches for reducing its impact.

1. Identify Your Triggers

Understanding what fuels your anxiety is a powerful first step. Is it the planning process? Being away from home? Something specific like claustrophobia, hunger, or overstimulation? Once you identify your specific triggers, you can plan supports around them.

2. Plan (Without Over-Planning)

Planning can help, but over-planning can increase anxiety. You’ll likely run into issues you weren’t expecting, and you can’t prepare for every unknown scenario.

However, you can focus on essentials, like making sure you have a list of emergency contacts, a travel-size first-aid kit, and apps on your phone for directions and trail maps.

If you’re leaving the country, contact your phone company to make sure you can call and text as usual. You can also research healthcare options at your destination.

3. Practice Relaxation Techniques

Grounding tools can help calm your nervous system before and during travel. Deep breathing and progressive muscle relaxation can reduce symptoms of anxiety and help you stay regulated.

4. Utilize Distractions

Listening to music, watching familiar shows, reading, or playing low-stress games can help redirect anxious thoughts before, during, and after travel. Intentional distractions can serve as great regulation tools.

5. Consider Travel Anxiety Medication

For some people, short-term use of anti-anxiety medication, such as Xanax or similar medications, can be helpful, particularly for acute fears of specific situations. Medication should always be discussed with a medical professional and used thoughtfully, not as the only coping strategy.

6. Find People You’re Comfortable With

If you can, surround yourself with people you can rely on. If you’re comfortable with your adventure partners, new experiences feel less daunting.

Talk about plans beforehand with your co-travelers. While you’re traveling, spend time whenever possible with the people whose desires and interests align with yours.

7. Consider Therapy or Professional Support

A therapist can help you explore the underlying causes of anxiety about traveling, and help you find coping strategies tailored to your needs. In some cases, a psychiatrist or doctor may recommend travel anxiety medication as part of a broader treatment plan.

When Anxiety About Traveling Is More Than Nervousness

Some nervousness before a trip is normal. But travel anxiety may point to a deeper issue, like an anxiety disorder, phobia, or unresolved trauma. Signs include:

• Panic attacks related to travel
• Avoiding trips entirely
• Anxiety that disrupts sleep, work, or relationships
• Physical symptoms that feel unmanageable
• Needing substances or other unhealthy coping tools to get through travel

Support for Travel Anxiety

If travel anxiety or pre-travel anxiety starts impacting your everyday life, you might need professional support to help overcome it. Consider treatment if symptoms are preventing you from living the life you want or interrupting your everyday functioning.

Newport Institute provides whole-person, evidence-based mental healthcare for young adults ages 18–35. Our comprehensive approach addresses underlying mood disorders, anxiety, trauma, and environmental factors.

Through individualized treatment plans, psychoeducation, academic and career support, medication support, group therapy, and family involvement, we help you understand what’s driving your anxiety and build skills to navigate it with regulation and ease.

Reach out to learn more about us and get a free mental health assessment from our professional intake team.

Frequently Asked Questions