Let Me Out of Here! – Six Tips for Coping When You’re Stuck Somewhere You Don’t Like

You’re traveling merrily along toward a new and exciting destination, smiling brightly and humming tunes while waving at strangers, pausing to kiss cute babies and literally stopping to smell the roses. Then, suddenly, darkness descends. Crashes of thunder rip through your ears. In the next moment you find yourself bleeding and whimpering in the bottom of a pitch black crater of despair, in the most drastic subset of a negative travel experience known as The Worst Trip Of My Life.

If you’re severely travel challenged, The Worst Trip Of My Life may not be just a dot on your map which you can easily erase by jumping on the next train. You’ve committed yourself for the long haul by accepting a job overseas. You promised someone to whom you’re close that you’d come for a lengthy visit. You’ve shelled out thousands of dollars to study abroad. When you arrive at your new destination, you discover that your temporary home contains unfriendly, hateful and hostile people, a landscape so ugly you can’t stand to look, and absolutely not one thing to occupy yourself during your off hours. When well-intentioned travel plans grab you by the ankles and yank you face down into the sharp gravel, it is possible to put some emotional antibiotic on your injuries and recover.

Here’s six solutions to avoid dissolving into a swamp of misery when you realize you’ve walked through a gateway to the Anti-Paradise.

1. Go for the Good – Pay close attention to positive attributes which, under happier circumstances, would flit right through your mind. Perhaps the air in this land which you are hating is particularly fresh. Maybe a little shack down the street sells some pretty decent coffee. Perhaps a fluffy puppy in the neighborhood lets you pet its little head. Make sure you get daily doses of these bits of goodness. Such salve might help lessen your tremendous desire to bolt.

2. Cling to the Great – Now that you’ve got some good going on, maybe you’ll be able to loosen up a bit and see that a tiny bit of great is well hidden in this pit in which you are trapped. You’re beginning to get into the groove and are somewhat starting to enjoy the new routine that has replaced the one which was ripped from your grip. Your massive efforts at befriending people seem to be working a little bit on a couple of them. You’re beginning to speak the language with a fluidity that only immersion brings. These little victories can strengthen you. Keep it up.

3. Follow the Sun - If there is any. Disagreeable weather can make the worst experiences all the more pitiful. Whether your days of sunshine are rare or never-ending, get yourself out in it to lift yourself up emotionally from your new lifestyle of constant travel blues. Even better, don’t just situate yourself beneath the sun but move around in it. Sunshine combined with the inhalation of great gobs of air and the expenditure of energy that exercise requires can really shift your mood from horrific to just bad.

4. Hang with the Happy - Find people who love it where you hate it. There are plenty of crazy people in the world, so you’re bound to be able to find some unbalanced enough to actually like this place. Maybe the few people who are accepting your overtures of friendship are amongst this bunch. Don’t be afraid of their unfathomable affection for this land of nothing good. Listen to them closely and attempt to integrate their vision of their locale into your own. This could rearrange your thinking. Just don’t let yourself get brainwashed.

5. Resign – Not from your new overseas job or whatever has gotten you into this mess. Rather, accept that this is your situation for the time being. With this acceptance, hopefully thoughts of bolting will start seeping from your head. As you come to terms with your new life, its temporary nature may move more into the forefront of your mind, helping you to feel less stressed, depressed and trapped.

6. Utilize Yourself – Now put into place the same healthy sort of “I’m going to have to make the best of this” attitude that has seen you through other life difficulties. Surely you’ve come across a worse situation from which you have learned some personal coping skills. Well, if not worse, at least maybe 25 to 50 percent as bad as this. Pull these skills up from the depths, fine tune them and line them up for serious action. With this ammo, you can begin to live instead of wallow in this hole in which you have stranded yourself.

Have you ever found yourself trapped in a black hole while traveling? Do tell. Did you cope? Or did you bolt?

Thumbnail “Help” photo by D3 San Francisco. Junkyard photo by Beige Alert. Walking on Beach photo by Tomas Fano.