This is a guest post by Alegra Kastens, a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist who founded the Center for OCD, Anxiety, and Eating Disorders.
When packing for an upcoming vacation, we often want to keep obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) out of the suitcase.
We expend time and energy wishing it away, thinking to ourselves “I don’t want OCD to come with me!” It makes a lot of sense. If given the choice, who would want OCD to show up on a honeymoon at the Amalfi Coast or a holiday in Scotland? The issue is, choice is an illusion when it comes to the presence of intrusive thoughts/images, unwanted feelings like anxiety, and bodily sensations such as the groinal response. We do not get to pick and choose when OCD rears its head, and it will not take a vacation just because we ask it to.
OCD symptoms might show up and the sooner you can accept that, the less you will suffer. Resistance backfires and might actually create a self-fulfilling prophecy: trying not to have symptoms (unwanted thoughts, anxiety, etc.) tends to generate those very symptoms. Studies show that the more we tell our brain that it cannot think something, the more likely it is to think it—meaning if you are begging your brain not to produce unwanted sexual thoughts about kids while at Disney World, you are probably going to experience more of those thoughts than you would if you practiced radical acceptance. Thought suppression, as it relates to intrusive thoughts that are out of our control, doesn’t work for OCD. The same goes for the suppression of feelings and bodily sensations. The more you resist the presence of anxiety and the feelings and physiological sensations associated with it, the more anxiety persists.
Instead of wishing OCD away, we can accept the reality that we might experience symptoms on vacation. This might look like you saying, “If symptoms arise, I’ll cope with them” or “I can have intrusive thoughts while I’m away—no problem!” and then redirecting your attention to what is happening in the present moment instead of staying in the “what if.”
To be clear, acceptance is not synonymous with enjoyment. You don’t have to like your OCD symptoms to accept that they might show up, nor do you have to love them to practice acceptance if they do. Acceptance is about allowance of and co-existence with what is out of our control: unwanted thoughts, images, urges, and feelings.
The good news is that you are not powerless over OCD. While you cannot control OCD showing up, you can control what you do when it does. Acceptance does not equal accepting that you are doomed to spending the entire vacation performing compulsions. Even if you jump into them without much conscious awareness, compulsions are active choices. You can stop performing them at any time, although—of course—easier said than done.
Just because OCD comes along for the trip does not mean that it gets to make decisions for you. You can practice values-based living and do the things you want to do instead of compulsively avoiding the things on your travel bucket list. This might look like staying in a hotel despite the fears of Contamination OCD, swimming in the ocean despite being triggered by kids in bathing suits, and exploring Paris with your partner despite the noisiness of Relationship OCD (ROCD). Avoidance is a compulsion that we can choose to engage in or not. Even if we are triggered, we get to decide what choices we make. We are in the driver’s seat, not OCD.
You might be thinking, but what if OCD ruins the vacation?
It does not have to! We can both experience unwanted thoughts and feelings and enjoy vacation. People often think that the presence of obsessions and anxiety automatically ruins experiences, but this all-or-nothing way of thinking isn’t accurate. Even though it may feel that way at times, intrusive thoughts don’t make your trip “bad” or “contaminated.”
It is true that a trip might be made more difficult by OCD and it’s also true that people without OCD have imperfect trips. You’ve spent a lot of money and it makes sense that you would want it to go well, but expecting a flawless trip—where nothing goes wrong and you only feel amazing—sets us up for failure. It makes us even more resistant when OCD shows up because it tarnishes the perfect time we envisioned.
Sometimes, the imperfect moments—like me not knowing Uber didn’t go to the mountains in Scotland and having to hitch a ride with locals—make for great memories. Everything does NOT need to be “right” to be meaningful.
Try not to shame yourself if symptoms get louder. You can manage OCD on a trip just as you do at home. Progress, not perfection!
A few tools I carry in my toolkit while traveling:
- Mindfulness skills:
- Noticing thoughts and feelings without judgment
- Allowing unwanted thoughts and feelings to exist (Reminder: This does not include compulsions, as those are active choices)
- Healthy redirection, or turning my mind back to what IS helpful in the present moment, instead of following the unhelpful “what-if”
- Radical acceptance of whatever will be (even if that means louder symptoms)
- Self-compassion if I have found myself engaging in compulsions (we can hold ourselves accountable while being kind to ourselves)
- Knowing that a change of time zones, less sleep, etc. can impact my mental health so I’m not surprised if it happens
If this has helped you, feel free to bring it with you on your next trip or special occasion. OCD is tough, but you are tougher! Bon voyage!
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