One of the most common questions I get asked about moving abroad and solo travel, whether in the context of my South African exchange in high school or my time in Glasgow, is “But… aren’t you scared?”
and honestly…..yes. All the time. It’s part of why I do it.
Acute stress is the stress we experience everyday. It’s the stress that teaches you how to handle problem-solving, how to do things you’re not too crazy about, and generally keeps you functioning when things aren’t perfect. It’s the stress that is supposed to accompany a due date on a school project, the reaction to an alarm, or a not-so-great interpersonal interaction. As long as it’s not chronic, small amounts of acute stress are not only good for you, but required, especially for young people, in order to properly learn how to manage and handle the stressful aspects of daily life.
If you spend your life avoiding the things that scare you, your world will continuously shrink, get more difficult to handle, and you will be more likely to put up the barrier or avoid things that cause discomfort. I’m not the first one to believe this, and there are entire companies built around it, but your willingness to embrace the uncomfortable feeling that comes with low level stress, in my experience, builds up a tolerance to the fear, making it easier with time.
In an effort to embrace my understanding of myself, I spent new years 2020 doing something I never thought I never would. Ziplining through mountains with my family.
You read that right. I, someone who can’t stand heights, zip-lined through the Hottentots Holland mountains. Did it terrify me? Absolutely. Do I regret it? Absolutely not.
We started the morning by driving from Stellenbosch into the cape nature reserve, where we were suited up and piled into a 4X4 for a drive halfway up the mountain. We hiked the last kilometre or so, and completed our first stretch of the zipline.
It was nauseauting. These are tiny wooden platforms mounted to the side of mountains. the drops are sheer, and you’re being held by nothing but a wire and a harness. I like to joke that I’m not afraid of heights-I’m afraid of human error. and while that’s true, the knowledge of just how high up I was certainly didn’t help.
The views, however, were incredible (once I got my heartrate under control again). The feeling of being up there, the exhalation of knowing I was doing something I thought I couldn’t, the encouragement of knowing that that fear, that anxiety, that stress was surmountable left me feeling more human than I had in a long time.
Fear is such a huge part of what holds people back today. In a life as comfortable as the one we live, it becomes too easy to avoid discomfort, and it allows it to take over our lives. Little things, like crowded subways, become as insurmountable as literally jumping off a mountain. Without pushing ourselves, and without forcing your brain to check its fear and reassess, small, seemingly easy tasks become mountains.
The course was made up of 13 zipline slides, and finished with a hike back down the mountain. Even during the hiking portion, my adrenaline was insanely high- even though I knew, rationally, I was safe.
I’m not going to pretend I’m extremely educated on this, or understand the science behind what I’m saying. I’m trying to learn, and I did a little bit of reading(referenced and linked below), but this is my understanding of my own experience. Most of what I do doesn’t leave me this terrified-solo travelling and moving to Scotland by myself tended to be more spread out given the amount of time I have to prepare and plan. But, at the end of the day, landing in an airport I’ve never been to, by myself, always leaves me with the same low-level panic. I’m still learning how to handle it, but I honestly believe that if I hadn’t been forced to take the train solo into Toronto as a kid, I would never have had the guts to fly solo to South Africa, and I definitely would never have had the courage to come to Glasgow. It’s been progressive. It takes time. It’s not easy; I still get a level of panic when I ride the train. But, it’s manageable. It doesn’t get in the way of my life-not the way it used to. And I plan on continuing to push my boundaries. I may not be skydiving anytime soon, but hey………maybe one day.
Further reading/watching:
Kohn, N., Hermans, E. J., & Fernández, G. (2017). Cognitive benefit and cost of acute stress is differentially modulated by individual brain state. Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, 12(7), 1179–1187. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsx043
How Stress Affects the Brain: https://ckclinical.co.uk/how-stress-affects-the-brain-and-your-capacity-to-function-at-your-best/
Jamieson, J. P., Mendes, W. B., & Nock, M. K. (2013). Improving Acute Stress Responses: The Power of Reappraisal. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 22(1), 51–56. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721412461500
this is so well written and researched- great little piece!