Emotions don’t take a vacation. Put your powers of observation to work on your family trip.
A few summers ago I stood in an airport line watching my own irritation rise, and I thought, but the vacation had barely started. Being the thinking-systems nerd that I am, I started wondering how a systems perspective might apply to trips like this one. I’ll confess it has helped me become a better vacationer over the years. Family vacation stress is real, and much of it comes from something simple: a trip tends to intensify the patterns that are already running in a family.
So why does a trip meant for enjoyment create so much friction? Much of it comes down to stressors.
Why is family vacation stress so common?
A stressor is any change your body has to adapt to. It can be a threat or an opportunity. Family vacation stress is usually not one big problem, it is many small ones stacked together. Travel brings planning, worry about missed connections, airports, and customs, and plenty can go wrong. A new time zone and an unfamiliar bed disrupt sleep. Depending on where you go, the food and the eating times shift too. The body gets challenged in a lot of small ways all at the same time.
Then there is money. For Canadians travelling to Europe, the price of a coffee can be a shock. Many of us don’t plan for the incidentals, the subways and taxis and meals, and the running total becomes its own stressor.
There is also the “we have to do it all” pull. A family spends a lot to get somewhere, so they want to see everything. More stress.
Here is the part that is easy to miss. Stacked stressors raise the anxiety in the group, and higher anxiety leaves each of us a little less flexible than usual. So what emotional patterns start to run?
It’s okay to disagree
One pattern shows up around the pull to agree on what we do and when. In families there is a natural pull toward togetherness, toward doing the same thing as one unit. That pull gets heavy when it runs for a sixteen-hour day, especially when the group is on a mission to see as much as possible. There is nothing wrong with everyone agreeing the whole time. It is just unlikely to happen.
What I notice is this. This is emotional reactivity: the stressors make each of us more reactive, so the pressure to always agree can curdle into resentment, and resentment turns into an argument. Once our family learned that we don’t all have to do the same thing all the time, the trips got better.
What does defining a self look like on a trip?
Murray Bowen developed the concept of differentiation of self. A simple way to think of this is the ability to be yourself while staying connected to others. It is a central idea in family systems theory. You can read more about differentiation and Bowen theory here. Defining a self doesn’t have to be dramatic. It can be as simple as, “I’d like to just chill out this afternoon. You go ahead and do what you want.” Not everyone has the same interests or energy, and pretending we do tends to breed frustration.
Dr. Michael Kerr used the phase “being for self without being selfish, and being for other without being selfless”. Maybe a venue holds no interest for you. Can you support the others in enjoying it, even if you stay behind? What is your own limit on a trip, and do you say it out loud?
Managing self: the responsible vacationer
There’s a warning for gamblers that fits here: know your limit, stay within it. Managing self means getting clear on what you want to do, when, and for how long. It means not just going along to please others while your frustration climbs. It also means not pushing others to go along with you.
Managing self is also physical. What is my comfort level with the new location, with eating different foods, or at odd hours, with too little sleep or too little exercise? Each of these feeds how stressed my body gets and how reactive I become.
There is a quieter trap too. Going along to “keep the peace” can slide into over-functioning, that is, taking on responsibility for everyone else’s good time. The over-functioner ends up drained and resentful, and often no one asked them to carry it.
How can you have a less reactive trip?
None of this calls for a spreadsheet. A few choices made ahead of time lower the anxiety that drives reactivity.
- Protect sleep and food. Keep something close to your normal rhythm where you can. Tired and hungry is where most trip arguments begin.
- Schedule downtime and alone time. Build a slow afternoon into the plan, and treat it as basic maintenance, not a reward you have to earn.
- Leave room for differences. Assume that not everyone will want the same thing, and treat that as normal rather than a problem to solve.
- Add buffers of money and time. A cushion for the incidentals, and a little slack in the schedule, removes stressors before they start.
- Decide in advance how you want to be. Before you leave, ask yourself how you would like to show up on this trip. It is easier to hold that when things get tense.
Picture two families at the end of a day. One is tired and short-tempered, eating too late because no one planned or set a limit. The other is lingering over a enjoyable meal, talking about what they liked the most that day. The difference is rarely luck.
A calmer way to travel
Emotions don’t take a vacation, so a family trip is a good place to observe yourself. It is also fine to set the self-work down for a while and simply enjoy the moments. Both can be true on the same trip. If family vacation stress is a familiar pattern and you want to understand your own part in it, the counsellors at Living Systems in Vancouver would be glad to talk with you. After your vacation of course.
One of a number of studies about vacations and stress is here.