wellness tips
Travel jitters: How to cope with the post-travel blues
Barbara Kamholz | May 1, 2025
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Travel is all about new adventures, but it can bring up some tough feelings, too, including a bumpy re-entry into everyday life. The good news? A few simple strategies can help you navigate your return from a big trip, reconnect with your everyday life, and bring some of the benefits home with you.
Barbara Kamholz, PhD, is the Director of Behavioural Health at EF Education First. She’s board-certified in behavioural and cognitive psychology by the American Board of Professional Psychology (ABPP). Before joining EF in 2022, she spent 20 years as a public health leader, social justice advocate, educator, and clinical psychologist—and she has many insights to share about travel anxiety and mental health.
This is the third and final installment of a series written by Barbara that’s been adapted for our EF Tours Canada travellers. This month, we’re focusing on how to navigate travel anxiety after your trip.
Read part one here: Managing travel anxiety before your trip and part two here: How to navigate anxiety during travel.
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Adjusting to life after travel
Returning home after a trip can be a rollercoaster of emotions, including feeling let down after the adventure ends. For many travellers, the excitement of exploring new places can leave us feeling low, bored, or overwhelmed after vacation.
Whether you’ve travelled many times before or this is your first time making the transition back to regular life, thinking about how to adjust to life after returning home is important. Using practical tips to address re-entry means you can bring the best of your trip home with you.
Does this sound like you?
“I don’t think I’ve ever felt happier than when I was on tour two weeks ago. Now that I’m back in my old routine, I’m bummed/feel let down.”
Or
“I really felt like my best self on tour, and I’m nervous I won’t be able to tap into that part of myself at home.”
Post-vacation letdown is real. When you’ve just spent a week or two only really thinking about yourself, and doing what you want, it’s even more real.
Feeling down after travel? Here are six ways to help with a smooth re-entry and hold on to some of the special things you discovered.
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Soutien à chaque étape
Lorsque vous travaillez avec nous, nous mettons à votre disposition une excellente équipe de soutien à chaque étape du processus. Notre personnel vous aide à trouver le voyage idéal pour votre classe, à régler les détails avec votre conseil d’administration, à recruter des voyageur.euse.s, à répondre aux questions des parents, et bien d’autres choses. Bref, nous travaillons fort pour vous faciliter la tâche.
Soutien à chaque étape
Lorsque vous travaillez avec nous, nous mettons à votre disposition une excellente équipe de soutien à chaque étape du processus. Notre personnel vous aide à trouver le voyage idéal pour votre classe, à régler les détails avec votre conseil d’administration, à recruter des voyageur.euse.s, à répondre aux questions des parents, et bien d’autres choses. Bref, nous travaillons fort pour vous faciliter la tâche.
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Soutien à chaque étape
Lorsque vous travaillez avec nous, nous mettons à votre disposition une excellente équipe de soutien à chaque étape du processus. Notre personnel vous aide à trouver le voyage idéal pour votre classe, à régler les détails avec votre conseil d’administration, à recruter des voyageur.euse.s, à répondre aux questions des parents, et bien d’autres choses. Bref, nous travaillons fort pour vous faciliter la tâche.
Soutien à chaque étape
You probably discovered new things about yourself, and new things you like, while travelling. That’s great! Now let that into your everyday life. Maybe you’re more extroverted than you realized. Harness that to expand your social life at home. Maybe you like solitary time more than you ever noticed. Insert moments of quiet and alone time into your life.
Check out local cafes or restaurants that feature different foods you’ve tried or learn how to cook them yourself. Just because your trip is over, doesn’t mean all that you discovered disappears.
Soutien à chaque étape
Maybe you were fascinated by the politics of the places you visited. Maybe you were drawn to helping fellow travellers. Maybe you had a harder time than you expected, and you want to learn the skills to be more independent or confident. Whatever it was, pay attention to it, and let it influence your priorities and choices moving forward.
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Soutien à chaque étape
Your mental health matters. If you’re feeling depressed weeks after you’ve returned, and these tips aren’t working, talk to someone. A trusted adult or therapist can help you understand why the challenges of returning home have lingered and provide personalized guidance on how to address it.
Travelling is exciting! And everyday life can be, well, not. It’s normal to feel down, bored, or concerned that what you experienced will somehow vanish. Give yourself a chance to acclimate and take an active role in keeping the joy and lessons from travel close to you.
The wonderful thing about a big trip is that it will stay with you always.
Travel changes you
Hear it from Rylee, a student who experienced the transformational impact of travel in Costa Rica.
