Go on a Introvacanza, the introvert solo-adventure vacation

Daily life and family/adventure holidays can be too overwhelming for a highly sensitive person (HSP) or someone suffering from high-functioning anxiety. Take an introvacanza instead! It's not a meditative retreat nor an organized singles holiday, it is a trip to get your inspiration back on track. -July 10, 2016

Last week I went on what I now call an introvacanza, a solo-adventure vacation for the introverted idealist soul suffering from constant anxieties. In this post I will try to make clear what an introvacanca is what it is not.

Definitions

What is a vacation or holiday anyway. Vacation comes from the latin verb vacare which means to be unoccupied. A vacation is freedom from obligations and duty, which is traditionally used for the summer break. A holiday is a special day of rest as opposed to a day of work. It comes from the words Holy Day and refers to the religious days of rest. So both definitions suggest that you should take a break from your regular chores, and to take it easy. In practice, taking a long holiday often means going to a preferably sunny place to do nothing on the beach or to be super active in hiking, visiting museums and other fun or cultural places. For someone with HSP or suffering from (high-functioning) anxieties this is not a break from being overwhelmed.

The introvacanza

The introvacanca is also a type of holiday. In a way it is about taking rest and not doing your regular chores. And like most holidays in practice it does not merely mean being unoccupied.

Going solo

A very important choice you have to make is to go solo. Even if you are married with children or have a pack of super close friends, I still suggest going solo. Why? As an introvert we need the time and surroundings to be just right to let our mind to unload. Once you have other people around you during your trip you will be constantly pressed to think about their wishes as well and to adjust schedules and plan ahead. This goes especially for the people you are closest to such as your direct family or best friends. It is also nice to calm your anxieties, and to not constantly fight your social anxiety.

Solo vacations are all the rage right now. But when I check what the agencies focused on solo travelers are offering it sounds like hell to me. First of all they often group solo travelers in the same category as singles and you travel in large groups of at least 10 people. Basically they assume if you travel solo you are either lonely or in need of a new relationship (or a relationship excursion).

To make matters worse they tout that you do not have to pay a singles tax for traveling alone, but, and here it gets funny, that does mean you have to share your room with a group mate. Ugh.

Do not get me wrong, with the term traveling solo I do not mean that you should not meet any people, but meeting those people should be by chance in certain context to make it interesting, not in a predefined group you suddenly have to identify and interact with. Sometimes sleeping in a dorm room of a hostel with strangers is fine, because you choose it and it is temporary. It might trigger some anxieties though.

The purpose of the introvacanza

If you lead a perfectly balanced life you probably do not need one. But like many hard working people that need a longer period of rest so does the idealist introvert need one too. But what for?

In our daily life we are filled with impressions, highly sensitive persons would call it being overwhelmed. In our work other people demand things from us, our family expects things from us and at the same time we are bombarded by inspirational material in your Facebook timeline, in movies, newspapers and daily conversations. But when do we really get the time to bring back the harmony. To let the input sink in, to remove anyone requiring output from us and just letting our brain create output just for the sake of it. If we create during our daily lives it is mostly like cooking with other peoples recipes and adding your special sauce to it.

That voice in your head pushing you to do more and let no moment go to waste, or the one that urges you to do things perfectly, or that we need to please to be accepted should be disarmed so that other voices such as your platful child come out.

I have noticed that taking an hour of rest in my fortress of solitude is not enough. It will calm me down and sometimes trigger new creative ideas but the time is usually just not there to let the idea grow in leisure and for me to grab it and write it down or work on it. I need a few days for that.

Location and daily routine

I am not going to tell you where to go because the world is big and varies even more. Personally, I would suggest going far enough to not be reminded of your typical surroundings. So pick a place with a different accent or way of life. I don't like the hustle and bustle of cities so I would avoid that, although really big cities offer anonymity while giving a sense of being among people. Being alone in your tent in the mountains is simply too scary for most of us. Try to balance quietness and a level of service or commodities so you don't have to spend half your day worrying about finding a place to eat in time. This is important if you are suffering from constant anxiety.

This is my daily routine. I get up when I wake up. I only set the alarm so I do not miss breakfast. Take your time at breakfast and take your notebook or dummy. If you stay at a hotel and the breakfast is a buffet it gives me great pleasure to observe the other guests and discover how they go about their breakfast routines and how they avoid looking at each other. After eating you can grab an extra infusion tea, or coffee if caffeine does not bother you, and open your notebook again. Start jotting down topics. If you don't know what to write down here you might as well go home because you probably don't need a introvacanza.

In the late morning I am staring with a hike. I do more or less plan it such that I know I will arrive somewhere in the afternoon and I bring enough supplies to not need a restaurant or cafe on the road. In my experience, even of you plan your route to pass a nice restaurant it will probably be closed, out of business or foreclosed by the time you arrive. Take at least savoury and sweet stuff, fatty stuff and plenty of water.

Now start your hike. If you are like me then a flurry of ideas will start flowing. Sometimes they will be related to the topics you wrote down during breakfast, more often it will not be. At some point I always start to find symbols along the route that refer to the current state of my life and soon the whole trip becomes a metaphor for life. Anyway, your job is to jot down those thoughts. You might sit down on a bench or stone or tree and take a few minutes to write down what you have been thinking. By the time the insects have found their way to your blood you are on your way again. Sometimes I keep my notebook in my hands and write while walking slowly. Do not do this near a cliff or that pretty scenery you would miss. If you are comfortable talking into a voice recorder you can do that too but I think that is silly, even when I am all alone in the forest.

The idea here is to let your mind offload all the thoughts it has been cropping up. It is a bit like zen meditation but not quite. With meditation you let the thoughts come and go until they stay away. That is peachy for worries and 'ego' thoughts but the idealist brain will have acquiesced in those worries when he made the commitment to go on a introvacanza. The thoughts he has now are ideas and observations that are either a waste to let go by or they will come back at a later time. So while hiking is a meditative activity we will use it to diverge on all kinds of thoughts.

In the afternoon you take a well deserved rest from the hiking. And in the evening you grab your laptop or tablet or other notebook, you pick a topic and you start to flesh out the ideas one at a time. You do this at leisure, with a good meal, a proper drink that you will also enjoy to the fullest. Let the ideas come together in the quiet of the encompassing onset of darkness.

And when the time is up and it is time for bed, you stop. Tomorrow you will continue. You will notice that after a day or two in my case, my mind will be empty during the hikes. You can then make them shorter and spend more time working out your ideas. The danger in this is that working on your ideas becomes work and our pusher voice is telling us to continue working on it, our perfectionist voice wants to keep improving it and our pleasing voice will worry about the people that may read your ideas.

Other do's and don'ts

Cut off your email. You don't want to be confronted by colleagues with new deadlines or things you forgot to do before you left. To be fair, try to not leave any task open or you will spend your time worrying and then you do need to add a few meditation sessions to your introvacanza. Remove your Facebook, Twitter and whatnot app. Make sure you can send 'I'm peachy!' messages every other day to tell your loved ones you are safe. But do not share photo's or your ideas. You are not collecting your ideas to be admired straight away, you write them down to get it out of your system. Let the other people have their rest from you as well.

Take things slowly and enjoy the world around you. If you notice setbacks, see them as symbols for your situation, smile at them and find a workaround.