Everyone handles homesickness in their own different way. You could be away from home for a variety of reasons such as college, volunteering, or traveling for an extended period of time. There are some tricks that can help to reduce the effects of being homesick. So, how to cope with homesickness?
It is not fun feeling homesick but there are a few tricks that can help with homesickness or even prevent it from bothering you at all. Doing simple things such as staying in regular contact with home, keeping yourself busy, and making new friends will help with homesickness.
In this post, we will go through how to cope with homesickness. Let’s get started!
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What Is Homesickness?
Homesickness is a form of depression and anxiety that is caused by being away from home. This can affect children and adults. This affects people taking a short trip to an extended trip.
Let’s go through simple ways to manage homesickness.
How To Cope With Homesickness?
There are techniques to cope with homesickness that do not resolve the issue but help to reduce the effects of homesickness.
Here are a couple of tips for coping with homesickness.
Maintain Contact With Home
In this day and age of social media, there is no excuse for not being in contact with home. People may be busy with work, university, or other commitments. And, they might be in different time zones.
To avoid that homesick feeling. It is important to have fixed or regular dates set to make that call on Skype, Facetime, Viber, Whatsapp, and Line regularly.
Compare schedules and plan those calls so that you also have something to look forward to.
Get Out And Do Something
It is not good to sit in your hotel, hostel, or guesthouse room all day. You will start to get bored and the feeling of homesickness will get worse. Keep yourself entertained, engaged, and active by searching for something to do.
That can be through any number of things like joining a club, going scuba diving, going to the beach and there is plenty to do.
Make New Friends
This is probably the easiest tip to deal with homesickness. As you travel, you will encounter other people in a similar situation with similar interests.
There is also the option to interact with the locals if you are traveling.
Explore Your Surroundings
One of the top reasons we can feel homesick is that we are unfamiliar with our new surroundings. Go for walks to explore your new town or city and soon you will feel more at home.
Exercise
If you can only manage a brisk walk outside, then go for it. If you can work out at home or in a gym, do it. Exercise is a major stress reliever, aside from being great for your mind and body.
Get Into A Daily Routine
While traveling, life can be full of inconsistency, instability, and surprises, so get into a daily routine.
Take-Home With You
Before your trip, be sure to pack a couple of items from your home that may remind you of it when the homesick feelings begin to strike.
Alternatively, why not shift the annual family or friendship group vacation to your country of stay?
Stay Positive
A little easier said than done but homesickness is prone to negative thinking. Learn to think positively. Carrying a positive attitude around with you will help you to combat homesickness in a major way.
Documenting Your Trip
One of the best ways to deal with homesickness is to write about your experiences. Whether it is starting a blog, a YouTube channel, or a simple travel journal to record your adventures.
It is a way for your family and friends back home to keep up with what you are at while on your travels.
USEFUL TRAVEL RESOURCES
Book Accommodation
Booking.com has a large range of properties from hotels, hostels, guesthouses, and resorts where you will find the best deals. Airbnb and Hostelworld also have a good range of places to stay at good prices.
Booking Flight
Skyscanner is a flight search comparison website that searches millions of flights all at once. Ultimately it is the best flight comparison website online at the moment.
Booking Transportation & Things To Do
Rome2rio and 12Go are useful to plan how to get anywhere by searching train, bus, car, and ferry routes. Especially useful in countries like Vietnam or Thailand. While Klook is great for exploring things to do in each place.
Travel Insurance
Travel insurance is cheap and more than likely you will never need to use it but you will have peace of mind if something does happen, you are covered in case of an emergency. World Nomads have great customer service and competitive prices.
Check out our resource page for the best companies to use when you travel.
Wrapping Up
Finally, it is not fun feeling homesick but there are a few tricks that can help with homesickness or even prevent it from bothering you at all. Doing simple things such as staying in regular contact with home, keeping yourself busy, and making new friends will help with homesickness.
And that’s it for now! I’d love it if this post on how to cope with Homesickness was helpful to you. Let me know if you have any questions and let me know if there is more to add.