Vacations and Your Journey of Self Discovery

Posted: June 24, 2024

The expression “journey of self discovery” is a metaphor that is used very widely. To some, it might even seem cliche, but it is far more than that. It is rooted in the metaphor of human life as a journey, which as neurolinguistic research has shown, is one of the symbols that is most deeply rooted in the human psyche.

Photo by Ali Jabiyef

Given the deeply rooted character of this metaphor, we can expect it to appear in lots of different places in human life. We find it all through drama, literature and religion— consider the play O’Neil’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night or Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. We often find that people describe parts of their progress through life, or their whole life as a journey.

However, here’s something else to consider. The prime summer months of July and August are nearly upon us. This is often the time of year when people travel on vacations or family trips. Can the time of vacation or travel be a time when individuals are led to think about their “life journey”, and perhaps to gain a broader perspective on what is going on in their lives?

Time Off, Travel and Our Lives

What happens to our psyche, to our soul, when we take time off and travel? Well, to travel is to be in a different place, physically, than we were before we started to travel. It is also often true that travel brings us into a different place psychologically than we were in prior to beginning our journey.

We may well see things differently in our lives when we travel. In fact, I would say that travel invites us to see our lives in a different light. And that can be a very important thing.

Throughout the year, we may be fairly fixed in the pattern of our lives. We may go regularly to the same places, and engage in the same activities (work, shopping, recreation) in a fairly standard daily or weekly routine or pattern. The effect of this can be almost hypnotic. We can start to see our lives, and even our selves in a fairly standard, uniform, perhaps all-too-predictable way.

Travel can have the effect of shaking up these standard routines. Vacations can give us new and different experiences, experiences that may connect with parts of ourselves that our usual daily routine do not. New locations may lead us to feel things that we don’t usually feel, as we look at unfamiliar places, or perhaps lodge in places that are quite different than our usual accommodations. Also, we may have very different encounters with people, who may be very different from ourselves.

All of this journeying experience may lead to us looking at our regular routine lives differently. Perhaps for a time, we will view our life “as if from the outside”. From our temporary outsider viewpoint, we may be led to reflect on our lives, on what is really significant and important, and perhaps even on what it is that we actually want in our lives.

Turning Off and Tuning Out?

Of course, we don’t have to do any of this when we go on vacation, travel or take time off. Vacation can be a time when we just blank out. Or numb out. If we are dealing with anxiety and depression, it may be all too easy.

It can be tempting, given the busyness, continual stress and unrelenting demand that many of us face, to use vacation time as a time to simply collapse and “zone out”. Yet perhaps this is to refuse to go on a journey that has real importance for our lives, to decline the invitation that a vacation offers to us.

In vacation time, there may be the opportunity to see possibilities in our lives that we just haven’t seen before. The vacation may bring to us the call of our deepest selves, or what Jungians refer to as the Self.

All the Roads That Beckon: Travelling Our Journey of Self Discovery

The journey is a powerful metaphor for all the changes that we pass through in the course of our lives. Travel and vacation can be a powerful, very physical way of entering into experiences that shed light on the meaning of our lives, and also on the possibilities in our lives that may be waiting for us to see them and perhaps bring them to life.

What is waiting in your life, lying dormant, until you discover it, and bring it into your conscious awareness and your lived experience? In depth psychotherapy, we are often concerned with the “undiscovered self”, the parts of our experience that we have not lived out. At key points in our life, it can be a matter of crucial importance to identify possibilities, and even whole parts of ourselves that have not yet been lived out, and to explore the value and meaning that they have for us. In the famous worlds of the poet Robert Frost,

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less travelled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Working with a skilled and supportive depth psychotherapist can be a key part of discovering and exploring hitherto unexamined possibilities and potentials for renewal in our lives.

With very best wishes for your continuing personal journey,

Brian Collinson

Registered Psychotherapist and

Certified Jungian Analyst (IAAP)

Certified Clinical Anxiety Treatment Professional