mini: four mental health skills for your next family vacation

welcome to the mental health minis series! every other monday, we will feature a five-minute mini-episode with content from a past she persisted episode. this week’s episode is a solo episode on navigating family vacation this summer. 

in this mini-episode, you'll learn my top four tips for maintaining your mental health (and having fun!) while away on a family vacation. 

to listen to the full episode, click ⁠⁠HERE⁠⁠!

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Happy Monday and welcome to yourmental health mini.
This week we have a solo and youare going to learn my top 4
tips. For maintaining.
Your mental health. And having fun.
While away on a family vacation.We are in the summer season and
there's a lot more holiday weekends.
If you're out of school, whetheryou're in high school or
college, you're probably spending a lot more time with
family and that can bring up a lot of emotions.

(00:21):
Your coping skills are really tested and especially if you're
not used to that level of familytime, it can be challenging.
I think going into any social commitment, especially family
vacations or family time, it's really important to be aware of
what your social battery is and at what point you stop showing
up as your best self. And so I think over the past

(00:42):
couple of years, I've gotten much better at identifying what
that line is for me and at what point I need more time to myself
and how many hours a day or how many days I can show up as the
best version of myself where I'mlike, OK, gonna need to read my
book for a while, gonna need to sit here quietly and not
actively engage. And having that awareness has

(01:03):
allowed me to show up is a much better version of myself.
Rather than expecting myself to show up 100 percent, 24 hours a
day, seven days a week, and getting really irritable and
snappy and not making it an enjoyable experience for
everyone else. The second thing I would do from
a preventative planning perspective going into family
vacations is be really intentional and proactive about

(01:28):
coping skills and how you're going to tolerate distress if
that arises. And if you're someone that's
like, I am expecting a lot of distress.
I am just trying to make it through this family vacation
scaffold that a lot make a list.Like if I feel angry, I'm
calling this person. If I'm just feeling a little bit
anxious, I'll text this friend. I am making sure that I am
getting this many hours of sleepevery night and getting enough

(01:51):
food so I'm not hungry. And you're doing like everything
possible to give yourself the best chance emotionally.
And you have a list on your phone and you're like, I'm going
to use the tip scale or I'm going to make sure I know where
the gym is in case I need to do some intense exercise.
And I'm going to remember to do my deep breathing and my phone
screen is square breathing, whatever it is.
So you could really scaffold it or you can have a more flexible

(02:12):
approach and be like, I've brought books.
So I have like a socially acceptable way to kind of be
more introverted and spend some time to myself.
I'm going to make sure that I text and check in with friends
like twice throughout the week just so that I'm able to let out
any stress if needed. I feel good about my ability to
set a boundary or bring up something challenging with
family members, so however much scaffolding you need, but

(02:32):
definitely have some idea and intentionality around like
coping skills and what to do if things get overwhelming.
The next thing that I would alsosay is helpful on family
vacations, and this is somethingthat my family has kind of
evolved and adapted over the years, is having more open
communication and feedback around how trips have gone.

(02:53):
I think we've all like, in hindsight been like that was
really stressful and there was alot of arguing happening or
like, you know what, that was great.
Everyone was like in a good mood.
We all participated. There was a good balance of like
relaxing and doing activities. And we started to be more vocal
about that and kind of just likediscussing how that went.
And it's great when my parents are like, you guys did a great

(03:14):
job on that trip and we were so proud of how you showed up and
got to spend time with everyone or everyone was like really
effective and responsible. Or you know what, it was busy.
And I think we're all feeling a little stressed and overwhelmed
after that. Or would have been great to have
some more time where we had likedown days and just kind of hang
out rather than be like go, go, go, go, go the entire time.

(03:36):
And I think it's a family that'sallowed us to be more
intentional with how we plan things.
Shout out to my parents who are often times planning things, but
we also will sometimes take on some of the planning roles with
like dinners or lunches or reservations.
And so when people are communicating about how they
think the bounds of the trip is going, then whoever's planning,
whether it's us or my parents are able to pick, OK, we'll do

(03:57):
three nights where we'll go to dinner and then one night maybe
we'll plan for like a chillaxed,just hang out casual night.
Or we'll do like 2 nice dinners where we all get dressed up and
it's a whole thing. And then the other night we'll
do something much more chill andcasual and we can just kind of
go and hang out and not have that be like a three hour long
situation. And I know it's harder like as a
kid to be the one like starting that conversation.

(04:18):
But I think even if you're just doing it casually, it can be a
great way to kind of kind of make sure everyone's on the same
page and knows what their boundaries and limits are.
Another thing that's been reallyhelpful for me going into trips
is kind of having some idea of what the activities or itinerary
is going to be. And this could be like we are
flying on these days and we havedinner reservations on these

(04:42):
days throughout the week or thisplace is nice.
This place is more casual and I'm a little type anxiety prone.
I like to kind of plan these things and understanding like
when there will be times to realize and when there's times
where we're meeting up with friends, that's really helpful
for me to plan and not have thatanxiety of like, Oh my gosh, I
don't know when I'm going to have to be like socially on and

(05:03):
go, go, go for the entire day. And so if you can, asking for
like a general idea of what that's going to look like.
And even if you're listening andyou're like an adult and you're
planning your own trip with friends, I think this is
something that's really easy to do for yourself and putting it
on your calendar. That's kind of the TLDR here is
like when you were on any kind of trip or vacation or in a new
environment, you're not able to be an autopilot and use your

(05:27):
same skills and routines and you're not seeing the same
people that you do most of the time.
And so your support system is going to look a little bit
different. Your daily routine is going to
look different. So you have to be more
intentional and proactive and expect maybe a little bit more
distressed than you would in your home environment if you.
Enjoyed this week's mental Health mini?
You can listen to the full episode.
It is episode 195 with yours truly.

(05:48):
A link to the full episode is inthe show notes.
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Thanks so much for listening.