My Anxious Vacation in Ireland: Flights, Finances, and Driving on the Left

Over the last couple of months, I’ve written about the anxiety I’ve been having regarding our vacation in Ireland. There’s been the overplanning, overscheduling, overspending, and the trying to make sure that everything went perfectly — like that was going to happen. I had anxiety about whether I would pack too much or too little, whether I could sleep on the plane, whether I could find things to eat comfortably (after recovering from dental surgery). Anxiety about whether I could find help with my mobility challenges in the airports and at my destinations. Anxiety about driving on the left. Et endless cetera.

As my therapist noted when I spoke to her after my return, it was good I took my anti-anxiety meds with me. (I made sure to pack them, even though I haven’t been taking them every day since consulting with my prescribing psychiatrist. I packed all my other psychotropics too, of course. I also carried my sleeping aid, which I’ve also stopped taking regularly, for the plane flights, but didn’t need it.)

Many of the anxieties I encountered in Ireland did indeed have to do with driving. I tried driving the rental car once, but I was too nervous to continue that. My husband ended up doing all the driving and I navigated. After some bad experiences with the GPS unit that the car rental company provided, we switched to using Google Maps on my phone, both of which fortunately worked in Ireland. I was in charge of transmitting the directions to Dan and trying to translate kilometers into miles for him.

One of the first difficulties we had before we defaulted to Google Maps was when we were heading to our first bed-and-breakfast reservation. The accommodations were arranged in advance by the travel company, so I didn’t have to have anxiety about where we were going to sleep each night.) The GPS took us on a series of narrow, stony roads that ended up with us running off the one lane and into a ditch. After the initial shock and the realization that we couldn’t simply rock the car out of it, though, I wasn’t really all that anxious, perhaps because it was late at night and I was emotionally as well as physically exhausted.

I had a flashlight in my purse (something I almost always carry). My husband took it and set off on foot to find help, while I waited with the car. In about half an hour he returned with a local couple of lovely, helpful people, who drove us and our luggage to the B&B (which was actually quite nearby). They also came back in the morning to pull the car out of the ditch and pulled out a minor dent for us, and they accepted a modest amount of Euros for all their help. All things considered, it could have been much worse. I fell into bed that night and slept soundly.

During the whole trip, I never got really used to the driving situation. Dan noticed that I was making humming noises as we drove and bracing my hand on the dashboard (or the roof) at times. He called this “vibrating” and gently reminded me that I had the anti-anxiety meds with me. Eventually, I got used to taking them every morning before we began our day’s wanderings. My vibration was particularly noticeable when we passed another car, or when I thought we were swerving too close to the edges of the road (the ditch situation made this seem all too plausible). Parking in cities – and indeed simply trying to navigate in them – also triggered my anxiety.

Then, there were the God-awful problems with our flights and our finances. Back in December, the airline had changed our flight out but never notified us about it, so we showed up at the airport four hours after our flight left. I spent several hours on the phone with the airline, our bank, and our credit card company trying to make arrangements for the first flight out the next day and the money to pay for it (since we were considered no-shows). Fortunately, I went into task-oriented mode (which I am sometimes capable of) and shuffled money and flights around before I collapsed. We did miss our scheduled first day in Ireland, though.

Getting a flight back was even worse. There was a problem with our COVID-19 certification (we needed an antigen test, not just a triple-vax card) and later flights were booked solid. In the end, we had to spend two days in a Dublin airport hotel while trying to make arrangements with a dying phone and no charging cable. Dan came through there too when I was at the end of my proverbial tether and managed somehow to get a replacement. But by then, we were out of money and I had to ask friends and family to PayPal us money for the extra nights in the hotel. It was all quite nerve-fraying and close to panic-inducing.

We’re back home now and I have settled down quite a bit, though I’m still dealing with financial repercussions, which have always been one of my major anxiety triggers. But I’m not taking the anti-anxiety pills daily anymore. And, as always, Dan is helping me.

The good news is that, throughout and despite all this, we managed to have a great time in Ireland. Sure, I had anxiety – and quite a bit of it – but I was still able to enjoy the country, the scenery, the food, the activities, and the wonderful people. We’re already talking about saving to go back.

For more, check out the Mighty Community’s list of tips for traveling with anxiety.