4 Ways Solo Travel Can Improve Your Relationship With Yourself

Have you ever felt so overwhelmed, lost, or disconnected from yourself and immediately thought, “I need to get away?” If so, you’re definitely not alone. In fact, this is a driving force behind many people’s decisions to travel solo.

Solo travel has become a popular trend for many people. Rather than waiting for others to join you, why not plan a trip or adventure on your own terms? Not to mention, the benefits of solo travel extend far beyond exploring beautiful locations. In fact, traveling alone can support personal growth and healing. 

Here are four ways that solo travel can help you deepen your self-intimacy. 

1. Forces you to trust and rely on yourself

When you’re traveling solo, you’re basically forced to rely on yourself. You have to trust your own instincts, make your own decisions, and take care of yourself the way a loved one would. 

For example, if you get lost, it’s on you to find your way back and keep yourself safe. If you get sick, you’ll have to nurse yourself back to health. This might feel intimidating or even terrifying at times, especially if you’ve been conditioned to believe you can’t trust yourself. 

For those of us who doubt our own abilities or intuitions, solo travel can be deeply uncomfortable. But it can also be exactly what you need to build self-reliance, resilience, and independence. 

2. Gets you out of your comfort zone

I recently read “The World Tour of Oopsies: Chapter 2 – The Bucket Shower” on TravelAwaits by Tay Belgeri, writer and traveler. In her post, she shared that—while solo traveling—she came across a bucket shower.

“It wasn’t actually the bucket shower that tripped me up,” she explained. “Though I was new to the setup in which you scoop water from a large basin and toss it over your body between scrubbing, it wasn’t overwhelming for me. Did I miss warm water? Sure. But after days spent working in high temperatures, cold-water bucket showers were a refreshing treat.”

However, taking a communal bucket shower truly threw her out of her comfort zone. 

“I grew up in a Catholic family in Missouri. Even verbally, we didn’t show a lot of affection,” she explained. “Something like a hug was reserved for a graduation or a funeral. The idea of washing together with another person while fully naked (in a platonic sense, at least) had never drifted onto my radar.”

Still, Belgeri didn’t let this stop her from joining her new travel friend in the washing room, where the two took turns washing and rinsing each other.

Why? Her travels provided her with a different environment where she could safely step out of her comfort zone.

“I was in a faraway place—a magical, safe place where everything I’d ever known was up for reinterpretation.”

3. Encourages self-reflection

As mentioned above, when you solo travel, you’re pretty much thrown into an entirely new setting, surrounded by unfamiliar faces and lifestyles. This change in your environment typically encourages one to self-reflect. Don’t be surprised if you experience an identity crisis of sorts.

For example, you might discover deep truths about yourself. Maybe you realize you’re more extroverted than you thought, now that you’re surrounded by like-minded people. You might question the values you previously held close to your heart. Or perhaps all that alone time sheds light on some emotional wounds that still need healing.

4. Challenges limiting beliefs 

Belgeri’s bucket shower debacle didn’t just get her out of her comfort zone—it challenged her previously limiting beliefs, like most solo travel adventures do.

“I came from a place where nudity focused almost solely on sexual contexts,” Belgeri wrote on TravelAwaits. “Women I had known my entire life wouldn’t have gotten naked with me, even in a utilitarian, platonic bucket-shower way. Or if they did, it would have been palpably tense.”

“Very quickly after the bucket shower, I realized travel would teach me more about myself than it would about the world,” she wrote.

She went on to explore the concept of Edward Said’s book Orientalism, which basically explains that “when we travel, we situate the world according to our pre-held beliefs, rather than letting what we experience change how we understand the world,” Belgeri wrote.

“We filter what we experience through our own pre-held beliefs, like a light through a prism. The light that enters is one and the same, but the prism’s conditions change how light is refracted through it. The prism is culture, geography, language, history, and all the other factors that generate a people; the light is consciousness.”

If you allow yourself to push your own boundaries and question your previous beliefs, you can return from your solo travels as a completely changed and free individual.