Travel won't fix your problems. Here's why.
When your travel addiction isn't really about travel at all
It usually starts late at night, when the weight of the day feels heaviest. You find yourself drawn to flight search engines, scrolling through destinations that blur together in a promise of escape: pristine beaches, charming cobblestone streets, sunsets over ancient cities. But you're not really seeing the destinations. You're seeing yourself somewhere—anywhere—else, in a place where your current problems can't follow. The specific location stops mattering because what you're really searching for isn't a place. It's relief.
I know this pattern intimately because I've lived it, watched it consume me, and finally understood what it was trying to tell me. That magnetic pull toward "anywhere but here" has nothing to do with wanderlust. It's the voice of something deeper, something we're trying desperately not to hear.
In 2021, my family and I embarked on an ambitious project: visiting 21 resorts in a single year. On paper, it was the perfect pivot. We had just closed our decade-old martial arts school due to the pandemic, switched our daughters to homeschooling, and finally had the geographic freedom we'd never experienced before. The timing seemed meant to be, like the universe was opening a door just as another closed.
But beneath the surface lay an uncomfortable truth: we weren't just moving toward a new opportunity. We were running away from the grief of letting go of our previous business—a dream we'd poured our hearts into for over a decade.
Our martial arts school wasn't just a place where people trained. It was where life-changing transformations happened. Bullied kids who came to learn self-defense found something more powerful—the kind of confidence that meant they never had to throw a punch. Students who'd been told they'd face lifelong health struggles completely turned their lives around, losing 50 pounds and reversing dire medical diagnoses through dedication and hard work. We watched love stories unfold as people who met in our kickboxing classes ended up walking down the aisle. We celebrated countless milestones with our community: graduations, promotions, pregnancies, first homes. When you close a small business, you're not just shutting down a revenue stream. You're laying to rest a dream that represented everything you hoped to create in the world. A piece of you dies with it. And that kind of grief doesn't disappear just because you're standing on a pristine beach in the Maldives.
Social media knows exactly how to feed this impulse to run. Our feeds overflow with carefully curated images of digital nomads living seemingly frictionless lives—working from infinity pools in Bali, running profitable businesses between beach yoga sessions and sunset cocktails. Most of us know these narratives are crafted to sell courses or coaching programs, yet they still strike a nerve. They tap into that voice inside us whispering that if we could just get away, everything would somehow fall into place. That voice is lying, but it's lying in an incredibly seductive way.
The pattern sneaks up on you gradually. At first, travel feels like medicine—each trip a shot of adrenaline making life more vibrant, more bearable. But soon you need stronger doses. Weekend getaways turn into week-long escapes. One vacation blurs into the next. You find yourself planning your next trip before you've even unpacked from the last one, because the thought of sitting still with your reality feels unbearable. The moments between travels start feeling like holding your breath underwater, just waiting until you can come up for air again.
You might recognize these patterns in your own life if you've ever caught yourself in those 2 AM flight searches, not even bothering to check destinations because anywhere would be better than here. Or maybe you've noticed how your credit card statements tell a story of incremental escape—weekend trips turning into longer getaways, each return home feeling a little more hollow than the last. The time between travels starts to feel like you're just going through the motions, waiting for your next chance to feel alive again.
This isn't about wanderlust or adventure-seeking. True wanderlust pulls you toward something—specific experiences, cultures, or places that spark your curiosity. This other thing, this need to escape, pushes you away from your life with an urgency that should be a warning sign. It's the difference between running toward something and running away from everything.
The solution isn't to stop traveling. That would be like treating a fever while ignoring the infection causing it. Instead, we need to create lives that we don't feel compelled to escape from. This means facing what we've been avoiding—whether it's a relationship that's not working, a career that's lost its meaning, or dreams we've let slip away. It means asking ourselves hard questions about what we're really trying to leave behind every time we open that flight search app.
But facing these bigger truths doesn't mean we have to solve everything at once. Sometimes the first step toward building a more fulfilling life is simply breaking the cycle of constant escape. For me, this started with creating small anchors in my daily life—simple pleasures and routines that gave me reasons to stay present instead of always planning my next getaway. It wasn't about profound transformation at first. It was as simple as my morning coffee ritual. Even after breaking my caffeine dependency, I kept my daily cup because I genuinely love the smell and taste of it. It's just a small bright spot in my day, but it's mine.
These little moments of joy look different for everyone. Maybe it's a standing dinner date with friends that gives you something to anticipate all week. Perhaps it's a morning walk that gets you out of your head for a bit. Or it could be treating yourself to that beautiful notebook you've been eyeing and your favorite pen—because sometimes the simple pleasure of good paper and smooth ink is enough to make journaling feel less like a chore and more like a treat.
The hardest part is learning to find adventure in the everyday without diminishing your spirit. We're often told to "be grateful" for our normal lives, as if wanting more is a character flaw. But it's not about lowering your expectations or settling for less. It's about expanding your definition of what makes life rich. Sometimes that means finally trying the family-owned restaurant you've passed a thousand times but never entered. Other times it's about saying yes to experiences you've dismissed as too touristy or obvious—like finally taking that city tour in your own hometown and seeing your familiar world through fresh eyes.
Most importantly, it's about getting comfortable with stillness. When you're constantly moving, it's because you're trying to create enough noise to drown out something inside you: unprocessed grief, suppressed anger, unspoken truths, abandoned dreams. Those feelings are patient. They'll wait. They'll be there when you check into your hotel room, when you're staring out the airplane window, when you're standing in front of that breathtaking view feeling strangely empty. They'll follow you to every destination until you finally turn around and face them.
Sometimes what we interpret as an urge to travel is really a desperate need for something else entirely. The desire to book a spa retreat might really be your body begging for consistent rest. That sudden urge to fly to Paris alone could be about needing to rediscover parts of yourself that got lost in the roles you play for others. The constant planning of family vacations might really be about craving deeper connections with your loved ones in everyday life.
Because here's the truth that no amount of airline miles can change: if you're deeply unhappy with your life, no distance will be far enough. Even if you become a permanent nomad, eventually life will call you back—for a wedding, a birth, a funeral, a reunion. And those unprocessed feelings will be waiting right where you left them, probably with compound interest.
Travel should be about enhancement, not escape. The most meaningful trips happen when you're running toward something—curiosity, growth, connection, wonder—not away from everything else. The goal isn't to escape your life, but to create one that feels worth staying present for. One where traveling adds color to an already vibrant canvas instead of being the only thing making it worth looking at.
Question for you:
Have you ever taken a trip thinking it would be a reset, only to realize your problems followed you there? What did you learn from the experience? Share in the comments 👇
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Carmen Van Kerckhove is a writer and speaker whose work explores how technology intersects with social class and cultural change, reshaping the way we live and work. Her essays challenge conventional wisdom about success, ambition, and identity, offering a provocative lens on what comes next for a generation caught between collapsing systems and emerging possibilities.
Based in New York City, Carmen speaks at keynotes, conferences, leadership summits, and company retreats.
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Welp… that was the gentle slap of reality I didn’t know I ordered. 😅
Carmen, I came across this well-expressed post today and immediately thought of the title of a book I read years ago. It was called “Wherever You Go, There You Are” by Jon Kabat Zinn. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!