Anxious in Ireland

So not us.

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…