Travel Time – by air

This a time of year when many of us are travelling, but spending time in planes, trains, and automobiles can be quite a challenge psychologically—and of these modes of transport, being airborne can be the most taxing.

Why?

• The pandemic has sensitized all of us to coughs and sneezes—so hearing them not makes us tense—even when they’re allergic reactions to the cat traveling in the next seat. When we’re stressed, wherever we are, our mood and our ability to process the information we’re gathering from the world around us and to get along with other people falls lower and lower.
• When we’re traveling on an airplane we’re also significantly stressed by the fact that we don’t have much control of the world around us once we step onto the plane. We can’t leave, or stand and move around when we want to, we can’t do much about the awful smell of the lunch our row-mate brought onto the plane, etc. We can turn on an off our light and fiddle with the fan overhead.     All this tension makes us less comfortable physically and also even more cognitively impaired.
• All sorts of things happen on planes that can add stress to our lives, mainly because we don’t understand them. Is that new noise an indication of an impending crash?  Is this turbulence normal?
• Our personal space is often invaded by the person sitting near to us—and these invasions aren’t just physical, they’re also olfactory and acoustic (as mentioned earlier). The worst situation is when the person in front of you must recline their seat fully, which leaves you unable to use your laptop or eat on your tray table.  In this situation, you’re also denied all but the most basic, basic sort of territory (you can sit down, but may not have even an arm rest to call your own).  We are only truly comfortable when we can establish a space around ourselves that is definitely ours (even if it’s tiny) via an iPad or book on a tray table, for instance.  We our stress levels will be high in a seat if all we have is a place to put our butt, if we’re lacking access to our tray table and to at least one of our arm rests and have no territory to call our own.
• We get dehydrated in the dry air on a plane which isn’t good for our wellbeing or mood or our cognitive performance—and may well give us a headache.
• The cabin pressure inside most planes is equivalent to an elevation at which our cognitive performance is impaired, we’re less alert—which is not great for problem solving what to do about the person who has reclined their seat all the way, etc.

What can you do on a plane to regain your sanity—at least some and from an environmental psychology perspective?

• Take advantage of the signalling devices at your disposal to signal to others nearby how you want to be treated—which may help some. Get out that eye mask so you are allowed to snooze.  Put in those earphones to tell others you want to be left alone.
• Listen to calming (less than 50 – 70 beats per minute) music and nature sounds (the sort that you might find in a meadow on a lovely Spring day). The number of beats per minute in a piece of music can often be found on Google.
• Bring a distraction such as a book you’ve been wanting to read for fun.
• Look out of the window at the clouds—they’re natural fractals and seeing those sorts of patterns is relaxing.
• Try not to make eye contact with other passengers; it’s great that all of the seats in planes face in the same direction.
• Drink water.
• Bring a no-smell snack.
• Wear clothes that are soft to the touch, not itchy or stiff.
• Be understanding of others. We’re all flying while “impaired.”