Group Travel: How To Keep The Peace
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This message comes from the podcast Five Miles From Home. When a high school student disappears from a small Nevada town, a story of betrayal and shocking confessions emerges. Hosted by Dateline's Keith Morrison. Search Five Miles From Home to follow now.
Hey, let's go on a trip together. Let's get a bunch of friends or a few couples and I'll do a getaway. It sounds like an awesome idea at first. But say you're abroad in Africa and someone gets left out. I can remember being so angry. Or you're the lone introvert among a group of raging extroverts in the Balkans. It turned out to be one of the worst journeys I've ever been on in my life. Or people start hooking up on a semester abroad.
Couples started really quickly in the beginning and by the end had completely ruined the group dynamic.
Frayed nerves add to tension on getaways.
I had a time. Obviously not the way that you want the trips to go.
What are the common challenges of group travel?
And if you're not careful, that big camping trip you agreed to, the one that's supposed to be a fun time, is the last time for your friend group.
And we haven't done any group traveling since then.
It's vacation season. Getting together your favorite people for a getaway can make for great memories. But none of us want to make the kind of memories that we'll have to block out. This is your NPR Live Kit on navigating group travel. We've talked with conflict coaches, therapists, group tour guides, and globetrotters of all sorts to prepare you with the emotional goods for group travel. I'm Elise Hugh, a correspondent based at NPR West in Culver City. And those were the voices of Ariel Seabright-Wu, Amy Cato, Janet Webster, Akeem Bruce, and Heather Stevens. They are listeners whose relationships were put to the test, or worse, destroyed by traveling together. The goal sounds simple in theory but can be tough in practice.
To have a good time while avoiding the pitfalls and personality clashes that can come with traveling as a group. Surviving. No, thriving when you travel with other people. That's after the break.
This message comes from the podcast Five Miles From Home. When a high school student disappears from a small Nevada town, a story of betrayal and shocking confessions emerges. Hosted by Dateline's Keith Morrison. Search Five Miles From Home to follow now.
Travel and together can be a tricky combo because going away itself is already a lot on your senses.
The nature of travel is that you don't know what's coming and there are often glitches.
This is Lisa Kayes, Peace Corps volunteer turned therapist in private practice in Washington, D.C. She provides psychotherapy to individuals, couples and groups.
When we're at home and we have glitches, we know how to handle them. We know kind of what the routes are. If we need to make a detour, we know where the detour goes. We can get reoriented. But when you're traveling, there's this unknown piece about it that I think adds layers of stress. But then when you're also trying to manage social dynamics, so you're also trying to be nice and be friendly and have your best face forward, it's almost like it's too much.
So if you decide to go somewhere with a group of your friends or coworkers, takeaway number one is the most important one. Align your expectations in advance and agree on the ground rules for how to make decisions.
For instance, if you are traveling and somebody has the intention of sitting on the beach reading books and just vegging out and doing nothing and someone else thinks that they're going on a sightseeing tour, you're going to have instant conflict. And so you want to really talk about, you know, what are we looking for internally? in this trip.
You can call it what you want, pre-trip counseling or setting up a social contract. But when you do it, ask yourselves, why are we going on this trip? To relax or to work? To learn about history? To reunite a family? To conquer a physical challenge? Talk about the goal and intentions beforehand. And after the why is set, then you can move on to expectations for other potential problem areas.
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