When her relationship ended in September of last year, Leah Castillo knew she had to get out of San Luis Obispo, California. Her apartment was littered with reminders of a recent string of belly-up relationships—including the woman who, she’d just discovered, had been with someone else. She moved out of her apartment, packed up her Mitsubishi Outlander, and headed to Zion National Park.
“There were reminders of my heartbreak everywhere and I was left pretty broken. I felt extremely undesirable, my self-worth had taken a hit, and I could not escape the insecurity and doubt I had about myself,” says Castillo. “I couldn't stay where I was and heal properly. But I knew that if I was in some desolate canyon in Utah, my past experiences would be nowhere to be found.” She began a two-month journey through the American Southwest, where she camped in national parks, taught herself how to fly fish, and angry-cried as she drove her car across the desert.
Cutting your hair, quitting your job, moving cities—trying to reclaim a sense of control after a break up is a common reaction when life is flipped upside down. It's no wonder, then, that travel has long been an appealing coping mechanism. It offers the separation of routine, new connections, and, importantly, a chance to focus on the self. Love it or loathe it, there’s a reason Eat, Pray, Love struck a chord with so many.
But what role can travel really play in the healing process?
“After a breakup, you're going through withdrawal—the dopamine, the oxytocin, the serotonin, all those hormones that love produces for you are no longer there,” says Kathleen Hendrik Ebbitt, a New York City-based therapist in the Alma network who moved to Mexico City following her own breakup two years ago. “It's a really scary space to be in, to need to acclimate to what the brain is when you're no longer in love. One reason that I think travel can be really great after a breakup is that it can stimulate your brain and encourage new connections within your cerebral matter.”
Those benefits begin before you even leave home, experts say. Not only is there distraction in putting together your great escape, but it offers a more practical reason to stop sifting through the wreckage of the split and begin thinking about what comes next. “When you are in the pain and darkness of a separation, people get very stuck in the past,” says Amy Chan, a former relationship columnist and founder of Renew Breakup Bootcamp retreats, which take place in upstate New York and California. “[People] go into spirals of what should have happened, what shouldn’t have happened, and that’s what really keeps them stuck. Travel can be helpful because you put something in the calendar to look forward to. That shift of focus gives a little bit of hope.”