Published on: Mon Aug 03 2026
By Gregory Harmeling, Psy.D., LMFT

Why Therapists Are Prescribing Travel

The Science Behind Healing Through Movement

For the last several articles in this series, we have sat with something heavy: what it looks like when a relationship quietly erodes a man’s sense of self, and how long it can take to name it. That work matters, and it does not stop here. But recovery is not only about understanding what happened. At some point, it also becomes about proving to yourself, in a felt, physical way, that life can feel different. That is where this next chapter of the series begins, with a question I hear from clients more than almost any other once the fog starts to lift: what do I do now?

My answer, more often than clients expect from a therapist, involves a suitcase. Not because travel is a cure, and not because a week in a new city erases years of coercive control or narcissistic abuse. It does not. But a growing body of research suggests that travel does something specific and measurable to a nervous system that has spent too long braced for impact. It gives that nervous system real, sensory evidence that safety and novelty can coexist, which is exactly the kind of evidence recovery depends on.

The Body Keeps Score, and Travel Can Help Rewrite It

A 2025 systematic review published in Tourism Review examined more than two decades of research on the psychophysiological effects of travel, drawing on data from over 2,100 studies (Petrick & Wang, 2025). The review’s central finding was straightforward: travel reliably reduces both perceived and actual stress, and people who take more vacations tend to be healthier than those who do not. Several of the studies included in the review also found that these effects compound over time. It is not the length of any single trip that matters most; it is the frequency of stepping away that appears to move the needle on long-term health.

The same review carefully notes that travel is not uniformly beneficial. Poorly planned trips, financial strain, or conflict with travel companions can just as easily raise stress as lower it. The takeaway for recovery is not “book any flight,” but that intentional, well-structured time away from your usual environment is one of the more evidence-backed tools available for interrupting a chronic stress response, provided it is approached with the same care you would bring to any other part of your healing.

Why the Nervous System Responds to Nature and Novelty

A 2024 scoping review in the Therapeutic Recreation Journal examined 25 studies on nature-based programs for people who had experienced trauma (Stevens & Truong, 2024). Three themes ran through nearly all of them: nature-based experiences gave people genuine respite from trauma symptoms, built and strengthened relationships with others, and supported the kind of intrapersonal growth that talk therapy alone often struggles to achieve. Being outside, moving through unfamiliar terrain, and engaging with an environment not tied to painful memories appear to do something that sitting in an office and discussing the past cannot fully replicate.

There is also a specific cognitive mechanism worth understanding. A study published in the journal Stress examined cognitive flexibility, the brain’s ability to shift between ways of thinking, in individuals with PTSD following a structured nature adventure intervention (Zabag et al., 2020). Trauma tends to lock the mind into rigid, threat-oriented patterns of thinking. The researchers found that nature-based adventure experiences, which demand ongoing adaptation to new and unpredictable conditions, were associated with measurable improvements in that flexibility. In plain terms, an unfamiliar trail or an unfamiliar city asks something different of your brain than your usual routine does, and that difference itself appears to be part of the therapeutic value.

Why This Often Lands Differently for Men

Many of the men I work with are highly capable of analyzing what happened to them. What they struggle with is trusting themselves again, particularly after a relationship where their instincts were consistently undermined or dismissed. Rebuilding that trust through conversation alone is slow going for a lot of men, not because insight does not matter, but because self-trust is often rebuilt through direct, embodied experience rather than through more analysis.

A 2022 study in the Journal of Experiential Education looked at mental health outcomes for military veterans, most of them men, who participated in a peer-led therapeutic adventure program (Bettmann et al., 2022). The researchers found meaningful improvements in overall mental health symptoms among participants. Adventure-based approaches like this one are not a replacement for clinical treatment, and the researchers are clear on that point, but they offer something clinical treatment alone often cannot: a physical, present-tense experience of capability. Navigating unfamiliar ground and coming out the other side is a different kind of proof than understanding, on paper, that you are capable. For a lot of men, especially those who have spent months or years being told, directly or indirectly, that they could not handle things on their own, that proof matters.

The Emerging Field of Travel Psychiatry

This connection between travel and mental health has grown substantial enough that it now has its own name in the clinical literature. A 2021 paper in BJPsych Bulletin describes travel psychiatry as an emerging field examining how travel intersects with mental health treatment, both as a risk to be managed in vulnerable patients and, increasingly, as a resource that can be intentionally incorporated into care (Flaherty et al., 2021). The authors are not suggesting travel replaces medication or psychotherapy. They are suggesting that the mental health field has been slow to formally recognize something many clinicians already do informally, which is to treat travel as a legitimate part of a recovery plan rather than a break from it.

What Prescribing Travel Actually Looks Like

None of this means the answer to relationship trauma is an expensive vacation. Escapism dressed up as healing is still escapism, and a trip taken to avoid feelings rather than process them will not produce the benefits described above. The research is specific about what helps: intentional time away, engagement with unfamiliar or natural environments, and enough structure that the trip itself does not become another source of stress.

In practice, this can be far more modest than it sounds. A weekend hiking somewhere you have never been. A solo trip that puts you in unfamiliar territory without the buffer of your usual routines and relationships. Even a day trip to an unfamiliar part of your own city, approached with real intention rather than as a distraction, can offer a small dose of the same novelty that the research points to. What matters is not the price tag or the distance covered. What matters is giving your nervous system a genuine, felt experience that the world can be safe, engaging, and yours to navigate again.

This is also where this series shifts. The last several articles focused on recognizing harm. This one, and the ones that follow, focus on what comes after recognition: the deliberate, sometimes uncomfortable work of building a life that does not just avoid what hurt you, but actively moves toward something better. Travel is one tool for that work. It is not the only one, and it will not be the last one covered in this series, but it is a place worth starting.

References

  • Bettmann, J. E., Anderson, I., Makouske, J., & Hanley, A. (2022). Mental health outcomes of peer-led therapeutic adventure for military veterans. Journal of Experiential Education, 45(3), 295–315. https://doi.org/10.1177/10538259211049535

  • Flaherty, G., Chai, S. Y., & Hallahan, B. (2021). To travel is to live: Embracing the emerging field of travel psychiatry. BJPsych Bulletin, 45(3), 167–170. https://doi.org/10.1192/bjb.2020.32

  • Petrick, J. F., & Wang, X. (2025). The psychophysiological effects of travel: A horizon 2050 paper. Tourism Review, 80(1), 121–138. https://doi.org/10.1108/TR-12-2023-0879

  • Stevens, A., & Truong, S. (2024). Exploring therapeutic nature-based programs for individuals who have experienced trauma: A scoping review. Therapeutic Recreation Journal, 58(2). https://doi.org/10.18666/TRJ-2024-V58-I2-12175

  • Zabag, R., Deri, O., Gilboa-Schechtman, E., Richter-Levin, G., & Levy-Gigi, E. (2020). Cognitive flexibility in PTSD individuals following nature adventure intervention: Is it really that good? Stress, 23(1), 97–104. https://doi.org/10.1080/10253890.2019.1645113