Solo travel and self discovery: Who am I when I am alone?

By Sally Pei Han Chang, BA Psychology Graduate

Solo travel is often framed as an opportunity for liberation and self-discovery; however, less has been written about the psychological depth of this experience and how solitude can challenge long-held beliefs about identity, particularly for people who navigate across cultures. Drawing on my personal experience of travelling alone in Europe, this article reflects on how time away from a familiar environment created space to question culturally inherited ideas of identity. It explores how solo travel across unfamiliar cultural contexts can create the psychological conditions for listening to an inner voice rather than external expectation. 

Introduction: When Travel Becomes a Mirror 

‘’Who am I when I am alone?’’ Perhaps this is the question I asked myself the most over this year when I travelled to unfamiliar places on my own. On my first evening in Geneva, the air felt tense, and the world around me was unusually still. My body felt suspended, neither fully tensed nor fully relaxed. My shoulders were tight, my breath uneven, as if my nervous system was trying to decide whether this place was a threat or an invitation. It was a sensation I knew well, the familiar ache of living between worlds. In that moment when I passed by the customs, something in me stirred, something small, instinctive and honest. It was here that the question kept resurfacing to my mind again: Who am I when I am alone, away from the worlds that shaped me? And for the very first time, without noise or expectation, I could hear the faintest answer curling from somewhere deep inside. 

Having grown up within a collectivist culture and later living within Western contexts, I became increasingly curious about how identity shifts when familiar expectations fall away. Research published in the Personality and Social Psychology Journal suggests that people from collectivist cultures tend to develop an interdependent sense of self , where their identity is formed through relationships, expectations and social harmony rather than personal desires (Markus & Kitayama, 1991). Growing up, identity was something defined for me, by family, culture and expectations, not something I ever paused to reflect on. But in these quiet transitional moments between countries, I began to wonder what identity felt like when no one else was watching. Only until this year, as I held myself together and wandered through unfamiliar landscapes, did I begin to truly understand who I was becoming. With each journey, my nervous system carried memories of home. However, my intuition carried something different, a small pull toward what I had not yet met, yet somehow recognised. 

Why I chose to travel alone 

Before I ever boarded a plane alone, my sense of self had always been shaped by how academically successful I was; being the responsible one, the girl who never disappointed others, who stayed well-behaved and reliable. This explains interdependent self-construal, where in East Asian culture, identity is formed through group harmonious relatedness (Giacomin & Jordan, 2017). I’m grateful for how this shaped my resilience and strong discipline over the years. Yet, beneath the role I unconsciously carried, a quiet part of me wondered whether there was more to me, what freedom might feel like, who I could be away from expectations. Expectations, including my own self-imposed ones as a perfectionist, the high-achiever. I vividly remember how worried my parents sounded when they learned that I wanted to travel alone. I understand that their concerns came from care. However, for me, this decision felt both terrifying and necessary: a small act of stepping outside the cultural scripts that had shaped me.  

‘Why don’t you travel with friends? It’s safer.’ they asked. I agree with them, and in fact, solitary behaviours are often seen as violating the group norm and are often perceived negatively (Chua & Koestner, 2008). It is the most asked question solo travellers receive: Why alone? For me, this moment became a psychological turning point. In Self Determination Theory, autonomy refers to making self-directed and authentic decisions even when it differs from consensus (Ryan & Deci, 2000). I began to realise I wasn’t travelling to escape my life or even to see the world. I travelled to meet the parts of myself that had never been given language. In choosing to travel alone, I granted myself a permission I had spent my whole life waiting to receive from others, those familiar voices ‘maybe next time’. The unspoken role about when it’s acceptable to go. For the first time, I allowed myself to act on my inner compass rather than external expectations. This reflected the

beginning of my self-authorship, where Magolda (2008) explains: the shift from relying on external expectations to inner voice. It was also the time I began to reconstruct my narrative identity (McAdams, 2011): our sense of self we construct through our life stories, shaped by both culture and meaningful personal life experience.  

Meeting Uncertainty: Fear, Discomfort and the Nervous System 

My first solo flight didn’t even land where it was supposed to. One moment we were descending into Geneva, and the next we were diverted to Lyon, France, because Geneva airport wasn’t accepting incoming planes due to the weather. I remember vividly gripping my little journal, trying to steady my breath as the cabin crew explained that we had to choose whether we wanted to land in France in fifteen minutes or stay in the air indefinitely. Even alone, I could already hear the imagined voices of my parents: You’re being reckless. You shouldn’t take risks like this. Their warnings lived inside me, echoing louder than the announcement and even louder than the kind passenger who translated the French for everyone. By the time I finally arrived at my hostel in Geneva, it was almost 1am, and exhaustion blurred everything. That was when I realised I had booked my next accommodation in the wrong city entirely. I stayed awake until nearly 3am, trying to fix the mistake, spiralling between panic, disbelief and shame: a familiar collapse of my window of tolerance (Siegel, 2020). And then something in me softened. This was the moment I began learning to let go, to stop chasing perfection and allow life to go wrong without catastrophising. It was my first time making every decision, managing budget and handling bookings on my own. Why was I being so harsh on myself? In that quiet, vulnerable moment, I realised that self-blame was the last thing I needed. What I needed was, instead, self-compassion. In psychology, self-compassion refers to treating oneself with the same level of kindness, care and understanding that one would offer to others, particularly during difficult moments (Neff, 2023). The kind I had never really learned to offer myself gently.

When Old Beliefs Began to Loosen 

Nothing about my situation had changed after that overwhelming night in Geneva, but something inside me had. I woke up expecting a panic return, yet felt a strange sense of calm in my body. The quiet internal shift, the subtle recognition of ‘I can handle this’, is what psychologist Albert Bandura (1997) describes as self-efficacy, the inner belief one has in their ability to overcome challenges and succeed. It is then I realised I survived it and my nervous system was settling. In clinical terms, this reflects a natural down-regulation after dysregulation. Both Polyvagal theory (Cherland, 2012) and the window of tolerance model (Siegel, 2020) suggest our nervous system and body returning to a sense of safety once the threat has passed. It was the first time my fear didn’t take the lead and override self-trust. My mind, often loud with contingency plans and imagined criticism, was unusually quiet. This was my first glimpse of autonomy, a shift from waiting for external permission to listening inward. Self-discovery began to unfold gently. 

Saying yes to Zermatt felt like saying yes to myself. Zermatt has always been on my list for years, yet I had always postponed it with a familiar voice: maybe next time, it’s too far, I’ll go with family or friends, I am horrible at directions, I can’t read German. Instead of talking myself out of what I wanted, I said yes this time. Not to a destination, but to myself. Booking the four-hour train spontaneously felt like my first act of self-authorship, a quiet declaration that my intuition deserved to lead. As the train carried me deeper into the Alps, I realised, for the first time, freedom wasn’t a concept I had to chase or a dramatic transformation to earn, it was something I could feel in my body. A spaciousness and a sense of alignment I had never recognised and experienced before. I pulled out my journal again, noticing how relaxed I felt, how my body just felt grounded in a way I never thought possible in a country where I didn’t speak the language. It has stuck with me since then: I felt safe not because the place was familiar or the world was predictable but because I finally trusted myself. Safety wasn’t about the environment; it was about trusting myself to move through it. 

I didn’t expect to feel such aliveness in Zermatt, but it happened in the simplest moment, stepping out before sunrise and stepping into a snow-capped world wrapped completely in fog. I woke up at 5am but there was no Matterhorn view, no dramatic landscape, nothing to capture, nothing to achieve. Yet, I was not upset at all. Instead, I felt strangely alive, as if the absence of expectation had allowed me to be present. There is no ‘should’, just me and the world as it is. I experienced aliveness without achievement. Yes, the fog removed visibility, but what should have been a frustrating experience felt better than seeing the postcard-perfect Matterhorn itself. And a small part of me quietly knew: I would return to this lovely village again. 

Reflection: Who I Am When I Am Alone? 

Looking back, self-discovery didn’t come through clarity or control. It took shape through diverted flight, wrong bookings and quiet mornings where I had no choice but to face myself alone. I grew by becoming more myself. Those flawed moments taught me self-trust has nothing to do with perfection, but steadiness and stillness. Growth, I realised, is not becoming someone new, but finally hearing the person you’ve always been trying to emerge. 

Perhaps it is never about changing who we are but listening to the parts of ourselves we’ve ignored for so long. 

Somewhere between Geneva and Zermatt, I met the version of myself who had always existed beneath the layers of responsibility, self-imposed pressure and the quiet standards I had carried for years. She wasn’t hidden by other people’s expectations. She was hidden by my own. Solo travel gave her space to breathe. It allowed me to honour my inner voice, listen to the desires I had long muted, and discovered that home is not a fixed physical place. Home is the moment I return to myself, the groundedness I can carry within me, even in the most foreign place.

If you liked this article check out What are the psychological benefits of travelling alone?

References 

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https://doi.org/10.3200/SOCP.148.5.645-648 

Giacomin, M., & Jordan, C. (2017, January 1). Interdependent and independent self-construal. Springer International Publishing. 

https://link.springer.com/rwe/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_1136-1 Magolda, M. B. B. (2008). Project MUSE – Three elements of self-authorship. Journal of College Student Development, 49(4), 269–284. 

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McAdams, D. P. (2011). Narrative identity. In Handbook of Identity Theory and Research (pp. 99–115). Springer New York. 

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-7988-9_5 

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https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-032420-031047

Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. The American Psychologist, 55(1), 68–78. 

https://doi.org/10.1037//0003-066x.55.1.68 

Siegel, D. J. (2020). The developing mind: How relationships and the brain interact to shape who we are. Guilford Publications.