What retreat is best for you? Sarah Tucker highlights the holidays most suited for people struggling with issues such as loneliness or anxiety

Just returned from holiday? Lucky you! Do you feel refreshed or more stressed now than when you left? Have you ever wondered why you can go to one place year after year, and some years feel refreshed and chilled and others completely drained and frustrated?

Being a travel journalist for over 20 years, I researched the impact of travel on our psyches: why and how travel affects us in the most profound way, allowing us to see with better eyes the world around us and be more aware of ourselves. Sometimes the best souvenir from your travels is how you changed and grew as a person…and whether your sense of wellbeing lasts longer than your sun tan.

External journeys you take reflect the internal psychological journeys of selfdiscovery. In this sense, travel has become a therapy — a healing. Research by luxury tour operator Kuoni several years ago revealed that people are more likely to change job, lifestyle, even relationships after a holiday because it allows them space to think, reflect, put things into perspective and challenge their values. By observing how others live, how happy they are with far less, we learn to appreciate what we have. For example, I recently returned from Madagascar where people are poor and the faces smiling in at our coach were more genuine and heartfelt than those smiling back out at them. Everyone in my group said the same. When you see people appreciate what they have, no matter how little, you realise what you have. Observing the value other cultures place on family, friends and relationships makes you reflect on your own. In contrast, places such as Monte Carlo or Dubai or Las Vegas — where the culture is one of vanity, need and greed — it may be harder for people to appreciate what they have (even if they have a lot, because enough is never enough). Travel in the right direction and the journey teaches you that the stuff of experience is far more important than the experience of stuff.