Mastering Mental Health on the Road: Essential Strategies for Truckers
A topic in trucking that does not get talked about enough is maintaining your mental health while spending most of your time in a truck. This job requires a lot of time on the job. You will be driving or sleeping in your truck the majority of the time.
Facing Loneliness
Expect to face loneliness on an entirely new level that you never even knew was possible. You are going to stare it deep in the eyes and get to know it well but at the same time eventually become more comfortable with it than the average person out there ever could. You will also likely become more distant to the important people in your life because you simply will not have the time and in some cases the energy during your home-time to nurture these relationships compared to someone with a normal and less demanding career would.
You are Your Own Best Friend
One thing I found out in trucking fairly quick is you better be comfortable being by yourself. The human mind is not conditioned to receive such little social interaction by being stuck in a truck a hundred hours or more each week. So, what is the alternative to helping beat loneliness? In my experience it comes down to a couple of things. For one Phone calls. Talking to the people in your life on the phone helps tremendously to reduce the amount of loneliness on the road. And no, texting is not the same. When talking on the phone there is a more personal connection, and you can really nurture your relationships. It is the next best thing to being there in person. And, you will have an endless amount of time to talk on the phone providing you have a wireless Bluetooth headset.
Talking on the Phone Can Be a Distraction
It is important to note however that talking on the phone can be a distracting driving behavior and it takes a lot of skill to do both safely. I do not recommend anyone talk on the phone while driving a big rig until after their first year on the road. It is a challenge to do it safely, especially in traffic. In fact, you should avoid talking on the phone while driving a semi-truck when surrounded by heavy traffic. Do not say I did not warn you. If you are on an open highway with large gaps between you and other traffic it is safer, but you still always have to pay close attention to your driving while talking on the phone and always use a wireless headset or earpiece. You never want to be holding your phone. Your phone should be placed on a mount while driving.
Disappointing Social Interactions
If you are looking to meet nice new people trucking is the worst profession you can enter. There are no warehouse workers or other truckers looking to make friends. In fact, there are a lot of them with bad attitudes. Why? Likely because they are facing the same challenges that you are. They are overworked, underpaid, or simply do not have the time or desire to talk and make friends. Just do not expect people in the trucking industry to be friendly because they are anything but that most of the time.
Here are some of the ways I have found to make trucking by yourself for extended periods a little easier:
- Talk on the phone with the people in your life as much as possible.
- Get a satellite radio and listen to your favorite stations when you are bored.
- Listen to audio books on a service such as audible.
- Listen to podcasts of your favorite topics through a podcast app.
- Talk to an AI assistant like Chat GPT or Bing Chat about random stuff.
- Ask Google assistant questions that pop up in your head to help kill the time.
Your Inner World
The most important one is liking your inner world. If you are not happy with who you are as a person deep down inside and always require the attention of other people every day to be happy you are going to hate trucking. Be kind to yourself.
Have Thick Skin
You are going to come across some mentally challenged and rude people in the trucking and warehouse industry. Having thick skin and realize that when these undesirables hurl an insult or take a negative action that this is really just a reflection of their own miserable lives. In other words, it is not your problem, they are like this. Just try not to take it personally and whatever you do not escalate the situation, maintain your demeaner and get away from them as quickly as possible and continue with your job.
Your Internal Dialog
Be aware of your own destructive internal dialog. While spending a large amount of time by yourself you are going to want to pay attention to your own thoughts and recognize the ones that are getting you down or putting you in a bad mood. Did you know that it is your thoughts that are responsible for this? You cannot always control your thoughts, but you can take a softer focus on the bad ones because after all whatever you are upset with is all in your head to begin with.
