The last days of August and the beginning of September are one of the mentally toughest times of the year: the time when many workers return to work after the vacation period. According to a report by Adecco, 37% will experience the so-called "post-vacation disorder", which translates into symptoms such as apathy, tiredness, lack of energy, difficulty concentrating, sleep disorders, nervousness, stress or sadness. .
Returning to work after a few weeks of vacation implies a drastic change in day-to-day life, "and humans are very adaptable, but we adapt to new situations progressively; we cannot expect to change the lifestyle on vacation in a matter of 24 hours," says Enric Soler, a relational psychologist, specialist in highly complex grief and addictions, and associate professor at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC).
He recommends not planning the return to work too much. Because? This is the opposite of what we have always been told...
Don't let the future ruin your present. Planning a lot is just as dangerous or inadvisable as not planning at all. The more specific you have the expectations of the return and the more you want to control how everything will go, the easier it will be for you to get frustrated because what you expected is not fulfilled. But neither can we go back completely bareback, especially if we have made a long trip, for example. If you go on vacation to Australia you cannot return to work the day after traveling.
He also advises avoiding sudden changes in the day to day... Is it a way of helping the body to adapt to the return to the pit?
Humans have a great capacity for adaptation, but it is always progressive, slow. When someone goes through mourning, for example, he needs time to be able to live without that person he has lost. Duels can last between one and three years in general. Therefore, adaptations are progressive, and abrupt changes should be avoided. If during the holidays we have woken up late, we have gone out and altered meal times, a few days before going back to work we must begin to adapt lunch and dinner times, as well as bedtime.
How long can adaptation to the new rhythm last? How long can it be?
It is as if you were living a little mourning for the quality of life you had in recent weeks. It is the "I would like life to be like this" or "I would stay with that life". The adaptation can last a couple or three days, because at work we have mechanisms that help us. An example is when colleagues ask us how the holidays have gone: with the narrative of what you have done you are reliving the experience, you connect with the well-being of the holidays.
And if this does not happen to you and you always miss it?
If you are still hooked on the past when you are already working and you think a lot about how good you were and how bad you are now, perhaps you have to reflect on whether you are passionate about your work or not. If you don't like your job, and you go from a period in which you do what you want to work on something you don't like... maybe you should rethink things.
Should we be excited to return to work? This is very difficult, coming from an absolute rest…
The summer vacation period is so long that it would be equivalent to a change of year. When we change the year, we make resolutions, we have hope. September should be the month of work purposes, of new projects, of thinking about how to approach work. If you do not have any of these hopes or illusions, it may be an indication that you dislike the job. A person who really enjoys work and finds it very rewarding, when he hasn't worked for three weeks, there comes a time when he wants to go back. In fact, job development is not only productivity in exchange for a salary, it must also be taken into account that we are paid with quality of life, with participation in stimulating projects, having co-workers who contribute things to us...
September, or the return from the holidays, always makes you think, reflect... What should we value?
You can always find exciting aspects when you return to work; If you can't find them, be careful. If nothing you do in the workplace you like, there is a part of the remuneration that you do not receive, and that does not depend on the company but on you. It is true that it is not easy: the labor market is not there to choose the job you want, but between one thing and another there are intermediate points. September is a good time to look for a job that you like better.
It is necessary to conceive work breaks as annual planning. Weekends and long weekends are important: Does planning them now give us energy to start?
Holidays are part of working life, they are essential. And they are very well designed, because there are not only the long summer ones, but we also have three categories of moments of rest to be able to continue giving our best professional version: weekends (short periods), intermediate periods such as Christmas or Easter , and the longest period to disconnect completely, the summer holidays.
If you think a lot about bridges, is it a bad sign, or just a resource to get ahead?
Get attention. If you have finished the holidays and the first thing you do is take the calendar and see how the long weekends and festivals are distributed, alert. Maybe it's a symptom that you haven't had enough and maybe you'd get hooked on a life without working. It may be a sign that you are not finding a stimulating or rewarding context at work.
Do we fill the weekends with too many obligations and commitments?
Weekends are not just for putting the washing machine on. If we think that weekends should always be productive (shopping, cooking, cleaning, washing machines) and we get even more tired than the rest of the days, the supposed rest has no effect. There are people, especially women (who take more charge of the house), who say they are looking forward to Monday to come to rest at work, after all the weekend up and down. Tasks must be shared, but weekends are not just for the housekeeper. Social activities should be scheduled, dinners with friends, some short outing... and if you do rewarding activities on the weekends, it is very likely that your quality of professional life will improve and you will not need to concentrate all the disconnection only on summer vacations.
Does post-vacation disorder exist?
Nowadays we have a tendency to look at everything very carefully, and we invent a syndrome out of everything. It must be taken into account that mental health issues are medical and have been defined and studied to determine that there is a pathology. Now we have a tendency to put so many names that it seems that we can have a thousand diseases for a thousand things; however, they are adaptive movements that people can have, and what underlies everything is that they are adaptation processes. We must relativize a bit, without obsessing, without worrying more than necessary. If every year we have returned to work and we have overcome it, we will do it again.
It also vindicates the differences between individuals when it comes to making recommendations about returning to the routine…
Generalizing is dangerous, there are great differences and personality is decisive when dealing with adaptations. People who need to have everything much more controlled feel bad if they leave their comfort zone, they have very defined expectations about the future, and they will suffer more. The more flexible you are and the more confident that you can cope with whatever comes your way, the better.
This article was initially published on the RAC1 website.
