by Anna Fregonara
After the holidays, peak happiness lasts for a couple of weeks. Then, for many, the time to go back to work, school and daily routine becomes a nightmare, generating discomfort and anxiety. Here’s how to mitigate it
The worst part of a vacation is usually when it ends. Once you get off the plane back, the peak of bliss, it reads Applied Research in Quality of Lifelasts about a couple of weeks. For many, as the time approaches to return to work, school and daily routine, a feeling of unease and anxiety arises. that same feeling that feeds the so-called fear of Sunday syndrome which, despite the name, manifests itself in those who already suffer from going back to the office on Monday at the end of the weekend.
The sadness of Monday
It is no coincidence that Rebecca Brendel, director of the Harvard Medical School Bioethics Center and a few months ago former president of the American Psychiatry Association, speaks of the post-vacation blues (an expression that refers to the more well-known Monday blues, the sadness of Mondays) for remember how the end of something joyful can sometimes result in a sense of loss, an experience we dislike, low mood, irritability, or insomnia. The common feature of the “fear of Sunday” syndrome and the end of the holiday is that sense of anguish that psychologists and therapists classify as anticipatory anxiety, comments Giuseppe Carr, professor of psychiatry at the Bicocca University of Milan and director of the mental health department and branches of ASST Nord Milano. This expression describes fear and worry about negative things that might happen in the future. Therefore, there is a tendency to anticipate a volume of work that is experienced as a possible risk of being submerged.
First tip: don’t ruminate
Psychologist Guy Winch has learned from his clinical practice that people experience most of their work-related stress when they are not on duty: on the way home, when with family or friends, when wakes up in the middle of the night. Defending against this trend is one of the strategies to protect our holiday well-being. According to Winch, he tells The New York Times, he dwells on these dead times because they are those moments in which it is not necessary to compete with other activities for attention or other resources. Furthermore, una ricerca, pubblicata su International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health has highlighted how rethinking work is one of the strongest predictors of fatigue and burnout.
How to get rid of negative thoughts
The tendency to rumination, a technical term to indicate the act of brooding, is done with negative thoughts and an illusory and unaware form of control of the situations represented by the thoughts themselves, comments Carr. One frees oneself in two main ways: by introducing the doubt that it is a bit magical to believe that by thinking so much about things these can change; returning relativity to one’s contribution. When we give in to ruminating on persistent and repetitive thoughts about work-related matters we feel urgent and important. an attitude that fuels self-esteem, but in reality we are not the only determinants of that single outcome. Furthermore, ruminating creates a vicious cycle of stress: we believe we are gaining more insight into a problem, which is actually unproductive because every time we do it we activate our stress response. Better to think of solutions to problems that don’t seem to negatively affect your emotional well-being.
It can help to keep a brooding diary: it’s about writing down the hours we dedicate to this act every day. It can be impressive to see how much time you lose per week.
More practical tips
Then there are simple wellness-saving strategies to try to adopt: use boarding passes, museum admission tickets or receipts from your favorite shop as a bookmark or put them in full view on your desk or put them in the nightstand drawer; choose a photo of the trip as the background of the computer screen; make an object purchased while you were away part of your daily routine: wear clothes bought on the go; jot down some thoughts about something you particularly liked or about something new you learned; the day before returning to work, if you still have time otherwise just after, plan something you can’t wait to do like a dinner with friends or an evening at the cinema; unpack as soon as possible and get it over with; return to work in the middle or at the end of the week on a less stressful working day than a Monday and so that the week is shorter; if no longer possible, remember it for the next trip; open the professional email, scroll through all the messages to get an overview and read only the necessary ones; open the private email and delete promotions and old newsletters en bloc; resume the routine as soon as possible, then respect the times of meals and when you go to sleep, put your usual workouts or appointments back on the agenda. All approaches and strategies to mitigate the impact on subjective well-being upon return are fine, because they revive the experience and the positive feelings we felt at that moment, everyone finds the most suitable as, specifies the expert.
Manage expectations
To avoid the stress of returning, it is also essential to manage expectations which must not be those of returning from vacation as a changed person, ready to face everything on the first day: the recommendation of Charles Samenow, associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Faculty of George Washington University Medicine. However, these are childhood expectations that many have as if they lived in an eternal school cycle in which the post-holiday recovery is perceived as the moment of a sort of rebirth, almost as if it were the means to recover energy to be poured into work performance, he continues Carr. For sound management of working and personal time, on the other hand, it is important to establish a clear boundary between the two: this is the necessary condition, but by itself it is not sufficient because it also requires a certain amount of awareness at 360 degrees on our being, on our mental functioning.
A practical way to establish a psychological dividing line between the end of work time and the beginning of personal time can be the ritual of changing clothes, listening to music or walking home.
Instructions for the next trip
Scientific literature shows how it is easier to enjoy a greater sense of well-being by planning the next break. To experience its benefits, it is enough, for example, to read a book about the place you would like to visit, browse the airline flight sites or imagine the project that could be carried out while staying at home. It’s easier to throw yourself into a period of hard work if you have something to look forward to. This greater ease of feeling well-being by planning depends on the fact that anticipating a vacation or a project evokes stronger feelings and images.
Pull the plug or not?
Finally, the next time you’re away from the office, is it better to unplug it altogether? It affects not only the temperament. There are those who, during the holidays, prefer to give themselves a more or less daily rule of checking their e-mail and in this way giving themselves an updated representation of what awaits them. For these subjects, the main cause of anxiety is the unknown and not the amount of work they will find on their return, concludes the psychiatrist. Instead, those who pull the plug completely usually have resources that allow them to be aware that what they will find on their return will correspond to their possibilities for dealing with it. The type of job performed certainly plays a role on this difference in behavior: it changes whether or not other people depend on us.
Indeed Brooks Gump, professor of public health at Syracuse University, had discovered in uno studio su Psychology & Health that workers in low-stress jobs felt calmer and less anxious before, during and after a vacation, feelings that did not appear to extend to those in high-stress jobs.
August 28, 2023 (change August 28, 2023 | 08:32)
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