Are you dreading returning to work after a pleasant and relaxing holiday? The end of your holidays might be one of the worst parts of it because of the anxiety of what awaits in the office. You might be already experiencing and anticipating a post-vacation depression.
Intuitively, research shows that if one has successfully disconnected from work during a holiday, replenishing their resources for work, they can feel energized going back to work. Yet, this does not always happen because of the way we tend to think about work after having been away from it for some while: that’s what psychologists call “cognitive distortion”. Here are some typical distortions and how to address them:
Fighting negative overgeneralization
Negative overgeneralization could be, in that case, “I don’t want to go back to work – there is nothing I am looking forward to or excited about in my work.” Even in the worst-case scenario, this is rarely true, but we tend to think in absolute terms, reinforcing negative thoughts. This negativity makes us reluctant to return, reinforcing the negative over-generalization because it prevents us from confronting ourselves with a more positive reality.
In this case, it is helpful to consider the positives and what you might be looking forward to, including seeing specific colleagues, specific activities, or the workspace itself. Think of overgeneralization as a mental filter: you must balance the negative with the inevitable positive aspects of your work experience, even if it takes a conscious effort to identify them.
Addressing emotional reasoning
Emotional reasoning is a form of distortion that considers emotions a source of truth. For example, feeling anxious about returning to work and not performing does not mean that returning to work won’t go well or that you won’t perform. Feelings are important, but they are not fact. Importantly, they also reinforce themselves: feeling anxious about performing and returning to work will naturally feed itself.
A factual reminder to yourself will help: if you got this job in the first place, you certainly had the skill for it. Remember moments you did well in this job or similar occupations to help you dispel self-reinforcing emotional reasoning.
Fill your agenda with enjoyable activities
Plan for enjoyable aspects of your work when you return. For example, a walk or a coffee with colleagues to catch up on holidays. Or it can be about taking a new training. This is what psychologists call “behavioral activation”, a technique that takes advantage of the link between what we do and how we feel. Experiencing enjoyable activities can reinforce a positive mood and make the more difficult part of work more manageable. At work, taking time to develop genuine human connections or develop new skills can reinforce self-confidence and social comfort, which in turn improve our perception of other work activities.
Spotting and assessing how we distort our perception of work is the first step to breaking the cycle of negative thinking. Acting on it can then follow.
There is no reason to believe that your vacation benefits will disappear immediately. In fact, research shows that holidays do significantly reduce the risk of burnout and that this effect lasts for four weeks. A study also found that vacationers enjoy the most benefits compared to their colleagues before their holidays, as they anticipate them. If we could, in the same way, anticipate positively our return to work, it would undoubtedly ensure we do not waste the end of our holidays thinking about it!
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