Francisco José Navarro
After the typical month of rest for most citizens, returning to work becomes a real ordeal in many cases. Many people suffer from the classic post-vacation trauma, which manifests itself with symptoms such as anxiety, insecurity, nervousness, or even headache or high blood pressure.
Dr. Fernando Jiménez Los Santos recently stated on the radio program "La Sobremesa" that there are more and more cases in which patients come to the medical consultation suffering from this type of trauma.
"There are more and more cases and more literature on this topic. In the last four or five years, the circumstances surrounding modern life have been especially blamed for this syndrome," he said.
But in most cases, especially when vacations are longer than usual, patients themselves are unaware of the condition they suffer from and go to their family doctor pointing to a general malaise.
"I think the vacation syndrome does exist because there are many people who suffer from it, and not only physical disorders are suffered but also emotional ones, since people feel very bad, even socially people feel changes that range from a more or less mild discomfort to significant discomfort," added the expert.
As a professional doctor, Dr. Fernando Jiménez specifies that "I could not diagnose the so-called post-vacation trauma, but I have encountered many cases in which people suffer from insomnia, sleeping little or not at all when they are about to finish their vacation period, even palpitations, anxiety, apathy and boredom at not feeling comfortable."
For the Radio Lanzarote guest, what intrinsically happens in the subject is that work is taken as something necessary but, once vacations are taken, the mistake is made of thinking that rest should last a lifetime."
Causes
The origin of these palpitations, of this perceived fatigue, lies according to Dr. Fernando Jiménez in the "disadjustment of the internal clock of each individual.
I think there is a great relationship between our lifestyle and the appearance of these symptoms. Given such an extreme, after remaining with great freedom of schedules, resting and with few obligations, in addition to eating almost everything that one wants during the holidays, it is very common that "just thinking that we have to return to our routine, to our usual way of organizing things, that biorhythm is the one that is bothering us and that turns that state of vacation optimism into a situation of boredom and depression."
In other words, it is a situation in which internally "we try to prolong the unextendable."
Naps, relaxation, night outings, and so many other pleasures not excessively common during the rest of the year are abruptly replaced by normality.
But, how can a single month cause so much damage and cancel the rest of the year if we remain working for 11 months -in the case of most mortals-? "We program ourselves a lot and study the preparations for such a desired month. We actually organize the rest of the year based on what we are going to do during those thirty days of pleasure," indicates Jiménez Los Santos. In addition, "we feel like a kind of failure, a phenomenon of insecurity and fear, because we are tempering like a kind of dread and thinking about how long the next vacation will take."
Advice
There is no perfect recipe to avoid this trauma motivated by the incorporation to work since, among other things, man is an animal of habits. However, Dr. Fernando Jiménez advises, as a lesser evil and whenever companies allow it, "that the entire month of vacation is not always taken, but rather divide it a little. 15 days or so becomes more convenient, so that each worker can have two or three vacation periods throughout the year," warns the doctor. "We must make the entry and exit hours more flexible, and even the vacation periods," he added.
Another of the professional's recommendations is based on avoiding losing all the customs and habits of the rest of the year during vacations "because otherwise, the change is dramatic. Personal motivation should not only be focused on vacations as if it were the last thing that is going to happen in your life," he explained.
It is also recommended not to be away until the last moment before joining work. It is better to stay for three or four days in the usual environment and develop daily life a little before the final incorporation because "the problems of anxiety or insomnia can be resolved during these days, and without the need, as often happens, to resort to pills such as antidepressants."
Occupational syndrome
On the other hand, the doctor briefly defined what is understood by "occupational syndrome", a discomfort discovered in the Justice union and in which new technologies have a lot to do. "Sometimes we feel overwhelmed because we cannot adapt to the evolution so quickly, which is aggravated in the case of older people who have been promoted and who fear being relegated by their own subordinates."
In the case of occupational syndrome, "symptoms such as occupational neurosis, mental and physical fatigue, fear of the work situation, boredom, tension, etc., have been described, when in reality it is only a problem of adaptation and stress control," he remarked.
