"I don't want to go to work!" Ester Gómez shouts on her first day back to professional work. "Just yesterday I was rested and happy, but when the alarm clock rang today I felt tired, fatigued, sleepy and sad," she added.
Gómez suffers from post-vacation syndrome, "an ailment that is not serious and goes away in a maximum of ten days," diagnosed Francisco Sánchez Eizaguirre, dean of the Official College of Psychologists of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. In some cases, the symptoms that Gómez presents are joined by: "Stomach discomfort, muscle pain, nervousness, irritability, lack of interest, restlessness and some indifference," he added.
The cause of this syndrome cannot be cured with a prescription, because it is nothing more than the return to the routine of work, university or household chores. However, "it can be prevented," Sánchez assured. "Post-vacation syndrome appears when we abruptly break a relatively long period of vacation, the days of the year that we idealize the most," he stressed.
"Therefore, we must prevent the aggressive change from rest to work, gradually adapting to the routine; you should not arrive from vacation and enter the office with your travel suitcase, it is important to plan the return to the profession in the same way that we do with moments of rest," explained the dean. "You should avoid dividing the year between the horrible months of work and the pleasant time of vacation, because that way, all we achieve is being sad almost all year. It is also good to get used to maintaining a positive attitude and avoiding constant complaints, as well as planning relaxing and fun activities during the months of work."
Other recommendations that the psychologists of the Official College invite are to "get our body used to waking up early or eating at routine hours during the work period, the days before returning to the office. Interspersing vacation days throughout the year, because it is not necessary to have four weeks in a row to find serenity and rest, is also another option to take into account; as well as facing the return to work as a vital period and the warning not to make crucial decisions about the professional future in the first days after the return, since we may later regret it."
The profile of patients who suffer from post-vacation syndrome fits into the wide field of people under 40, male or female. "They are the ones who have incorporated new habits of periodic rest into their lives. The previous generations, in the midst of the Spanish political transition, had other more basic priorities, such as having a job and earning money to support the family. Vacations were shorter and to closer places."
Refining the analysis of the radiography of those who suffer the most from the evil of the lazy ones, Sánchez stated that "stressful jobs are the ones that produce the most victims of the syndrome, especially those related to health work or that of teachers, who have long periods of disconnection with the classrooms." "The best vaccine to avoid suffering the psychological damage of returning to routine is to be comfortable in your job," concluded the dean.
However, this is no guarantee of having a healthy attitude, there are individuals immune to post-vacation syndrome, who are precisely so because of the opposite evil, work addiction. Those who suffer from it consider free time a problem and cannot avoid disconnecting from their work obligations. They change their mood and activate dormant diseases during the rest period.
"Neither too much nor too little," Sánchez concluded, "the optimal state of psychological health is one that does not tend to touch the limits."
ACN Press