Tips for returning to work & life after a holiday

Hi everyone, my name is Rachel Havocost. I am a mental health writer and advocate and today I'm going to share with you three tips for returning back to your regular life or work after being on vacation. So it's summertime, which means a lot of us are taking longer trips on the weekends or more vacations. And for those of us that struggle with our mental health, it can be really difficult coming back from a trip and reintegrating in day to day life. So I want to share with you three tips that have helped me when navigating, returning home and getting back to baseline one of the reasons this can be difficult, number one, is maybe it's hard for us to allow ourselves to rest or take time away from work or things that we have to be responsible for in general.

So getting into a transition period of letting ourselves really detach from our day to day lives and our work and responsibilities can already be quite a bit of effort and energy. And then returning back into our routines can be a lot on our systems. So it's really important that we try and set ourselves up to come back in a way where we feel not only like we can gently ease back into what we need to do, but not get too overwhelmed or stressed out or beat ourselves up for the wonderful time we might have had when we were away.

So tip number one is set yourself up for success before you leave. One of my favorite ways to do this is to clean my apartment, take out the trash, fold my laundry, fold my bed, and make it so that when I come home it's a really safe and welcoming environment and that there's nothing in the environment when I return home that might add any stress or overwhelm to tasks or things that I have to do in returning home. The second thing I like to do is make my first day back a light day so I still will engage in my work tasks.

Things that I regularly do in my day, like maybe having a walk or going to the gym, eating my meals. But everything is sort of a light version, so I might not do a very intense workout. Maybe instead of cooking a full meal, I buy a pre packaged dinner so that I don't have to think about cooking. Maybe I try and do only the bare minimum at work so that I'm still getting back into the flow of things, but I'm not doing the hardest tasks on the day I returned to. Third tip is to focus on grounding when you get home.

This might mean doing a little meditation in the morning, finding ways to get outside and get into nature and just taking time to restabilize and reground the physical body and reorient yourself back into your space and time. Hope you found this helpful and as always, please leave me comments if you have questions and if there's anything you would like me to talk about more. I am always happy to see you next time.