As the summer holiday season comes to a close, many of us look towards our return to work with mixed feelings. September can evoke feelings of sadness or nostalgia as we swap leisurely book reading for mountains of emails and natural havens for city smog.
This year could be particularly hard as many had their first holiday for a few years thanks to the pandemic. Whether it’s been a few weeks or even longer, going back to work can bring its own particular type of anxiety.
Many of us associate the return to work with getting into bad moods and general tiredness. In the medical world, this is commonly known as "social jetlag": we feel out of step, after living unstructured lives for a few weeks with much looser schedules. We went to sleep a little later, we partied, we were spontaneous rather than structured.
Something we all dread: the morning squeeze for la reprise. BELGA PHOTO ARCHIVES
Overnight, we are forced into a new rhythm that can see our sleep reduced by a few hours – not dissimilar to jetlag. And if you have been somewhere exotic, there's a good chance you'll have jetlag as well. This rapid change can create anxiety as we return to work.
Darker days
Then there’s the change in climate. The end of the holidays often coincides with the end of summer. While it is expected that the current warm weather will continue beyond the end of our vacations, the seasons will inevitably change and with them, our mood.
Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is the term for the depression that many feel as the days become less clement. It is particularly prevalent in northern Europe as people feel the days gradually growing shorter and missing the rose-tinted days of summer. 57% of people are very sensitive to light, which can lead to depression and anxiety.
These factors all combine to increase anxiety. Many of us experience that slight feeling of dread in our stomachs which says: I'm going to go back to work today.
Winter woes and the unknown
The third pillar of post-summer anxiety is that of the unknown: we might be starting a new rhythm, meeting new colleagues, or remembering the stress that we have been trying so hard to forget. In addition, there is no shortage of concerns for the months ahead that can make us nervous about what's around the corner and convince us that it's doom and gloom hereon.
Experts on how to deal with this type of anxiety suggest some simple steps to ease ourselves back into work:
1. Get up ten minutes earlier each day. Children can also be retrained to get up earlier. Be careful to control your waking time, but not your sleep time. Don't try to go to sleep excessively early, this will upset your sleep pattern and generate stress. The best trick is to begin waking up earlier a week before you restart work, your body will then grow accustomed to sleeping earlier.
2. Light therapy: exposure to light in the morning will generate vitamins and hormones that provide a more positive attitude to the day.
3. Make good resolutions: in particular avoid hyperconnection – a source of stress and anxiety which has increased by 30% in the last 5 years. Experts recommend learning to disconnect and the return to work presents an opportunity to adopt a new professional rhythm: I go to work, I work; I leave work, I stop work.
4. Start work midweek: Psychologically, you tell yourself that you have a short week your brain is already looking forward to the weekend, making the return less of a shock to the system. Most people return on Monday and so if you start on Wednesday, you save yourself a couple of days' general stress.
5. Booking your next holiday: planning your leisure time is good for motivation and thinking positively about the year ahead.
6. Positive visualisation: is an interesting psychological technique, based on role-playing. If you are anxious about returning to work, imagine yourself coming back to an enjoyable work environment and focusing on finding solutions rather than more problems. This has echoes of other mood techniques, such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.
By projecting oneself into these positive scenarios, it is possible to get rid of feelings of anxiety. We have a tendency to create an unreasonable amount of anxiety based on variables that are often very improbable.
Positive projection helps address this return and the stress related to work, the lack of autonomy or social support in the company.
