Dr. Rachel: 'Leisure Sickness' and the Post-Vacation Blues

By Dr. Rachel Boehm, 

Are you miserable following your splendid vacation? Were you perhaps miserable on your splendid vacation? In either case, you aren’t alone. Here’s what’s going on in both instances and what you can do to try to minimize these experiences going forward. 

During-Vacation Blues

Now this one is not as intuitive for folks unless they've felt it. After all, who is sad on vacation?! Well, plenty of people.

The scholarly literature calls it “Leisure Sickness.” In a 2002 paper, Vingerhoets, Huijgevoort, and Van Heck found Leisure Sickness to be common, with risk factors of high workload and personality characteristics that drive:

• an inability to adapt to the non-working situation;
• a high need for achievement; 
• perfectionistic tendencies; and,
• a high sense of responsibility with respect to work.

Symptoms experienced by those studied in the 2002 paper and later papers include: 

• headache/migraine
• fatigue
• muscular pains
• general pains
• lack of energy
• nausea
• back problems
• vomiting
• ear problems
• flu-like and common-cold-like symptoms

Schemlzer et al. found in 2023 that these symptoms typically begin around the vacation's second day, intensify on the third, and last for 2-3 days.

The Let-Up Phenomenon

Leisure Sickness is very much under-researched and thus not well understood. One theorized cause I think worth noting (though the 2002 paper found no direct evidence for) is the "let-up phenomenon." 

Basically, when under pressure (“stress”), the body fights back with a counter-pressure. This is because your body is always trying to maintain homeostasis. I call it “Goldilocksing.”  If the pressure is removed, the counter-pressure must also be removed to maintain equilibrium. Vacation could remove that pressure too quickly for some people’s bodies to adjust. Basically, their counter-pressure doesn’t fade fast enough, and they develop these symptoms. 

Something to think about for yourself. Do you think your pent-up pressure just releases like a blown pressure cooker with no release valve, and the result is you feel crummy on vacation?

Alternatively, do you feel guilty when you try to relax or rest? This is often the case for high achievers, perfectionists, and those with a high sense of responsibility to their work.

Then there are those who suffer following their return from vacation.

Post-Vacation Blues

I used to struggle coming back from vacation. I thought I was the only one. I thought something was wrong with me. Maybe, deep down, I was a lazy person who had conformed to societal expectations and now couldn’t conform back? 

“How’s re-entry?,” my aunt once asked me after a vacation in my twenties. 

I stared at her, not understanding.

That is when I learned I was not alone in this post-vacation malaise. She called it the re-entry period, that phase we all must move through when we return from vacation and are confronted with our “real lives.” The schedules, the coordination, the expectations, the self-sacrifice, the lack of fun, the lack of downtime, the chores, the traffic….

I haven’t found an agreed-upon term for this malaise. Medical News Today calls it “Post-Vacation Depression,” which seems problematic since it is not a diagnosable depression; we should not pathologize this. Another outlet describes the phenomenon but uses a term from academic research that actually describes something else. In fact, it describes the experience we'll talk about next! 

The bottom line is there’s no go-to term to search. But if you have felt it, you certainly know what I mean. And if you’re an employer, get ready, because I guarantee more than one of your staff will head into your fourth-quarter push dreaming of doing anything but pushing. 

At the heart of many post-vacation-malaise experiences I have lived through and coached others through is a sense of lost freedom. Assuming we can even relax on vacation (that is another article) and take a vacation in the first place (yet another article), we often get to free ourselves from the daily version of ourselves – the one that's stretched too thin for any number of reasons. 

Vacation allows us to step back from the daily grind. To reflect on that grind. To experience emotions and moments and activities (or the lack of activity) that we don’t typically get to experience with people we may not get to see as much as we want to (or, heck, no people at all– you do you!)

When we return, we often plunge back in. We give ourselves no buffer, no transition time; we step on the gas and fly from zero to 100 mph. But our mind and body shout, “Nope!”

Three Steps to Smooth the Transition

So, step one: Give yourself a transition period. Even if it’s just a day. Employers, you benefit from this too, so try not to schedule meetings on your employee's first day back. Let them slog through their emails and get caught up. 

Step two: Plan a little something fun for the weekend after you return. This gives you something to look forward to and gives you a mini-break from the grind you just returned to. And if you can, try to schedule a few weekends a year that are essentially mini-vacations. Do something other than chores or work, basically. 

Step three: Ask yourself, what is something you did or felt on vacation that you can integrate into “real life”? If you can fully replicate the activity, great. The challenge will be prioritizing it in your schedule. More likely, though, you'll need to be inspired by the spirit of the thing. 

• You watched the sunset over the beach. Can you walk with your family to a park to do the same?
• You read in the mornings by the pool. Can you set aside even 10 minutes in the morning to read somewhere outside, or with the outside in view?
• You lingered over dinner with friends or family. Can you keep the unhurried part for even one dinner a week where phones are put away? 
• You felt more spontaneous. Try recreating that feeling by occasionally saying yes to something without researching, optimizing, or planning every detail, or by simply trying new things. 

Typically, behind all of this is that you managed to disconnect from work. I imagine, as a result, you felt more anchored to yourself, others, and the moments you were in while you were in them. Which, ironically, makes you feel freer. So, what you're really looking for is a way to give yourself more moments to disconnect from work so you can more deeply connect with yourself, and the space and people around you.  

Recap

Leaning into the vacation theme here — let's land this plane. It is common for people to experience aches, pains, and illness while on vacation. And to struggle with the return to “real life” following summer breaks or other vacations. If either is you, you can start addressing it by getting curious about your experiences. What might be behind them? What of the above resonates? How can you add a pressure-release valve to your “real life” so the tension doesn’t build up to the point that you get sick on vacation or wish you didn’t have to return because what awaits you is a grind?

Dr. Rachel Boehm is a resident of West Falls Church. She’s lived in the area for over 15 years and runs a modern change management firm helping leaders and employers navigate business transitions and constant busyness with less tension for more successful outcomes. Dr. Rachel holds a PhD in psychology focused on individual and organizational behavior.