Back to school: Does it affect us even in adulthood?

This is how the return to routine after the vacations affects us emotionally in adulthood.

Summer is usually a time of vacations, travel, few obligations... but, like everything else, it ends at some point.

It's great that we enjoy the vacation season and the freedom of plans that the good weather of summer allows us, but but we don't have to demonize the return to routine either.. When we return to work, we obviously come into contact with emotions that are not pleasant.

To begin with, we start to anticipate what it will be like to go back to work, that we will have to get up early again, keep to a schedule, do things we don't feel like doing... and all of this leads to laziness, that feeling that the next day will be hard for us.

In addition, when a lot of work piles up for the return from vacation, we may feel some anxiety and have the feeling that we will not be able to tackle everything that comes our way.

Despite all the leisure and enjoyment of the summer and the vacations, many people report that by the end of the summer, they are already feeling anxious and anxious, many people report that at the end of the summer they already miss a little bit to return to their routineto order, to their habits and to the stability of everyday life.

Do you remember when you were a child and, despite feeling a little lazy, you were also excited about going back to school? It was the time to meet up with friends again, to use new books, to find out who your new teacher would be? Below, you will find some suggestions suggestions to make your "back to school" a little more exciting..

The return to routine after vacation: anticipation vs. reality

Laziness and anxiety are very common when we go back to school, but... **Did you know that they are often more present in the days leading up to going back to work than on the day we return? **

The mind tends to anticipate everything that is going to happen and, moreover, to think that it is going to be something horrible. It prepares us to put ourselves in the worst situation... The mind is a pessimist!

This way of evaluating the future has a lot to do with our evolution as a species. Preparing ourselves for the worst has enabled us to protect ourselves from many dangers throughout our history as human beings. Now we are no longer in contact with all those dangers, but we still fear a bad answer from a colleague, a work task for which we feel incapable, or a scolding from a boss.

Remember that your mind is most likely anticipating that the day you return to your routine will be worse than it actually will be. Once you're at work, take action and your day will fly by.

Love and hate routine

The word "routine" can have some negative connotations in our culture. However, when we lack it out of obligation, that is, when our day-to-day life has no structure, we may come to miss it.

It is necessary to get out of that day-to-day order, out of the obligations and dedicate ourselves to rest and enjoy during the vacations; but it is also true that we are able to enjoy the rest because it is done for a limited period of time and, therefore, it is experienced as something exceptional that we have to make the most of it..

After a while, everything goes back to order and everyone returns to their place. Returning to the routine does not have to be negative. Our return to school can be a good opportunity to resume our daily habits or to include those that we have been proposing for a long time..

During the vacations we tend to neglect our diet, we stop doing sports, we don't structure our sleeping hours... When the summer period is over, it is time to go back or start doing what feels good to us, what helps us to maintain a good health and wellness.that helps us to maintain a good health and that brings structure to our week.

Post-holiday depression?

At the beginning of September we may experience a slight drop in mood and some anxiety. After all, we have come out of that oasis called "vacation" in which there are not many obligations, we have a lot of free time and all activities are made to enjoy.

This is normal and should not be given such a pathologizing name as "post-vacation depression". It is not clinical depression, far from it. It is simply a normal reaction to a change in our daily situation.

Plan your own return to school

It is normal that we find it hard to start the first few days, that we feel exhausted and that we miss being on vacation. Sometimes this slump can bring us unpleasant emotions and a feeling of not having the energy to face the activities of our routine. What can we do to alleviate the effect this has on us?

1. Start at the beginning

You arrive at work, open your e-mail and find your inbox full. In addition, you have ten calls from colleagues and superiors asking you to solve something and you still haven't even opened the week's agenda... Sound familiar?

It is normal that after a few weeks of absence from our job, we accumulate a lot of work and it becomes such a big mountain that we do not even know where to begin.. Tackling the most urgent tasks first can help you organize your workload. Besides, you can't solve twenty tasks if you don't start with one of them. So take the first one, and get on with it.

Only your action will get you out of the loop.

When we are faced with a large volume of work all at once, we may have the feeling that we will not be able to cope with it..

Thinking and planning how we will solve everything can help, but we must be careful not to just visualize how we will get things done. Situations can only be resolved through action.

3. Don't forget that free time still exists.

Yes, it's the end of summer, but you still have your days and hours off from work.. Do not forget that you must continue to take care of this free time, doing things that make sense to you and bring you well-being.

4. Reserve time for yourself

When autumn arrives, we are not only faced with work commitments. We also want to meet up with people we haven't seen all summer, run some errands we left pending, etc.

It seems that suddenly the agenda is saturated! Don't forget to take care of yourself, to take care of yourself and to dedicate some time to yourself.. Autumn is a great time for self-care.

5. Take some of your summer habits with you.

During the vacations we change our habits. Some take the opportunity to read more, to dedicate more time to their favorite sport or to spend more time with family members.

It is true that with the return to routine we can not keep all the activities we do in summer, but surely you can somehow take a little bit of that to your day, adapting it to your context. but surely you can somehow take a little bit of that back to your day to day life, adapting it to your context, your schedule and your circumstances..

The context is changing... so are we!

Back to school this year has some very important peculiarities. Many jobs are back to being face-to-face, the epidemiological situation is improving and it seems that it is not only a return to normality, it seems that we are getting closer to the old normality.

Although on the face of it this is good news, for some people it can be distressing or stressful and their usual behaviors are no longer adjusting to this changing context.. We are adapting to a new reality, and it is normal for some discomfort to appear.

If you see that your return to school is proving to be too hard, and that after a few weeks you are not able to adapt to all these changes, we invite you to review in which direction you are moving, what things are helping you and which are not, and what things you can change to improve your routine. Surely one of our psychologists can help you!