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

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

It is great that we enjoy the holiday season and the freedom of plans that the good summer weather allows us, but neither do we have to demonize the return to routine. When we return to work, it is clear that we come into contact with emotions that are not pleasant to us.

To begin with, we begin to anticipate what the return to work will be like, that we will have to get up early again, meet a schedule, do things that we do not feel like... and all this makes laziness appear, that feeling that the next day it will be difficult for us above.

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

Despite all the leisure and enjoyment of summer and vacations, There are many people who report that at the end of summer they already miss going back to their routine a little, to order, to their habits and to the stability of the day to day.

Do you remember when you were a child and, despite feeling a bit lazy, you were also excited about going back to school? It was time to reconnect with friends, to release books, to discover who your new teacher would be... Here are some proposals to make your "back to school" a little more exciting.

• Related article: "Closed for vacations! The psychological need to rest "

Returning to the routine after the holidays: anticipation vs. reality

Laziness and anxiety are very common when going back to school, but... ** Do you know that many times they are more present in the days before returning to work than the day we return? **

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

This way of evaluating the future has a lot to do with our evolution as a species. Preparing for the worst has allowed 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 continue to fear a bad response from a colleague, a job task for which we feel incapable, or the anger of a boss.

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

• You may be interested in: "Anticipatory anxiety: causes, symptoms and therapy"

Love and hate routine

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

It is necessary to get out of that day-to-day agenda, out of obligations and dedicate ourselves to rest and enjoy during the holidays; but it is also true that we are able to enjoy rest because it is done during a limited period of time and, therefore, it is lived as something exceptional that must be squeezed to the maximum.

After a while, everything returns to its order and everyone in their place. Going back to the routine doesn't have to be negative. Our return to school can be a good opportunity to resume our day-to-day habits or include those that we have been proposing for a long time..

During the holidays we tend to neglect our diet, we stop playing sports, we do not structure our sleep hours... When the summer period is over it is time to go back or start doing what feels good to us, which helps us maintain good health and provides structure to our week.

• Related article: "10 daily habits that improve your emotional balance"

Post-vacation depression?

At the beginning of September we can experience a small drop in mood and some anxiety. At the end of the day, we have left that oasis called “vacations” in which there are not many obligations, we have a lot of free time and all the activities are made to be enjoyed.

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 everyday situation.

Plan your own back to school

It is normal that it is difficult for us to start the first 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 energy to cope with the activities of our routine. What can we do to alleviate the effect this has on us?

1. Start at the beginning

You get to work, you open your email, and you find your tray full. In addition, you have ten calls from colleagues and superiors asking you to solve something and you have not yet opened the calendar for the week... Does it sound familiar to you?

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

• You may be interested in: "Time management: 13 tips to take advantage of the hours of the day"

2. Only your action will get you out of the loop

When we are faced with a large volume of work at once, we can get the feeling that we can't handle it.

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

• Related article: "Rumination: the annoying vicious circle of thought"

3. Don't forget that free time still exists

Yes it's the end of summer but you still have your days and hours of work rest. Do not forget that you must continue taking care of this free time, doing things that have meaning for you and provide you with well-being.

4. Reserve time for yourself

When fall arrives, we don't just find ourselves with work commitments. We also want to reconnect with people we have not seen all summer, do some errands that we leave pending, etc.

It seems that suddenly the agenda is saturated! Do not forget about yourself, take care of yourself and dedicate some time. Fall is a great time for self-care.

• You may be interested in: "23 hobbies to do at home and have fun"

5. Take some of your summer habits with you

During the holidays we modify our habits. Some take the opportunity to read more, to spend more time on their favorite sport, or to spend more time with family members.

It is true that with the return to the routine we cannot maintain all the activities we do in summer, but I'm sure that somehow you can take a piece of that into your day to day, adapting it to your context, your schedule and your circumstances.

The context is changing... so are we!

Going back to school this year has some very important peculiarities. Many jobs are once again 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 normal.

Although a priori this is good news, For some people it can be distressing or stressful and their habitual 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 being too hard, and that after a few weeks you cannot adapt to all these changes, you 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!