When you reading this, I will likely be mulling about in the hot, humid sunshine of Panama City, Panama, where I am off of on a 2-week vacation to visit my father in his early retirement. We’ll spend 4 days in Panama City, and then we’ll take a little commuter plane out to Bocas Del Toro, where he owns a home with his wife and my aunt. We’ll spend about a week there—hanging out on their wraparound deck, swimming in the ocean, eating delicious food, and sleeping in—before flying back to the states to visit some of my oldest friends in Minneapolis for a couple of days.
This is the first time I’ve had more than 3-4 days away from work since last summer, when I went to visit my mom’s retirement home in rural WI. Even then, my days off felt rushed, and were bookended by busy days, full to the brim with appointments. Over the last year, I’ve worked on the days around the Thanksgiving holiday, as well as the week of Christmas and the week of New Years. I did not take time off to enjoy spring break with my husband and step son. I’ve skipped out on a couple of weekend trips to Chicago. I’ve been seeing 24-28 clients a week, 5 days per week, every week for at least a year, with just a couple of exceptions.
It’s long past time for a break.
Taking time off has not always felt accessible to me, either financially or emotionally, especially since I moved to Indiana in 2020. There has always been some reason to feel fearful of being away from work—usually because not being at work meant not being paid, and not being paid is…well…uncomfortable. But there are other reasons, too.
Things like planning a whole-ass vacation being super exciting and tiring. Things like not exactly having enough money saved to cover all my costs (I’m taking a hit here because I can’t put off vacation any longer). Things like not quite knowing what to do with myself when I am not working (see—I actively struggle with this, too). And things like generally feeling uneasy/guilty for taking so much time away from my business (I’m really the only one who operates it) and my kitties (this one is more personal—I’m just gonna miss them 🥺).
On my last day of work before vacation, I saw several clients from the morning ‘til early afternoon. After that, I finished up with notes, emails, and various admin tasks before closing my computer down and turning off all the lights.
It was in that final action of closing things up for TWO WHOLE WEEKS that my brain found it almost incomprehensible—this idea of being able to just enjoy myself without needing to attend to work tasks, documentation, phone calls, or anything urgent. No sessions, no notes, no consultation calls—nothing for the next couple of weeks.
It felt weird. Freeing and exciting, but weird.
Indeed, I’d done everything I could to unburden my brain of all the random shit it might get worried about once I put on my vacation hat.
I made sure that every client was fully aware of this 2-week break at least a month in advance, and I provided each with contact information for interim therapists, were anything to come up that they needed to process before I returned home.
I set my auto-responders for email with the appropriate information, let my colleagues know of my upcoming absence, and took care of creating & scheduling content for my creative projects (like this piece of writing, for example) in advance of my last day.
I recorded & scheduled the 1-year anniversary podcast episode for Mental Status (coming out July 19) and wrote/scheduled 5 pieces for the New Therapist/Grad Student newsletter.
I typed and printed a whole comprehensive list of care instructions for the cat sitter, and made copies for family members in town (just in case).
I removed all work-related apps from my iPad and downloaded a variety of eBooks and podcasts to enjoy during travel/downtime.
The house was cleaned, the garden set up with automatic waterers.
Flights and hotels were booked months in advance, and my step-mom was provided with a list of grocery item requests for home-cooked meals together.
It was… a lot.
A lot of preparation, emotionally and logistically, to get ready to leave the country for a few weeks and mostly just sit on my butt and read/enjoy the Caribbean breeze.
I don’t mean to bore you—moreso, I want to highlight and acknowledge the types of financial, emotional, and logistical hurdles most of us have to clear to make room for these extended getaways. For those of us who provide direct service—which is the majority of us working in mental health—there are added layers to this prep that can make extended holidays feel less accessible (or, at the very least, a little bit more cumbersome to make happen).
We need to make sure our clients are prepared and supported while we’re gone. This might mean planning in-session with them for how they’d like to access support while we’re gone, and this might mean getting them contact information for colleagues who can step in while we’re out (which means having a solid network to call on as needed).
If we work fee-for-service, we need to plan and save months in advance to avoid putting ourselves in financial straits—perhaps even a year+, if finances are tight and building those holiday savings is slow-going. If we don’t have savings but want/need time away anyway, we may be doing so at the expense of our bank accounts.
If we work in an agency setting, we may be tasked with finding our own coverage. PTO may be limited or discouraged. We may be penalized if nobody is willing or able to cover for us. Taking too much time may draw the ire of admins or even our own colleagues. There can be immense pressure to put off vacation or shorten it.
Relaxing and taking it easy after mentally (or maybe even physically) running at full-speed for a long time can create problems with work inertia—that is, a hustling mind in motion tends to want to stay in motion, and attempts to change that (slow it down, for example) can create great feelings of unease.
Planning vacations can be fun. We get excited. We have things to look forward to. It’s also another task to complete, and even if we’re excited and looking forward to it, there’s often added stress when it comes to getting our personal logistics in order to make the vacation a reality.
For some reason, therapists are prone to feeling guilty for enjoying themselves or openly acknowledging that they’re indulging themselves / resting fully / enjoying something luxurious / experiencing great joy. We get all weird about telling our clients that we’re taking vacation. We don’t want it to be known that we’re investing in bigger, special-occasion ways of enjoying our lives. So we try to hide it and get uncomfortable when clients ask what we’re doing or where we’re going.
even when we LOVE our work, coming back from an extended break can be hard af. our bodies actually love & crave the rest (even if our minds aren’t so sure) and it’s not abnormal at all to have super mixed feelings about returning after an extended break.
All of this aside, I want to say this:
take the damn vacation.
take the rest time.
for the love of all that is good, leave for just a little while. plan something longer than 3-4 days. you don’t even need to go out of the country, or out of town—you can stay home, or go 5k miles away, or travel to the town next door. it doesn’t matter. what’s important is having extended time away from work to give your mind + body time to rejuvenate.
what matters is giving yourself extended opportunities to disengage from work. save up your PTO if you can, or start saving $$ to get that time off. create a fund that you add to regularly—even if it’s $5-$10 a month, if that’s all you can do right now—and work your way toward a break that allows you to sink in fully and completely, away from the demands of your job.
when you are on vacation and everyone has been provided with interim resources, remove your work email & other associated apps from your devices—or at the very least, turn off notifications and commit to checking it VERY INFREQUENTLY, with the rule of not responding unless it’s a house-on-fire emergency.
read books, watch shows, and listen to podcasts that are NOT work related. at least a few. try to stay away from social media if it’s got a lot of work-related content on it. keep those interactions brief and find other ways to spend your time that don’t involve lots of scrolling.
really, set the devices down and take in your surroundings, whether that is ancient architecture or the hidden gems in your own town.
These types of breaks are just as necessary as the micro breaks (i.e. the breaks we take during the day/week) and the mezzo breaks (those 3-4 day weekends, holiday breaks, mini vacations, etc). We need all of them to keep ourselves in a more regulated place. Joy in the midst of chaos might feel fucking weird or wrong, but we simply cannot do our best work with clients & ourselves if we are mired down in the never-ending stress and chaos of the world that surrounds us.
We can dip into those spaces to do the necessary work, and we can also dip out for a little while to catch our breath and recalibrate.
Both ways of existing can be here. You can take the extended vacation and still be a kickass, competent, ethical, compassionate therapist who is able to sit in the depths of this human existence with your clients.
I promise.
Alright, with that being said, I’m letting you all know that—other than the scheduled posts for the new therapist/grad student newsletter, and the podcast episode coming out on July 19—I won’t be writing anything else here or producing any longer-form content until I get back. I’m on vacation and I’m going to do my damn best to be fully on vacation, and that means checking on my work stuff as infrequently as I can while I’m gone.
Don’t worry, though. I’m back on July 20, and will return to your inboxes not long after that.
While I’m out, I’ll extend this invitation to you: even if you can’t take an actual vacation away from work, I encourage you to find any way you possibly can to take those micro and mezzo breaks (mini breaks/vacations during your day, or maybe even a 3-4 day weekend if you can). Make a plan to take your extended break, and start setting aside a couple bucks here and there to help yourself along.
Whatever you gotta do to find your way to an extended vacation, I support you. You absolutely, unequivocally, without any doubt deserve to disconnect and find a sense of joy in this big, weird, chaotic, beautiful, profoundly maddening world we share.
Alright, y’all. Take care. I’ll see you back here later ✌🏻
-meg
You posting this on my last day at work before my 5 week vacation - coincidence? I don't think so 😄
Enjoy!