Managing Vacation Anxiety – How to Unplug from the Office Truly

This scenario may be a bit too close to reality for most Canadians. And according to mounting evidence from the field of occupational health, failing to switch off work properly can no longer be perceived as being obsessive about your job or dedication – it is an acknowledged obstacle to recovery.

The Switch You Think You’re Flipping: Psychological Detachment.

Occupational health psychologists refer to the concept of psychological detachment when describing the essence of detaching oneself from work, both physically and psychologically. Psychological detachment involves the phenomenon whereby individuals stop thinking about their work outside working hours, as described by one measure of this concept: “not thinking about work at all.”

Psychological detachment forms part of the recovery experiences of Sonnentag and Fritz’s widely accepted model of stressor-detachment, featured in the Journal of Organizational Behaviour. The other three recovery experiences include relaxation, mastery, and control. In situations where such recovery experiences occur during downtime, the depleted psychological resources that have been exhausted through work-related stress are renewed. Failure for these experiences to happen means that the systems stimulated by the stressful work-related demands will be unable to return to their neutral states, hence creating an accumulation of stress over the years.

It is not just an academic idea. Research conducted in PLOS ONE by following up with working individuals during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2025 showed that individuals who had lower psychological detachment at the time of the first lockdown suffered from poor mental health after a year, suffering from depression, and were less satisfied with their lives. The capacity for psychological detachment was among the most significant predictors of their well-being.

“It’s Not That I Check It – I Just Know It’s There”: The Email Expectation Effect.

Surprise finding #2: You needn’t even read one email for work stress to manifest itself on your vacation!

In studies examining what the researchers call “organizational expectations for email monitoring” – in other words, the implicit (and sometimes explicit) assumption that the employee will be available outside of work hours – Becker, Belkin, Conroy, and Tuskey have demonstrated in the Journal of Management that this very assumption constitutes a specific form of psychological stressor leading to the so-called “attention allocation conflict”: an inner struggle between the work role and personal time during which neither can be truly engaged. And that stress didn’t confine itself to the individual; it was passed along to his partner and children, who were experiencing work-related stress at the same level and lower relationship satisfaction because of it.

The 2024 scoping review in the journal PLOS Digital Health analyzed the body of existing research on non-workplace-related use of smartphones outside of work hours and concluded that there is agreement on two findings: first, the culture of always being available enabled by the technological world leads to increased levels of stress and anxiety; and second, management holds an especially crucial position in the issue in question, as they can choose whether to uphold or tear down this culture by setting out clear (or intentionally vague) guidelines regarding after-hours communication.

Vacation anxiety is thus not only an effect of one’s personal choices. Rather, it stems, at least in part, from the culture of the workplace that has been eroding the work-life balance for decades.

The Fade-Out Problem: Why the Benefits Wear Off Faster Than You’d Think.

Even when people do successfully disconnect, the benefits of vacation tend to be shorter-lived than most of us hope.

In a meta-analysis conducted by de Bloom et al., published in the Journal of Occupational Health, various data collected from different studies revealed that vacations positively impact health and wellness. However, the unpleasant truth is that these benefits gradually dissipate within the next two to four weeks when individuals return to work, and in many instances, start to disappear in the first week back. It was evident that the “fade-out effect” took place across the studies under review.

An editorial published in Cureus in 2025 by Giridharan and Pandiyan considered the latest literature concerning the phenomenon and came to an interesting finding: contrary to popular belief, taking several short vacations throughout the year seems to yield better results than using all vacation days to enjoy one long holiday. An earlier study examined workers’ experiences during a 23-day vacation and established that their health and wellness were optimized during eight days and started to decline after this period, getting close to the baseline within one week after the end of the vacation.

Quality of vacation and not the duration of the vacation seems to be the most reliable factor in studies, especially with respect to how successful employees were at achieving psychological detachment during their time off. Work intrusions during vacation can have an extremely detrimental effect on recovery. Just one work-related task completed during vacation signals to the nervous system that the workday continues.

What Actually Restores: The Evidence for Nature and Active Recovery.

In occupational health research, the evidence converges around four key components of authentic recovery: physical activity, social involvement, learning experiences (mastering something), and, perhaps most importantly, being outside in nature.

One study on the physiological effect of nature exposure on stress levels was published in the Frontiers in Psychology journal by Hunter, Gillespie, and Chen from the University of Michigan. The scientists used two biomarkers of physiological stress reactions: salivary cortisol (a known biomarker) and salivary alpha-amylase (indicating sympathetic nervous system activation). In a two-month study involving 36 participants living in an urban environment, all individuals were instructed to spend at least ten minutes in an outdoor setting three times weekly. The effect was dramatic and consisted of lowering the cortisol levels by more than 21 percent per hour of being outside. This effect was stable and consistent over the entire duration of the experiment. The authors labelled this activity “nature pill,” an accessible tool to relieve stress with no location, equipment, or training needed.

Even for those who spend their vacations in cities, campuses, or places where there are very few opportunities to connect with nature, this theory applies. The Attention Restoration Theory, which forms the basis of this study, is based on the concept that any place which creates feelings of novelty, complexity, and distance from the demands of daily life will always help in regaining mental resources, irrespective of whether the environment is an evergreen forest or even a city park.

A Canadian Context: When Policy Begins to Reflect the Science.

It cannot be said that this issue has gone unnoticed by government officials. In June of 2022, Ontario became the first province in Canada to enact legislation that would force companies employing 25 or more workers to draft a written policy regarding disconnection from the workplace. Disconnecting from the workplace means not engaging in any communication relevant to the work, including emails, calls, video calls, or other messaging so as to ensure that one is not engaging in any work activity.

The policy does not give employees an enforceable right to be out of reach at all times, but the legislation does demand that workplace communication standards should be laid down. It is important because, based on the evidence reviewed in this paper, ambiguity contributes to the issue in question. When people are unsure about the need for engagement, they become anxious about being available, which hampers recovery.

Indeed, scientific evidence confirms this policy strategy: when organizational culture is used to normalize disconnectivity when an employee is supposed to take a break and treats disconnection as an acceptable professional practice rather than something that indicates a lack of involvement, chances of achieving psychological detachment increase.

The Vacation That Actually Works.

However, the results obtained over several decades of research are very clear: vacations are good for one’s health. They help people to have low levels of cortisol, boost mood, decrease tiredness, and replenish the depleted mental and psychological resources. The problem is not even in getting free time but rather about achieving the right mindset that makes free time beneficial.

Even if one spends seven days at a campsite without working, from the point of view of neurobiology, such a week may not be considered as a complete vacation period since the nervous system will keep performing the task it was not created for – constant monitoring of the email box.

As shown in the scientific literature, true switching off is not a matter of luxury; on the contrary, it is a key part of the vacation.

Key Takeaways.