Why It Takes So Long to Feel Like You're on Holiday

I vividly remember sitting on a beach a few years ago feeling perplexed.

For months I had been looking forward to this holiday. I had quietly convinced myself that if I could just get through the next few clinics, survive another run of meetings, clear the ever-growing inbox and hand over my patients safely, everything would be different. There would finally be time to breathe. Time to reconnect with my family. Time to become the version of myself that had gradually disappeared beneath the demands of work. Time to let my soul catch up.

Without ever really noticing, I had invested that holiday with almost magical properties. It wasn't simply a break from work. It had become the place where I expected to recover. Yet although my body had travelled hundreds of miles, my mind had remained somewhere back in the hospital.

I found myself replaying conversations with patients, wondering how colleagues were coping, mentally composing emails that I couldn't even send and reaching for my phone far more often than I cared to admit. Not because I genuinely expected anything important to have happened, but because checking somehow felt easier than not checking.

What frustrated me most was that I wanted so desperately to be present.

I could see exactly what I was missing.

I knew my family deserved more than the distracted version of me that had arrived on holiday with them, yet the harder I tried to relax the more elusive relaxation seemed to become. It felt strangely ironic that after months of longing for this holiday I had finally arrived, only to discover that some part of me was still sitting back at work.

What surprised me wasn't that this happened; medicine is demanding and I had every reason to feel tired. What I hadn't anticipated was how long it would take before something began to change.

It took three or four days before I realised I was noticing the sea rather than mentally rehearsing Monday morning. Conversations became easier. My breathing slowed. I laughed more. Somewhere during those first few days I gradually became more present, not only with my family but with myself.

Since then I have heard remarkably similar stories from countless doctors, consultants and clinical leaders. Holidays that take several days before they begin to feel restorative. Weekends overshadowed by thoughts of Monday morning. Evenings interrupted by checking emails despite promising ourselves that this weekend will somehow be different.

Although my own experience comes from medicine, I doubt this is unique to doctors. Nurses, psychologists, physiotherapists, teachers, emergency workers, business leaders and anyone whose work carries significant responsibility may recognise something similar. Whenever our work asks a great deal of us, stepping away from it often proves much harder than we imagine.

For a long time I assumed this was simply what stress looked like. Now I wonder whether something deeper is happening.

Looking back, I think I had fallen into another version of what psychologists call the arrival fallacy. The belief that happiness lies just beyond the next milestone.

Getting into medical school.

Passing postgraduate exams.

Becoming a consultant.

Taking that long-awaited holiday.

Each one carries the quiet promise that life will somehow feel different once we arrive. Sometimes it does, for a while. More often we discover that although our surroundings have changed, we have quietly brought ourselves with us.

Over the last few years I have often spoken about what I call Medicine's system programme. It isn't written down anywhere and nobody consciously teaches it, yet I suspect almost every doctor would recognise it immediately. From our earliest days at medical school we absorb a set of beliefs that become deeply embedded in the way we think about ourselves and our profession.

The patient comes first.

Hard work leads to success.

Success leads to happiness.

When things become difficult, work harder.

There is something important about these beliefs. They helped shape the doctor I became.

The difficulty is that medicine says remarkably little about when and how this programming should pause.

Nobody teaches us how to leave it behind when we leave the hospital. Nobody explains how to shift from doctor back to partner, parent, friend or simply ourselves. We become highly skilled at caring for other people, yet struggle to become fully present again in our own lives.

At some point, almost without noticing, the programme stops being something we do and becomes part of who we are.

As I have reflected on that holiday, I have also found myself wondering whether something else deeper happens over the course of a medical career.

Medicine doesn't explicitly celebrate busyness. Yet the reality of working in a system where demand continually exceeds capacity is that we can begin to see busyness as badge of honour.

Without ever intending it, busyness becomes one of the ways we judge whether we are contributing enough. Not because we enjoy being busy, but because constant demand becomes normal. If people need us, perhaps we are making a difference. If our diary is full, perhaps we are contributing enough.

And so, when the holiday finally arrives, it doesn't simply remove us from work; it removes us from one of the places where we most consistently experience meaning, purpose and contribution.

I found myself wondering whether what I missed was the work itself or something rather more subtle.

It was about validation and meaning.

Few professions allow us to make such a tangible difference to another person's life. We spend our working lives helping people through some of the most frightening moments they will ever experience. Patients place extraordinary trust in us. Colleagues ask for our advice. Trainees seek our guidance.

Being useful feels fulfilling because it is meaningful; we make a positive difference.

Perhaps the hidden danger is that, over time, being useful becomes quietly woven into the way we understand our own worth; when it quietly becomes who we are.

When that happens, stepping away from work is no longer simply leaving the hospital. For a little while, it can feel as though we are stepping away from one of the places where we most consistently experience meaning.

One of the hardest things for me to admit is that, when I was practising as a neurologist, I often found it easier to give my complete attention to a patient than to the people I loved most.

Writing that makes me feel vulnerable because it could so easily be misunderstood.

It wasn't because my family mattered less. Quite the opposite.

It’s that Medicine had trained my attention in a very particular way.

When I sat with a patient, everything else disappeared. They had my complete attention. I listened deeply. I was curious. Present.

Then I would go home and discover how much harder it was to offer that same quality of presence to the people closest to me. Part of my attention was still somewhere between clinic, unfinished conversations and tomorrow's work.

My body had come home.

The rest of me was taking a little longer.

Perhaps that is why I have become so invested in the idea of restorative time.

Not recovery.

Not simply stopping work. Restoration feels gentler than that.

It feels like the gradual return of our attention to where we actually are. The slow rediscovery of conversations that aren't competing with tomorrow's clinic. The quiet pleasure of reading without feeling guilty that we should be doing something more productive. The moment we notice birdsong instead of our inbox. The point at which our family no longer have to compete with the endless internal dialogue that medicine has taught us to carry.

Perhaps restorative time is less about escaping work than allowing ourselves enough time for our minds, our bodies and perhaps even our souls to arrive in the same place.

I wish I could tell you I have mastered this.

I haven't.

It still takes me several days to unwind at the beginning of a holiday. I still catch myself reaching for my phone more often than I would like. I still notice my attention drifting back towards work when I would much rather it stayed with the people sitting opposite me.

I am still a work in progress.

The difference now is that I no longer experience those moments with the same frustration. Instead, I see them as reminders of how profoundly medicine shaped me. It taught me compassion, responsibility, curiosity and deep attentiveness. Those are gifts for which I remain profoundly grateful.

What I am slowly learning is something medicine never really taught me.

How to become fully present again once I have left work behind.

If you are heading off on holiday this summer and discover that it takes longer than you expected to feel as though you have truly arrived, I hope you will be kind to yourself.

You are not failing at resting.

You may simply be discovering that after years of caring for other people, your mind needs a little longer to loosen its grip on unfinished work, your attention needs a little longer to return to the people in front of you and your soul, perhaps, needs a little longer to catch up with the rest of you.

Looking back, I no longer think the most important thing I learnt on that beach was how difficult it had become to unwind.

I think I discovered something much more important.

Restorative time isn't something we find.

It is something we slowly relearn.

And perhaps that is one of the most important lessons a long career in medicine still has to teach us.