“Holidays are the time when one can experience a life without neuroses”

Inner conflicts that accompany us on a daily basis, neuroses also follow us on vacation. If this is too short a period to do in-depth work on yourself, holidays are an opportunity to take a break to take an outside look at your desires. Benjamin Lubszynskipsychotherapist and author of the book Sleeping well can be learned!gives us the keys to take advantage of the summer holidays to reduce its neurotic load.

How could we define neuroses?

We are talking about ‘neuroses’ as soon as there is a conflict between a desire and our way of thinking and acting: this term can apply to a lot of things. Concretely, this is manifested by the idea: “I would like, but I don’t’. In psychoanalysis, it is considered that the superego takes up too much space in relation to the ego or the self: obligation and morality govern more than envy.

Collectively, the neurosis has more than likely increased. I think our way of life, in which we are sedentary and where stress is predominant, plays a lot; vacations are a way to look outside.

Why take advantage of the holidays to take an outside look at his neuroses?

As the principle of neuroses is to force yourself to do what you don’t really want, holidays are a territory where the desire can, if given time, reveal itself. This can be an opportunity to have a moment to take a breather from your neuroses and let out our unconscious desires to move more and more towards them.

We have a compass: north is indicated by what makes us happy, and south by what hurts us, creates tension, as well as stress. We must take stock to know in which direction to go. As we are much less taken by our habits on vacation and our lives are less codified and surrounded by the demands that we give ourselves and that others give us, it is easier to avoid everything that we hate. . The holidays are the time when one can experience what a life without neuroses could give.

Could we go so far as to settle our inner conflicts on vacation?

I don’t think they last long enough to work hard on yourself, but it’s an opportunity to test and adopt a new rhythm, at all levels. Everyone has an incompressible need for decompression: first of all, you need an airlock because you can’t do anything good the very first days of vacation. It is better to accept it and give yourself time to rid yourself of guilt, adopt a healthy sleep pattern and stop thinking about work.

For me, the important thing is to have the right to recuperation in all its forms: naps, rest, reading… Reducing your neurotic load involves setting yourself fewer demands, setting yourself fewer constraints and focusing more about the present moment, the pleasures and pleasant things. You must not go from one obligation to another: from that of professional life to that of working on yourself.

How to start working on yourself on vacation?

Once the decompression time, which varies greatly from person to person, has passed, holidays can be a very interesting form of resourcing. For this, it is essential to choose a stay that suits us. On site, you must first give yourself an obligation to disconnect. This involves not looking at his professional emails; you can, for example, program in advance an automatic response with your holiday dates.

Then, some things are done quite naturally but it is possible to improve them: we can allow ourselves time to sleep longer and eat better. In short, develop a true lifestyle, a balance. Going back to reading can also be a great help. Unfortunately, we read less or less on a daily basis, while the holidays are often the time when we offer ourselves this pleasure. During this period, reading is part of a new rhythm of life very favorable to the reduction of the neurotic load: it allows to have a balance which lowers stress and anxiety.

Why not adopt this balance all year round?

We tend to create a kind of excessively clear border between our daily life and that of the holidays: we agree a lot of things during the latter, but not all year round. As we do not feel in a net of obligations, we do things that do us good and that correspond to our aspirations. The rest of the year, we keep a pattern of habit.

The problem is that even if on vacation we will go from need to want very spontaneously, with rhythms and subjects of interest that suit us better, we will tend to forget it overnight by returning to the work. Apart from reading, it can be cultural visits, festivals, or relaxation, which helps very effectively to reduce the neurotic load.

How to adapt relaxation to your holiday style?

First, relaxation can go through hypnosis, sophrology or even meditation; among others. The principle is to create bubbles of relief and well-being, which strengthens the system to deal with stress: the more you relax, the calmer you are. The progression is certain, but it has to be regular: if someone does three sessions a day, they will become hyper zen very quickly. Two weeks is enough, especially since this can apply to all types of holidays.

When you’re on the beach for idleness, you might as well listen to a hypnosis session or do meditation for 1 hour. If you go hiking, you can do mindful walking. This involves focusing on your breathing, then on the noises around you, and, finally, on the landscape, in order to be really in the moment. Thus, after 1 hour of walking, most hikers describe an oceanic sensation: all of a sudden, they almost have a feeling of communion with their environment.

For those who take advantage of their holidays to make cultural visits, the idea is to slow down and become absorbed in the contemplation of certain works rather than doing everything at a run to see as much as possible. It’s a way of giving yourself the right to have a different relationship with time.