Why do you feel more tired after a holiday than before you left??

This is more common than most people admit.

Here is what is actually happening. When the body is under sustained pressure, it runs on stress hormones that suppress fatigue, keep you alert, and hold everything together.

The moment you stop, those hormones drop, and everything the body was deferring – the exhaustion, the inflammation, the emotional weight it had been managing – surfaces at once.

So the first two days of a holiday often feel terrible. Because your body finally has permission to process what the previous weeks cost it.

High-stress employees lose an average of one and a half hours of sleep per night. A seven-day holiday does not repay that debt, especially if the holiday itself involved travel, disrupted routines, or the low-grade anxiety of returning to a full inbox.

The body recovers when it feels genuinely safe, rested, and without demand. For most people in high-pressure roles, that condition is rarely fully met, even on leave.