Why I Take Four Holidays a Year to Protect My Mental Health

I take four holidays a year.

Not four extravagant overseas trips. Not four weeks lying beside a pool pretending emails do not exist. Just four deliberate breaks across the year where I step away from work and give myself permission to properly disconnect.

Over time, I have realised that I need them.

There was probably a time in my life when I would have seen taking that much time away as indulgent. I grew up with many of the same messages a lot of men receive. Work hard. Keep going. Be responsible. Get things done. Rest when everything else is finished.

The problem is that everything is never finished.

There will always be another client, another email, another piece of work, another household job, and another reason why taking time away could wait.

These days I see rest differently.

Taking time away from Bent Couch Counselling is not about escaping a life I do not like. Quite the opposite. It helps me come back to a life I care deeply about with more capacity to actually be present in it.

And that matters to me as a counsellor, but also as a father, partner, and friend.

The mental health benefits of taking a holiday

We often think about holidays as rewards.

Work hard enough, and eventually you earn one.

But psychologically, taking a break from our usual routines can serve a much more important purpose. Time away can create distance from ongoing demands, interrupt patterns of stress, and give our minds and bodies opportunities to recover.

Research into holidays and wellbeing has found improvements in areas including stress, mood, and wellbeing during periods away from work, although some of those benefits can reduce after returning to normal routines.

That does not make holidays pointless.

For me, it reinforces something important.

We probably should not wait until we are exhausted before we rest.

I would rather build recovery into my year than keep pushing until my body or mind forces me to stop.

Why four holidays works for me

Four is not a magic number.

I am certainly not suggesting everyone needs to book four holidays a year. People's financial circumstances, caring responsibilities, employment, and lives are very different.

For me, though, spreading breaks throughout the year gives me something valuable: regular opportunities to reset.

Rather than working for ten or eleven months and hoping one big holiday will somehow undo everything, I know another period of rest is coming.

Sometimes the break is about travel and doing something new.

Sometimes it is about doing very little.

Both have value.

I have also learnt that a holiday does not need to be filled with activities to be worthwhile. There is something powerful about having mornings without an alarm, conversations without watching the clock, and days that do not need to be productive.

That last one has probably taken me the longest to learn.

Rest is not something I have always been good at

Like many men I meet through my counselling work, I know what it is like to tie worth to productivity.

Being busy can feel useful.

Achievement can feel safe.

Sometimes we become so accustomed to operating at full speed that slowing down actually feels uncomfortable.

For gay and queer men, there can also be additional layers to this. Some of us have spent significant parts of our lives adapting, achieving, proving ourselves, hiding parts of ourselves, or trying to find where we belong.

That does not disappear simply because life is now going well.

Learning how to rest can sometimes mean noticing the part of us that still believes we should be doing something.

I have become much more curious about that in my own life.

What happens when I stop?

Can I enjoy something without needing it to achieve anything?

Can I be somewhere without thinking about what I need to do next?

Those are surprisingly important questions.

Being a counsellor does not make me immune to burnout

Counsellors spend a significant amount of time being present with other people's lives.

People bring us anxiety, grief, shame, relationship difficulties, loneliness, identity questions, trauma, fear, and sometimes experiences they have never spoken about before.

I consider it a privilege that people trust me with those parts of themselves.

But being able to sit alongside another person properly requires something from me too.

Attention.

Curiosity.

Patience.

Emotional capacity.

Presence.

I cannot ethically expect myself to provide those things endlessly without also paying attention to my own wellbeing.

For me, taking leave is part of that responsibility.

I do not want to become the counsellor who is technically sitting in the room but mentally exhausted.

I want to notice what a client says.

I want to notice what they avoid saying.

I want to remain curious rather than rushing towards an answer.

I want to have enough capacity to sit with silence rather than feeling I need to fill it.

Rest helps me protect that capacity.

My clients deserve a counsellor who takes care of himself

There can sometimes be an expectation that people working in mental health should somehow have everything sorted.

We do not.

Counsellors are human beings with relationships, families, responsibilities, emotions, stress, and lives outside the counselling room.

I actually think acknowledging that humanity is important.

Professional responsibility is not pretending that I have unlimited capacity. It is recognising that I do not and managing my work accordingly.

That includes supervision, professional development, boundaries, appropriate workloads, and time away from counselling.

My clients deserve me to be present when I am with them.

Sometimes the most responsible way of ensuring that is to close the diary and go on leave.

My family and friends deserve me too

This is probably the part that matters most.

I am not only a counsellor.

I am a father.

I am a partner.

I am a friend.

Those relationships should not receive whatever energy happens to be left after work.

A holiday gives me the opportunity to reconnect with those parts of my life.

To have longer conversations.

To laugh.

To experience something new.

To sit around doing absolutely nothing.

To be Shaun rather than Shaun the counsellor.

I think we sometimes underestimate how important that distinction is, particularly when our work means a lot to us.

I love what I do.

But I do not want my work to become my entire identity.

A holiday cannot fix burnout

There is an important qualification here.

If someone is experiencing significant burnout, chronic workplace stress, anxiety, or depression, a holiday is unlikely to address the underlying causes by itself.

You can spend a week beside a beautiful beach and still return to the same workload, workplace culture, relationship difficulties, or patterns that were exhausting you before you left.

That is why wellbeing cannot simply become another instruction to "take a break".

Sometimes something in our everyday life needs attention.

The more useful question may be:

What am I returning to, and is the way I am living sustainable?

A holiday can give us enough distance to start noticing the answer.

You do not have to earn rest

This is something I am continuing to learn myself.

Rest does not have to be the prize for reaching exhaustion.

You do not need to finish every job first.

You do not need to justify taking leave by proving how hard you have worked.

And you certainly do not need to wait until you are burnt out before deciding that something needs to change.

For me, four holidays across the year have become one way of creating a healthier rhythm between work, relationships, responsibility, connection, and rest.

I come back looking forward to seeing clients again.

I come back with ideas.

I come back curious.

And usually, I come back reminded that there is a much bigger world outside my counselling room.

That is good for my mental health.

I believe it is good for my work too.

And perhaps most importantly, it helps me be more present for the people I care about.

When did you last properly switch off?

Not scroll on your phone while answering work emails.

Not take a day off to catch up on jobs around the house.

Actually switch off.

If you cannot remember, it might be worth becoming curious about why.

What makes rest difficult for you?

What happens when you stop being productive?

And what might change if rest became something you planned for rather than something you waited until you desperately needed?

At Bent Couch Counselling, I work with gay and queer men and LGBTQ people across Australia around anxiety, burnout, identity, relationships, shame, loneliness, connection, and life transitions.

Sometimes the work is not about learning how to do more.

Sometimes it is about understanding why we find it so difficult to stop.

If that is something you would like to explore, you can book a free Discovery Call with me to see whether counselling at Bent Couch might be the right fit.

Shaun

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