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Episode Description
You count down to vacation for months. Then you spend the first few days checking email and the last few dreading your first day back.
In this solo episode of The Art of Being a Therapist, Ashley Charbonneau records from the road. She’s fresh off a week in London and halfway through two weeks of travel in Africa. She shares five lessons vacation keeps teaching her about rest, boundaries, and therapist burnout. (She admits she has to relearn them every single trip.)
Ashley explains why “work hard, play hard” leaves therapists too drained to enjoy their time off. She talks about how travel makes us more curious and humble as clinicians. She also shares what a Jack the Ripper tour taught her about honoring trauma without turning it into entertainment. And she explains why your clients and supervisees are usually fine while you’re gone, and how your time away can build their confidence.
In this episode:
Why rest shouldn’t be something you have to earn
How being a student of the world makes you a better therapist
When curiosity about trauma turns into consumption
How to set vacation boundaries that fit your real life
Why the days before and after time off need more space
If you’ve ever answered emails at the airport gate, listen before your next trip. Then share it with a therapist, supervisor, or grad student who needs permission to take a real vacation.
CHAPTERS
[00:00] Vacation Reflections Intro
[00:40] Why Vacations Reveal So Much
[01:34] Lesson One: Slow Down
[04:03] Lesson Two: Student Mindset
[07:17] Lesson Three: They’re Okay
[10:02] Lesson Four: Time Off Reality
[12:04] Lesson Five: Transition Space
[14:31] Closing Be Human Always
Transcript
Vacation Reflections Intro
Ashley C.: This is The Art of Being a Therapist, the space between training and real life. But it's just me today, Ashley Charbonneau, and today I'm here to talk about what vacation keeps teaching me again and again. I'm actually recording this while I'm on vacation. I just wrapped up a great week in London. This was my second trip there, and now I'm in South Africa traveling for another two weeks, here as well up to Victoria Falls and to Kigali.
By the time you are listening to this, I'll be back home, but for now, I'd love to share a few things I have learned from taking time off.
Why Vacations Reveal So Much
Ashley C.: Vacations are really interesting to me, not because they're always relaxing. They usually aren't for me, no matter how much I plan, quote, unquote, to relax. What an oxymoron.
And not because I suddenly become a different person while I'm away. I definitely don't. Vacations are interesting because they reveal things. They reveal our relationship with work and our boundaries, our relationship with rest, our identity, our anxiety, things about our bodies. I am one to notoriously get sick while on vacation, and I've seen many doctors abroad.
I don't think therapists talk enough about vacations. We spend a lot of time talking about burnout, self-care, and work-life balance, but there's something about intentionally stepping away from the people who rely on us that can feel complicated. So today, I thought I'd share five things that vacation keeps teaching me.
Lesson One: Slow Down
Ashley C.: These aren't groundbreaking revelations, but they are lessons I seem to need to relearn every single time I leave town Lesson one: work hard, play hard isn't sustainable. I grew up hearing this phrase all the time and embodying it as well. Work hard, play hard, as if life is supposed to swing between two extremes, and I did swing between two extremes in so many different ways, starting from a young age.
If I don't get an A, I'm a failure. You're listening to someone who cried over a ninety-eight in third grade and a B+ in college. I've done the go a hundred miles an hour until you're exhausted and then collapse somewhere for a week before doing it all over again. For a long time, this is exactly how I operated, even with work.
I'd push through full and overly full schedules, answer emails late at night, take on just one more supervisee, one more client, one more project, one more book. I laugh, but there were some tough times, tough years. Vacation would become this magical finish line. If I can just make it. If I can just make it to vacation.
Sound familiar? The problem is that vacations were never restorative for me at all because I arrived completely depleted, or I was ready to go. It was not until I was on vacation with my now sister-in-law, and on our second day abroad, I asked her, "What are we doing today?" She said, "Relaxed." Relax?
What is that? But alas, I learned to relax in Bali. You can't recover from chronic exhaustion in five days. You can't undo months of ignoring your own needs by drinking a cappuccino in another country. I think many therapists fall into this trap because we genuinely care about what we do, at least I do.
Our work matters, and people depend on us. There's always another client who needs an appointment, another supervisee with a question, another email that feels pressing. And because our work is meaningful and because we find purpose in our work, it's easy to convince ourselves that pushing harder is somehow noble.
But here's what I've learned. Rest shouldn't be something we earn. It should be something we practice regularly. Vacation shouldn't be the only time we slow down because if that's true, then we've probably been moving too fast the other forty to fifty weeks of the year. I'm, of course, still working on this.
Lesson Two: Student Mindset
Ashley C.: I don't have it figured out, but I'm becoming much more interested in building a life where I don't need vacation to escape what I love Lesson two: be a student of the world. One of my favorite parts of traveling isn't checking landmarks off a list, it's learning. It's meeting people. I genuinely love becoming a student again and again and again.
The only regret in life I have is not spending time abroad during college, not spending that semester abroad. I wasn't ready at the time, I know that, but looking back, I really wish I was. London was such a perfect reminder that I love to learn. I've always loved the history surrounding Henry VIII specifically.
There's something fascinating about how one person's decisions surrounding relationships nonetheless reshaped an entire country's religious and political landscape. I took tours that focused on the history of the monarchy and religion, and I found myself not thinking just about history, but also about human behavior, about power, identity, fear, death, and belonging, the stories that we tell ourselves to justify big decisions.
As therapists, we spend our careers trying to help people, and history gives us another lens for doing exactly that. I also learned a lot about London's street art scene. What I had always casually admired over strolls through various streets turned out to have an incredibly rich history rooted in politics, protest, identity, and community.
Art, as we know, is communication, resistance, and storytelling. The walls of a city like London can tell you just as much as a museum can, even more so, I would argue. And then there was the Jack the Ripper tour. I'll admit it, I love true crime as I think a lot of us do, but this story in particular has become almost entertainment.
There's merchandise, walking tours all the time, people posing for pictures, and it made me think about how easily we can become disconnected from humanity of victims when, especially when enough time passes, especially as I realized how gruesome those crimes in particular were and saw what is thought of as the first CSI photos ever documented.
It's worth asking ourselves, when does curiosity become consumption? When does learning become a spectacle? As therapists, those are important questions because we hear trauma every day. It's our responsibility to never let someone's pain become interesting at the expense of remembering that it belonged to a real person.
This was a big reflection I had last week. And yes, I also ate incredible food. Being a student of the world means getting to try lots of good food, and good food deserves its own category. There's something really beautiful about sitting in a restaurant unknown to me with a book, even alone, eating or drinking something I've never tried before.
Travel expands us. It reminds us that our worldview is incredibly small, and that's a good thing. I think being a student of the world makes us better therapists.
Lesson Three: They're Okay
Ashley C.: It makes us more curious, more humble, more culturally aware, more willing to say, "I don't know. Tell me more." Those are some of the most therapeutic statements we can ever say to a client Lesson three, clients and supervisees are usually fine.
This one makes me chuckle a little. Before every vacation, I spend so much time preparing crisis plans, coverage, making sure I have contact information updated, scheduling stuff, checking in, reminding people of when exactly I'll be gone. And every single time, the thing I worry about rarely happens.
Clients are usually okay. Supervisees, yes, okay. Colleagues, also okay. In fact, they're always the ones telling me not to check my email. How many times have you heard a client say, "I hope you enjoy your vacation," or a supervisee say, "Please don't answer while you're away"? They're giving us permission that we struggle to give ourselves.
I think therapists often overestimate how indispensable we are, not because we're arrogant, but because we care and we want to help. But of course, there's another side to that. If clients believe they can only function when we're available, we may have accidentally created dependence instead of confidence.
Part of therapy is helping people internalize what they've learned, to practice skills, tolerate that discomfort, discover that they actually can get through difficult moments. Sometimes one of the greatest therapeutic interventions is simply allowing clients the opportunity to discover that they can manage while we are gone.
That is huge, huge, huge growth. I often have clients email me saying, "Hey, I know you're away. I just wanted to jot this down. No need to respond." Or when I come back, they'll say, "I wrote down a bunch of things that I thought I needed to talk to you about immediately, but the time has passed, and I got through it."
And that is so awesome to hear. And honestly, the same goes for supervisees. I don't want supervisees who need me forever. I want supervisees who actually slowly need me less. That means they trust their clinical judgment, and I trust their clinical judgment. They know how to consult appropriately. They're learning how to tolerate that uncertainty, and they remember that they know more than they think they do.
Modeling healthy boundaries isn't just good for us. It's teaching, it's helpful, it helps us learn. Every vacation becomes another opportunity to communicate, "You've got this," either to ourselves, to our clients, or other people in our life.
Lesson Four: Time Off Reality
Ashley C.: Lesson four, be realistic about time off. This lesson is philosophical and practical.
There's a very fine line between completely disconnecting and creating an absolute disaster for your future self. Some people can disappear for three weeks and come back to 20 emails. That is amazing. I have never been that person, ever. If you're like me, you come back to hundreds. There's clients, supervisees, owning a business, running a podcast, staying connected to my people.
Life goes on while we are on vacation, and that is okay. It just looks differently depending on your responsibilities and the different roles that you have. I've learned to stop comparing my vacation boundaries to someone else's because I have failed every single time. I have colleagues who truly do not look at their work email while they are gone.
They truly do not get back to people while they are gone, and that is something I continually strive to be able to do. And if I convince myself I can do that, then I am just setting myself up for failure because I am not able to do that. I chuckle, but it's helpful for me to laugh at myself because it means I know.
I know what to expect, and I know what I'm capable of. Sometimes I schedule one hour during a trip to handle something important, and sometimes I don't. Sometimes I intentionally check one thing because it actually reduces my anxiety, like deleting spam emails once a day. And there's been times where I get one email and it completely ruins my day and I gotta turn it around.
I've been more and more honest with myself the, as the years have gone by. I can actually disconnect, and I want to, but it's very hard and it has to be intentional. Try asking yourself these questions. Can you actually disconnect? Would checking one email make things better or worse? Are you working because you need to or because sitting or sitting still feels uncomfortable?
Lesson Five: Transition Space
Ashley C.: This is one of the hardest things about knowing ourselves, that honesty piece has to come in here Lesson five, I never like how I leave or how I return. Here's the funny part. Even though I know better, I usually find myself working right up until my flight. Except giving myself a pat on the back, my last two trips, go me.
I'll think I can squeeze in one more client, I can finish one more project, I can answer just a few more emails. I'm a planner and I get anxious about time so I always pack ahead of time. I always get to the airport two hours early, if not more. I have all those buffers but I'm checking emails until the gate closes.
Leaving for London a week ago was the very first time I changed my voicemail greeting to out of office before I actually got out of the office. I usually forget until a call comes through and I think, "Shit, I forgot to change my voicemail recording." And then I have a great trip, and then I come home and I immediately jump back into work the next morning.
Again, I know better. I don't enjoy rushing into vacation and I don't enjoy rushing out of vacation, yet somehow I have kept doing both until recently and maybe you do too. But here's the real lesson in this. Transitions deserve more attention than we give them. We expect ourselves to constantly and instantly switch from clinician to tourist to clinician again, clinician to client to clinician again, clinician to supervisor to clinician again, clinician to parent to clinician again, clinician to spouse to clinician again.
But our nervous systems don't work like light switches. They need transitions. They need space. I'm trying to get better at protecting those transition days or hours without rushing. Hopefully there is less squeeding-- squeezing every ounce of productivity out of every hour in my future but having space to arrive somewhere else, whether it's vacation or wearing another hat or stepping into a different role and enough space to come home and transition back in And to close, as I sat on the next plane reflecting on my week, I realized vacations aren't really about escaping work, at least not anymore.
Be Human Always
Ashley C.: They're about remembering who we are outside of work. I am truly my best self on vacation. I met up with a dear friend and colleague who recently moved to London for a PhD program, and she commented, "I really feel like I know you now that I've seen you abroad." And that was such a cool thing to hear.
My two best friends in life, one I met in 2015 in Peru, one I met in 2012 in Athens, and that just goes to show that I am my authentic self on vacation, someone who is driven by curiosity, a love of learning, and wanting to see the entire world. Remember, clients are usually okay. Supervisors are too. Emails wait.
History matters. Food tastes better when you're not multitasking, I promise. And slowing scow- slowing down is a skill. We shouldn't have to earn being human. We shouldn't have to earn rest or joy or recovery. I don't have to earn my true self only to be experienced by me and those around me a couple times a year.
I am human, and I want to be my true self all the time. Thank you so much for spending part of your day with me. If this episode resonates with you, please share it with another therapist, supervisor, student, or someone who needs permission to take a real vacation. Until next time, stay curious, take care of yourselves, and remember, the art of being a therapist isn't just what happens in the therapy room.
It's also how we choose to live the rest of our lives.
