Melina TzakouFounder & Scientific Director of the Arkesis Mental Health Center
Psychologist and Psychoanalytic/Psychodynamic Psychotherapist in Nea Ionia

Every year we look forward to vacation as if it’s going to give us something we’ve been missing all year. And when it finally arrives, it seems to end before we’ve had our fill. There’s a strange experience that repeats itself almost every summer. We count down the days until we leave, imagine the days ahead of us, and dream of the beach, sleeping in, hanging out with friends, going for walks, and a morning without an alarm clock. And yet, when the vacation comes to an end, the phrase “My vacation wasn’t long enough” slips out effortlessly. A phrase so common that we hardly notice it anymore. And yet, perhaps it’s worth pausing to reflect on it for a moment. Maybe it really wasn’t very long. But perhaps the interesting question isn’t how many days the vacation lasts, but how much we mentally expect to happen during that time. Is it just the number of days, or is it something more?

Essentially, vacations aren’t just a period of time without work. They’re a time in which we invest many different emotional expectations. We expect to rest, to be happy, to fall in love, to connect, to sleep, to play, to take our time. We hope, perhaps, to rediscover a part of ourselves that, in the midst of daily life, has been lost somewhere amid our obligations. And perhaps that’s why vacations always seem too short.

Even before we leave, the vacation has already begun to take shape within us. We imagine it. We fill it with images and expectations.  “I’ll sleep, I’ll relax, I’ll have a wonderful time, I’ll have time for my loved ones, I’ll enjoy the sea.” We invest a great deal of emotional energy in them. In reality, we often don’t just look forward to taking a vacation; we expect the vacation to fix something. To make up for the exhaustion of an entire year. To restore the energy we’ve lost. To make us feel free again.

This is precisely where the first paradox lies. When the needs of an entire year are condensed into a few days, it’s almost inevitable that those days will seem insufficient. Vacations are expected to be more than just vacations. They’re expected to be rest, joy, reconnection, freedom, pleasure, renewal, and, sometimes, a brief escape from ourselves. And the more we expect to get out of our vacation, the easier it is to feel that it wasn’t enough.

But there’s something else, too. Pleasure carries within it a bittersweet truth: it doesn’t last forever. When we start having a good time, at some point we realize that time is passing. The first day becomes Tuesday, Tuesday becomes Friday, and suddenly there are only two days left. And then another paradox may occur: even while we’re still in the midst of the pleasure, we’re already beginning to experience its loss. “In a few days we’ll be leaving.” This thought can creep in even during the most beautiful moment. The experience is no longer just “I am here”; it is also “soon I won’t be here.”

Psychoanalytic thought reminds us that desire is not simply the same as a need. A need can be satisfied—just as I am thirsty and drink water. Desire, however, has a different dynamic. It often shifts, returns, and seeks something more. Freud, already in his work on the pleasure principle and later in *Beyond the Pleasure Principle*, highlighted the complex relationship between satisfaction, repetition, and desire (Freud, 1920). This can help us understand why even a truly wonderful week might leave us with the feeling, “I’d like more.” Not necessarily because we didn’t enjoy it enough. But because pleasure does not have the power to permanently rid us of desire. Perhaps, in fact, that “just a little more” is an integral part of the human experience.

There is, however, one aspect of modern life worth noting. Often, we go on vacation with the same mindset we have at work. We want to “make the most” of our days. To get things done. To see places. To do activities. To take photos. To not let a single day go to waste. As if there’s a voice inside us saying, “Since you have time, you have to make the most of it.” It’s the voice of demand, of performance—what Freud would call, within the framework of his theory of the psyche, a superego function: the internalized demand to conform to rules, expectations, and ideals. In this way, even rest can turn into work. And then we return from vacation exhausted from trying to rest.

Furthermore, for many people, summer also carries a special memory: childhood summers. Back when time seemed different. The three months of summer could feel endless. The days had a sense of space; there wasn’t the same feeling of “I have to get everything done.” As adults, we return to that time of year in a way every summer. Perhaps not just to a place, but also to an older sense of self. Summer can awaken a memory of a life with more play and fewer obligations.

Winnicott (1971) linked play to a special space of experience, situated between inner and outer reality, within which a person can be creative and feel more alive. Perhaps sometimes what we long for on vacation isn’t just the place. It’s the self we can be there. On vacation, we might be a little different. We wake up later. We eat without rushing. We walk more. We talk late into the night. We swim. We gaze at the horizon. We have time to think—or, even better, time to think about nothing at all. For a little while, we don’t have to be so productive. And that can be deeply relieving.

And then comes the return. The suitcase opens. Clothes are put away. The alarm clock goes off again. Emails pile up. The schedule fills up again. Along with them, our roles return: employee, parent, partner, professional, the person who has to live up to expectations. Returning, therefore, doesn’t just mean that vacation ends and work begins. It means that the roles, demands, and obligations that had temporarily eased are coming back. Perhaps that’s why sometimes coming back hurts more than the end of the vacation itself. We’re not just saying goodbye to a place; we’re not just losing a beach or a hotel. We’re temporarily losing a version of ourselves.

But perhaps the point isn’t to make our vacations long enough that we don’t miss them. That will probably never happen. Perhaps the question is, “What did my vacation give me that I miss so much when I return?” If it’s rest, we can ask ourselves where rest fits into our daily lives. If it’s connection, what has happened to our relationships the rest of the year? If it’s freedom, how much room do we allow ourselves to choose? If it’s play, when was the last time we did something without it having to be useful? And if it’s simply the feeling that “I’m more myself,” then perhaps that’s where the most important message lies. Vacations may not just be a break from life. They may be a mirror of the life we’d like to have a little more of. So perhaps we don’t need to hold on to summer forever. We need to hold on to something of what it allowed us to feel. A little more space, a little more enjoyment, a little less guilt when we’re not being productive, a little more play. And perhaps that way, during our vacation, we’ll remember that life isn’t just about what we have to get done.

Because vacations may indeed end very quickly, but…

“What if we could let a small part of that experience continue to live within us every day?”

People rarely turn a blind eye to self-awareness because they are ignorant. They resist because the truth comes at a high cost. The mind does not hide things by chance, but buries deep within itself what once seemed unbearable. In psychoanalytic psychotherapy, this resistance is not treated as stubbornness or failure, but as a form of protection. Every defense mechanism that is mobilized is, at its core, an act of psychological survival.

A client of mine once told me, “I don’t understand why, in every relationship I have, I end up feeling completely alone and abandoned.” Intellectually, she understood the pattern, but emotionally, she couldn’t bear its meaning. Time and again, she chose distant partners—people who were emotionally unavailable, reserved, and hard to get close to. Consciously, she called it “bad luck”; unconsciously, she was reliving the emotional atmosphere of her childhood—a father who was physically present but emotionally absent. For her, the familiar pain of disappointment was “safer” than the possibility of “unknown” true intimacy. This is one of the tragedies of the unconscious: people do not seek happiness; they seek intimacy. Even pain can become a strange comfort when it resembles the emotional world in which one first learned to survive.

Freud (1917), in one of his writings, noted among other things, “…the ego is not master in its own house.” What I understand he essentially meant was that most people imagine themselves to be rational and self-aware; yet much of human behavior is governed by hidden fears, forbidden desires, unresolved grief, and unconscious beliefs. Powerful defenses are erected to prevent these truths from reaching consciousness.

Consider, for example, the person who constantly criticizes others for selfishness. He feels generous, moral, and ready to sacrifice himself. But beneath his moral indignation lies an unconscious envy; he secretly longs for the freedom to put his own needs first, but this desire seems unacceptable to him. So, instead of acknowledging his own aggression or selfish desires, he projects them onto others. Suddenly, the world is filled with selfish people, and he can remain “innocent” in his own eyes. Projection protects the self from guilt, but it keeps the person trapped in a distorted reality.

Another patient came to therapy complaining of “unexplained anxiety.” She described herself as independent and successful, with complete control over her emotions. Whenever sadness reared its head, she would throw herself headlong into work, clean, run errands, go out with friends, or hit the gym. Silence terrified her. One day, after a prolonged pause during the session, she burst into tears, whispering, “I can’t… if I stop moving, I feel empty, like nothing.” That sentence contained years of unconscious pain. Deep down, this productivity wasn’t ambition; it was a defense mechanism. Beneath the constant activity, she was reliving a childhood experience of emotional neglect. She had learned very early on that her emotional needs would not be met, so she replaced desire with achievement. Success became a substitute for love, and as long as she remained busy, she could avoid the unbearable sadness of her unmet needs for attachment.

Something similar happened with a man who had been telling me for years how much he longed for intimacy. But every time someone loved him sincerely, he lost interest. Eventually, he realized something devastating: what captivated him most was the chase, because that reproduced the emotional deprivation he had learned as a child. Love was unfamiliar and emotionally unsettling to him; it wasn’t rejection he feared, but being truly seen by someone. Being known deeply is terrifying because it shatters the illusion. Many people prefer idealized versions of themselves—ones that make them feel they’re always strong, that they don’t need anyone, that they’re rational, that they’re kind, that they’re in control.

People don’t resist the truth because they prefer illusion; they do so because the body remembers what the mind has forgotten. One of the toughest battles in psychotherapy occurs when a person nears real change. Paradoxically, anxiety increases the most precisely at the moment when therapy begins to yield results. Why? Because therapy threatens the identity they had known up to that point. The symptoms, however painful they may be, become the compass by which life is organized. Depression can hold unconscious anger captive. Anxiety can act as a shield against emotional risk. Even pain offers a strange sense of continuity.

Through psychoanalytic work, this inner contradiction is gradually revealed. It becomes clear that a person who loves can, at the same time, feel hatred. That the most independent person hides within themselves a need to depend on others. That behind the most unshakable self-confidence, fear lurks. True emotional maturity comes precisely when one is able to withstand these contradictions without breaking down.

Carl Jung (2003) spoke of the “shadow”—the hidden parts of the self that are rejected by the conscious mind. The more intensely one fights against and denies these aspects, the more power one gives them in the darkness. What is not acknowledged does not disappear; it returns through the back door, transformed into symptoms, dreams, obsessions, toxic relationship patterns, addictions, or pervasive anxiety. A woman who insists that she “never gets angry” develops chronic migraines. A man who believes that vulnerability is a weakness becomes emotionally numb. A parent who denies feeling resentment toward their child becomes inexplicably irritable and cold. The unconscious will always find a way to speak, even when the conscious mind refuses to listen.

Self-awareness is deeply liberating. The moment a pattern is consciously recognized, the person is no longer at its mercy. Awareness gives rise to choice. A person who understands that their jealousy stems from childhood insecurity may still feel that twinge, but no longer confuses it with objective reality. Reflection creates a valuable psychological space between the impulse of the moment and the action. This is the true, ultimate goal of psychotherapy: freedom. Freedom from the compulsive repetition of the same choices. Freedom from invisible fears. The freedom to love without endlessly reopening old wounds.

This freedom, however, comes at a price: mourning. Mourning, not only for the pain of the past but also for the loss of illusions in the present. It is essential to mourn the fantasy of perfect parents, of perfect love, of perfect control, and even the fantasy of a perfect, unshakable, and whole self. That is why self-knowledge is so frightening. Reflection threatens the very strongholds that have kept the soul alive until now.