You can be taking time out and still very much be working in your head.

You might replay a conversation, plan tomorrow, check for messages or feel that you should be doing something useful. The same can happen with responsibilities at home: one task ends, but your attention has already moved to the next.

This is why detachment matters to recovery. Detachment means being able to be fully separate from demands, including thoughts and impulses of anticipating, monitoring or solving dilemmas. Research distinguishes between emotional, cognitive and physical detachment, and identifies physical detachment as particularly important for recovery. Switching off is not just a matter of leaving work or telling ourselves to stop thinking and feeling a little more emotionally comfortable at home: we need time and conditions that allow our bodies to come out of their working state in order to feel sufficiently physically restored.

With detachment, you can still care about your work and the people who depend on you. The question is whether the demand continues to occupy you when you have an opportunity to rest. Many of the people I work with express that fully letting go can be a real challenge when they carry responsibilities.

Switching off is not always a simple choice. An unfinished task, an expectation of availability or a day with no clear stopping point can make it difficult. I also talk about sticky nervous activation states – an activated body and mind can resist moving into recovery and repair, and that very resistance can be used as the reason to stay attached to sources of stress.

Sometimes what helps are practical steps: record tasks that you will need to pick up later, agree when you will return to it, silence work notifications and then intentionally absorb yourself in something that takes you away from stress into recovery and bear with the inevitable transition that comes with letting go into restoration.

Notice when your mind or physical impulses pull you back into activation, then refocus and keep allowing yourself to relinquish yourself to the next part of your day or evening. You may learn something about the task, the boundary around it, or the conditions you need in order to let it go for now.

Recovery needs opportunities to be free of demand. Detachment helps make those opportunities real.

For more on what helps recovery once you’ve switched off, read How to Recover From Stress Why Rest Isnt Always Enough