Worse, this is probably intentional by your employer to discourage time off

The lesson is: never go on vacation.

My cousin told me why he seemingly suddenly quit his job the one day - The dramatic *glass-shattering realization* moment was that he was writing a post-it note to remind himself of something for later - Starting with "I need to..." but in his busy, juggling way-too-many-things haze, looked back down at the note and realized he'd written "I need to quit". The background was, of course, that he was going out of his gourd with how constantly stressed and overworked he was. But you get somewhat accustomed to that, especially when it's gradually piled on. So yeah, it was probably a thought rattling around in the back of his mind for a while leading up to this. But that was the moment when he fully realized just how bad things had gotten. My point is, OP, take the fact that you can't even disconnect yourself from the stress of looming work when taking a vacation as a sign that you are not in a healthy state, and that you should be seriously making plans for something to change. Sure, it's probably not as easy as just saying "Screw this. I'm out!", so that means looking at things realistically - Assuming your bosses aren't the type who would react well to you asking for a reasonable rebalancing of work responsibilities, What do you need to do to get yourself out with as little stress as possible? How many months' savings do you have? How long could you go without pay if you do reach that "I literally cannot do this anymore" breaking point? Actually, even if you're stuck there for some time while job-searching, is there anything you do have control enough over to scale back to give yourself more breathing room? Either way - Take care of yourself, OP. If you were to drop dead from stress at your desk, your job would barely wait until the next day to start replacing you, if that long. And they'd probably more upset by the fact that having your body removed would disrupt everyone else's ability to work for that day than the fact that they had to replace you.