Sunday Dread

Photo by Joice Kelly on Unsplash

I believe we're all familiar with the concept of the Sunday dread. Your weekend is going along well. Everything is great and then at some point Sunday afternoon or evening it hits: that dreadful feeling in your stomach. It can feel like anxiety or maybe just an overall feeling of sadness. And perhaps when it first hits you even wonder what's happening. "My weekend is going so great, I don't understand what the problem is," you think. And then you remember, "oh yeah, this is because I have to start another week of work tomorrow."

Even if you're in a job that you enjoy most of the time, you can experience this scenario on a Sunday. Why is that? Well, I will let you do the more intense googling on this. But the basic reason is because your body and your mind switch from full relaxation into the anxiety of all of the projects and tasks that you have to complete for the week. In the back of your brain you start computing all of the things you have to do, and how much time you will or will not have to do them. While you may not be consciously aware that you're starting to do all of this, you've gotten back on the hamster wheel and the body is feeling the effects.

That's why you shouldn't automatically assume that having any feelings of anxiety or sadness on Sunday equate to you needing a new job. If there's other other evidence that adds up to considering a job exit, that's a different story. But if it's just the normal Sunday dread that an overwhelming majority of us experience, there are things you can do to counteract it.

One of my favorite things to do is to have a set self-care routine in place. And by this I don't necessarily mean doing the same thing every Sunday, but rather a self-care rotation. Every single Sunday I have a plan to do something for myself that is self-care related. One Sunday I may choose to do a facial steam at home, the next will be restorative yoga. Or one Sunday I will watch my favorite movie with the perfect meal (that I didn't have to cook). The point is to plan for some fun activity that I can look forward to on Sunday night.

The other thing, and I know I come back to this often, is to make sure that my meditation practice is regular and consistent. I'm bringing meditation up once again because when we have a regular meditation practice, it's faster and easier to notice when we have those subtle shifts in our energy or anxiety level, etc. Okay, do I have you on board? Then I'll move on.

Let me leave you with a third step that will help. For the third step, it's actually better if you can do this on Friday at some point, making this actually item number one. And that is to create a list on Friday of all the things that you need to do next week. Or, you can create calendar reminders for the next week for the majority of items that must be completed. This is essentially a "brain dump" exercise. You want to get everything out and have the loosest kind of plan for how you will deal with the tasks that must be handled first in your work week. Then when you feel anxious on Sunday you can remind yourself, "I have already created a plan for the week, and it's waiting for me when I start work on Monday." It's true that you may start your work week and not be able to follow the plan that you created. But having attempted to put it all in order, can alleviate the pressure that you feel on Sunday to shift into work mode before it's really time.

Now you have three ways to make your next Sunday evening less stressful and more relaxing. Enjoy your day of rest!