We are all, unfortunately, familiar with the sensation of the “Sunday scaries”.
The end of the weekend brings with it an ever-present feeling of unease, so bad that it can ruin your whole day, preventing you from sleeping and pretty much wrecking your mental wellbeing just by virtue of the fact it’s… Sunday. Again.
The Sunday Scaries have been officially recognised by the government with the ministers from the Department for Health vowing to help people tackle the dread of returning to work on a Monday. The pledge comes after fresh research revealed that two thirds of adults deal with serious worries ahead of the working week.
Branding aside, the “Sunday Scaries” are actually an “anxiety based response,” according to psychologist and psychotherapist Nova Cobban. “Anxiety lives in the future which means that generally, it appears or builds when we are negatively anticipating future events.”
Senior therapist Sally Baker, agrees, and notes that the “Sunday Scaries” phenomenon has hit the headlines now — despite having been a well documented, universal experience for generations that even has its own Instagram account — because the world is just so difficult at the moment.
Most pertinently, the cost of living crisis is making people’s hours at work feel less and less worthwhile. “This makes it feel like you’re a hamster trapped on a wheel,” Baker explains, “you’re not making any ground movements, and you don’t feel as if work is where you’re going to actually succeed or gain traction. Everyone just feels stuck.”
And yet, we need the wheel to survive. The Sunday scaries will keep coming round each week, and we have no choice but to deal with them. The government has promised to set up a website listing advice to help with the weekend dread, but some people need help to deal with the scaries immediately, because they simply cannot deal with the feelings that will come when next Sunday rolls around. So here are two accredited therapists’ advice on what you can do to minimise them.
1. Take it easy on weekend boozing
“If you’ve been going out on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, by the time you hit Sunday your mental wellbeing is already on the floor,” says therapist Sally Baker. “You’re hungover, you’ve still got alcohol in your body, which means you feel in a pretty powerless state for facing Monday morning.”
Baker advises that when reaching the end of the weekend, you need to focus on how to boost your mental health ready for the week instead of depleting it further as a way of feeling distracted. So try really hard not to have any alcohol on Sundays, and see if it makes the work dread lessen.
2. Make Monday mornings slow starts
Don’t worry - this doesn’t necessarily mean getting up earlier. Nova Cobban suggests giving yourself “a little more indulgence” on a Monday to make it something you look forward to, instead of something you fear.
“The beauty of a Monday is that we generally have more time the night before to set ourselves up for a good morning,” Cobban says. “Prepare what you need for your favourite breakfast on Sunday night, take a little longer over your coffee on a Monday morning, take a longer shower, stick on a few tunes, listen to your favourite podcast and try to feel as relaxed as possible before facing the week.”
3. Eat food, good food
Baker stresses the importance of eating well and eating colourfully (“Eat the rainbow,” she says) to start feeling prepared from the inside out. “Avoid beige food and focus on getting the micronutrients you need - that can even come from herbs and spices - but make sure to have variety in what you eat,” Baker outlines.
If this feels like too much of a bitter (diet) pill to swallow, combine this recommendation with the first piece of advice and just go for a Sunday roast, sans alcohol! Bonus points if you make it yourself, have lots of veggies, or manage to go easy on the gravy.
4. Walk (or run)
Ugh, we know. Sometimes you just want mental health advice that isn’t like “exercise, eat well and be good to yourself!” but I’m sorry, it’s the hard truth. However, no one’s forcing you to drink liquid kale and go to a Sunday spin class - just go for a walk, that’s all.
“The whole idea with walking is that it’s meditation in motion,” says Sally Baker, “so go for a walk, make sure it’s somewhere green, and it can be with a friend or on your own. Even that little bit of vitamin D this time of year will be really appreciated by your brain, as will the fresh air.”
5. Do something you love on a Monday
Psychotherapist Nova Cobban says it can be easier to positively reframe Monday than you think, whether that means wearing your favourite outfit - “enclothed cognition” is a real thing, apparently - or doing something after work that you’re really hyped about.
“Go for a class, have a movie and popcorn night with the family, turn off notifications on your phone and go for a walk, meet friends, have a massage or a takeaway…end a Monday well and that will be the part you remember and anticipate on a Sunday.”
6. Tell someone
Sometimes the Sunday Scaries are *so* scary you don’t even want to let people know you’re feeling them, lest you speak them into existence. Well, newsflash, they already exist in your brain, so let ‘em out!
“Even if you can’t get to see a friend or family member that day,” Baker advises, “call someone and ask how they are, and tell them how you’re feeling in return. Don’t keep it a secret that you’re feeling work dread.”
Most importantly, pick the right friend. “Don’t hang out with someone who drains you,” says Baker - whether that be a friend that always talks about themselves, encourages you to drink too much, or simply isn’t mental health literate - “pick someone who you know always lifts your spirits.”
7. Stop doomscrolling
This is one for when you’re sitting on your sofa and you’ve been scrolling Instagram for so long you get onto the Insta stories of people you never, ever, interact with (you know what I mean), and the dread is weighing heavy on your mind.
Baker says at this point you’re deep into “catastrophic future thinking”, and what you need to do is “change state”. “The only way you can interrupt this pattern of thinking is by changing state,” she explains.
“Do something physical, something where you have an awareness of what you’re doing - go and open a window and take deep breaths, walk around the room, run up and down some stairs - recognise you’re wallowing in dread and that you need to do something else, and change that state.”
8. Fierce gratitude lists
Gratitude lists often feel like a Goop-y alternative to the quiet rationality of journaling, but it turns out there’s a time and a place for each of them.
Baker says journaling is actually more suited for mornings, “because the mind is fresher”. But if the idea of getting up earlier to work through your messy thoughts on Monday morning makes you feel even more dread, Baker advises putting together a gratitude list on Sunday night instead.
“People can do some quite vanilla gratitude work, but there’s real power in fierce gratitude work,” she says, “writing things like ‘I’m grateful I’m not with my ex-boyfriend’, ‘I’m grateful I don’t live with my mother anymore’, ‘I’m grateful I had that abortion,’ instead of things like… ‘I’m grateful for sunny days.’”
9. Remind yourself why you’re doing your job — or why you no longer want to!
If the Sunday scaries are always bad — concerningly bad — it might be time to take stock of what you want, and how much you actually enjoy your day job. “Mondays are often about facing the fact that perhaps there are aspects of your life that are not completely to your satisfaction, that they could be better,” says Nova Cobban.
“It can be a great day to notice what you need more of and less of. Use it as a day to be mindful of what it has to tell you about the changes you might want to make going forwards and use the week to work towards any changes you want to see. Monday will become a fresh start instead of a continuation of the worries of the previous week.”
