I don't get the Sunday Scaries anymore...
Sunday scaries, I no longer feel overwhelmed by them and here’s why.
What are Sunday Scaries??
No matter what job you are in, whether you love your job or do the job to get paid so that you can use the money for other things; anxiety for a new week can show up in many different forms for everyone. Every job has elements of new and unknown things to deal with. You can love your job overall and still had parts of it. That’s totally normal and doesn’t mean you’re in the wrong career. That feeling of anxiety or dread for a new week is what is known as the Sunday scaries.
Just because you feel the Sunday blues or scaries doesn’t mean you should change jobs. It means there is something your mind is trying to bring up via feelings of fear that needs to be looked at and acknowledged. This doesn’t mean trying to force yourself to believe everything will go smoothly as that just means glossing over issues and applying band aids as a temporary solution.
For me – I could have a good productive week and then spend time with family & friends at the weekend and feel super grounded. Then by the time Sunday evenings would roll round I always felt this tension in the pit of my stomach. Then a nervous anxious feeling would start to set in and I would start my week of feeling unbelievably depressed or low without there being any major reason for it. I wouldn’t be able to enjoy Sunday dinner with my husband or family lunches with nieces and nephews etc because I was dreading whatever unknown doom was coming the next day. Mondays ended up becoming this all encompassing mountain that I had to overcome or else my week would be failure.
All because my mind was already worrying about the next day that hadn’t even happened yet!
My strategy for banishing Sunday scaries
A few weeks ago I decided to look at what was going on in my mind in the lead up to a new week and I brought it back to basics.
I sat with my journal and Journalled. It. All. Out.
I started with – “I am dreading Monday and going back to work” “I’ve enjoyed the weekend so much and now I have to go back to the monotous routine of working life and having a 9-to-5 full time job”
I would let everything flow out of my mind and onto paper.
It turns out that what I was experiencing was fear in advance of anything possibly going wrong. And do you know what happened? 99% of the time there was absolutely nothing that needed firefighting on the Monday and it ended up just being another office work day and I made it through. AS a result of the Sunday blues I ended up feeling tired from all the unnecessary worry and doubt.
So I started journaling after my work day on a Monday evening. I would set a timer for just 15 minutes to look at how the day went and I would go back and re read the older weekend entries. The vast difference was clear. I went from doubt and pre-emptive stress to having a smooth day where nothing major went wrong. It was mostly in my head.
The result of journaling my fearful thoughts
I started to realise that I was playing into an overall story of doom and gloom by expecting my Mondays to feel hard and comparing my job to easier days back in university. This would then lead to me thinking about how work life can be hard and that there never feels like there is enough time to get things I want done.
All of these things are thoughts and not facts. Reading back through my journal allowed me to see I have created so many stories about how full time work and jobs are hard and it honestly made Mondays much harder than they ever needed to be.
So now…. I don’t accept the narrative that “Mondays are hard” or philosophies such as “back to the grind” which make work out to be this awful slog.
Creating a new story or narrative
Yes work is tough at times but overall there is so so so much good when you’re busy looking for the magic. Any time a thought pops up in relation to Sunday blues or scaries I tell myself “that is not my story, I get to have an amazing Monday so let’s go do this!” It’s a small shift but one that honestly has had so many ripple effects.
On Sundays I slow down and I pay attention to my thoughts. When I find myself thinking certain thoughts on a loop such as
“this is hard”
“I’m dreading tomorrow” or
“ I have a hard week ahead”
I breath. I give myself space and I put my hand on my heart and take a few VERY deep breathes. I tell myself “It’s ok to have these thoughts. Of course it feels hard after a lovely restful weekend”
Then I ask myself “What can I give myself so that I can start the new week of peacefully?”
A lot of the time it is as simple as telling myself “having a hard Monday is not my story”. Sometimes I like to do a 5 to 10 minute meditation audio and it helps shift my mind every single time.
Lately I’ve also started repeating simple but specific mantras
“I am Safe”
“I am protected and I am enough”
The journaling and the breathing and the mantras help to calm my nervous system down and to realise that I am always in charge of how my days and weeks go even if not so pleasant things happen such as arguments or disagreements. My reaction and response? Always in my control no matter what.
With this in mind I look forward to seeing what comes up this Sunday. I will keep you updated on my mindset work to really start each new week feeling refreshed (coffee may or may not feature heavily on Monday mornings but only because I absolutely enjoy a steaming hot mug of coffee.)