{"id":6439,"date":"2019-01-18T19:20:27","date_gmt":"2019-01-18T19:20:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.comparably.com\/blog\/?p=6439"},"modified":"2019-01-18T19:20:39","modified_gmt":"2019-01-18T19:20:39","slug":"how-to-banish-the-sunday-scaries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comparably.com\/blog\/how-to-banish-the-sunday-scaries\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Banish the ‘Sunday Scaries’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hopefully you don\u2019t know the feeling, but chances are you do: 76%<\/a>\u00a0of Americans suffer from what has been called \u201cthe Sunday scaries.\u201d It starts for most of us as we leave our live-in-the-moment childhoods behind and begin to plan for the future, to study for our SATs, get into a good university, find a good job<\/a>, and do well at it.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s then that we begin to reroute our ancient fight-or-flight wiring to focus our anxiety instead on those intangible workplace what ifs: \u201cWhat if my boss doesn\u2019t like the work I turned in last week?\u201d \u201cWhat if that look I got means I\u2019m about to be laid off?\u201d \u201cDid I forget to file that one bit of important paperwork on Friday?\u201d<\/p>\n

However it works, many of us are already \u201cat work\u201d in our heads when Sunday afternoon rolls in. And while there\u2019s nothing wrong with a little anxiety, it\u2019s a major shame when a quarter of your free time off is wasted worrying about something that won\u2019t happen until the next day. So here are some tips for taking back Sunday.<\/p>\n

1. A Friday list for Monday<\/b>\u2013 Let the last thing you do at work on Friday be to compile a list of things that need to get done on Monday. This will let you leave the office feeling totally on top of things, and if you\u2019ve been thorough you\u2019ll soon take heart in the notion that Friday You has Monday You\u2019s back, so Sunday You can get around to the important work of having fun and relaxing.<\/p>\n

2. Feed your five senses<\/b>\u2013 Since Sunday is probably your last free day for a week, go out in style. Do something you could only do with a full free day. And go somewhere that will infiltrate and stimulate all five of your senses in a way that working in an office (or sitting at home worrying about working in an office) never can. Let your senses take over, and even your anxiety will get distracted by the sense of in-the-moment immediacy you\u2019re feeling.<\/p>\n

3. See friends<\/b>\u2013 Talk about great distractions. See you friends, talk to them about your Sunday scaries. They\u2019ll either relate, and you\u2019ll both laugh it off, or they\u2019ll think you\u2019re weird\u2026 and you\u2019ll both laugh it off. Spending too much time inside your head is where the Sunday scaries come from, and nobody pulls us out of our heads better than our best friends.<\/p>\n

4. Push worrying off<\/b>\u2013 This takes a little presence of mind, but remind yourself that your Sunday worrying is an indulgence that isn\u2019t helping anyone. Knowing that\u2019s the case, simply make an arrangement with your anxiety to deal with all that later in the day, maybe after you make a nice dinner while holding a glass of wine, maybe even until after you tuck into bed. You still get to spend some time with creative worrying, but if you put it off it doesn\u2019t get to strip your Sunday of the carefree moments you need to thrive on during the week.<\/p>\n

5. Have more fun during the week <\/b>\u2013 If you can, stop treating your weekdays like you owe them to your company, and stop trying to jam in every bit of fun and relaxation you have planned into just Saturday and Sunday. Most of us get off of work fairly early in the evening: if you\u2019re not too beat from the workday, go out to a movie, a nice dinner, miniature golf, a walk on the beach. Use a few of your weeknight hours every week for the kind of thing you might reserve for the weekend, and suddenly the five-day workweek doesn\u2019t seem like such a shot of gloom and doom.<\/p>\n

6. Accept that the weekend is over<\/b>\u2013 Here\u2019s where we get real. Weekends are wonderful, and freedom is wonderful. In our modern lives, we\u2019re given just enough freedom to remember how it tastes before we have to return to our responsible adult lives. And when the weekend is over, it may be unavoidable that a melancholy overcomes us, but it doesn\u2019t get to take us down. Because we\u2019re adults, we can deal with this, work is hardly a situation to fear, and \u2013 guess what \u2013 there\u2019s another weekend just around the corner, maybe even the one where you reach your peak.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hopefully you don\u2019t know the feeling, but chances are you do: 76%\u00a0of Americans suffer from what has been called \u201cthe Sunday scaries.\u201d It starts for most of us as we leave our live-in-the-moment childhoods behind and begin to plan for the future, to study for our SATs, get into a good university, find a good … Read full-story <\/i><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":6440,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,6],"tags":[11,320,321],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comparably.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6439"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comparably.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comparably.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comparably.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comparably.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6439"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.comparably.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6439\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6444,"href":"https:\/\/www.comparably.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6439\/revisions\/6444"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comparably.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comparably.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comparably.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comparably.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}