Have you heard of the sunday scaries?
Headspace runs a series that addresses sunday scaries and the mechanisms to deal with them. I got introduced to this term recently and it’s like a light bulb went inside my head that totally defined what I have experienced for many years now.
What are sunday scaries
Sunday scaries can be best defined as that feeling of doom we all feel on the last few hours of the weekend. No real reason or meaning to feel anxious, but there is a feeling of sadness that envelops us like fog over a polluted city on a winter morning.
Most of us go through this without any awareness. The best we do is numb ourselves to make this feeling go away. We do everything to avoid this feeling and make it go away, right? It’s really difficult to deal with this kind of restlessness that just won’t go away.
We go out, we get drunk, sometimes we overeat, we get absorbed in TV Shows – basically we consume. We indulge in consumption in one form or other, almost always choosing behavioural patterns that are not very healthy. Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to sound like any of the above is wrong- It’s all fun, and we have earned this, right?
Right! But I am trying to get a little deeper here. I am trying to get to the feeling we keep running away from.
What is it about sundays that is causing these scaries
I mean, it is meant to be a day for relaxation. It is supposed to be a perfect culmination of this two day break we get from the hustle that fuels our consumption patterns. Instead, most of our Sunday hours, especially towards the end are spent in anticipatory anxiety with a sense of dread for something that has not happened yet : the coming week.
Why should we address sunday scaries
Well, for one thing, it is more common than we think. For some people who generally struggle with anxiety, it can become a lot of worse. And on especially bad days, when mild depression rears its ugly head too, it can become unbearable making us completely dysfunctional.
Even if our mental health is in good shape, it is always worth exploring difficult thoughts and emotions in our mind, to become more aware of them. : )
Who am I and why am I telling you all this
Well I am just a girl who spent the most part of her sunday curled up on the bed, binge-watching “The Morning Show“, crying inconsolably at the last episode of season 1. I am just the girl who spent an entire day trying to find a purpose to her life, and meaning in anything around her. I am the girl that ate three times her usual intake of food just because it felt right at that moment. I am the girl that ate a whole chocolate brownie despite hating chocolate which clearly shows my state of mind and relationship with food right now. I am just the girl who knows she is mildly depressed, as she always is, a week before she gets her periods, as her hormones wreak havoc in her body and her mind.
That, and I just felt I want to talk about this. : )
How can we cope with sunday scaries
I don’t have all the answers or any of the answers at all. In fact, today was one of my worst episodes. But I do know we all go through a milder version of this every sunday, and I want to share a few things that have helped me. These are not new, but they have personally helped, and I hope it helps a few other people too. That’s all I ever want.
1/ Schedule a worry time slot
I know how strange this sounds, but this helped me get through some very hard initial days of COVID induced anxiety when everything was so unpreditable and so scary. A friend sent me a video where a professor was talking about a few ways to address anxiety, she said “Schedule 15 minutes a day your calendar for just worrying.”
It’s pure genius! And it fucking helps! You see, worry only has power as long as you resist it or brood over it. If you sit down, try and make a list of all the things you are worried about, no matter how dark or how trivial it is, you offload them onto the paper, and that definitely makes you feel lighter. Do this for 15-30 minutes. Really lean into this, get creative, get ridiculous, we know how creative fear can get in our heads, right? Then discharge it all and let it go.
Try this to deal with sunday scaries too. Turn that TV off, sit down and make a list of all the things that is worrying you in your head. Dig deep. Try it, and tell me how you feel! : )
2/ Build a better routine for Sunday
You know the best way to control the unknown is to embrace the knowns. We all routines work for enhanced productivity etc. but routines also work to keep your mind from wandering all over the place getting imaginative about the unknowns.
If you are someone who undergoes the sunday scaries, try to get ahead of it by building a great routine. Allocate sometime for exercise because you feel great afterwards. Breathe, because it helps you ground yourself. Get some sunshine, and fresh air. As the Sunday scaries strike towards the evening, write down your priorities for the week, and eliminate junk from your calendar and your mind. This can someone help you get into the week feeling more in control and enhance the quality of your Sunday evening experince.
3/ Remind yourself of what really matters
Most of us live inside our noisy head that keeps us constantly busy with unimportant and self absorbed nonsense that won’t matter shit in a few years. One of the problems is this, never appreciating the magic in every moment. Sundays are not a gift with an expiry date, they are just another to spend quality time with yourself and people close to you doing things that really matter.
So, one of the ways to tackle the guilt of us generally feeling like we have wasted our Sunday is to spend it with people who matter, and we rally love. It could be a visit to your grandmother, or a truth telling game with your family. I am not talking about sitting in front of the idiot box watching a highly commercialised sports event while sipping on sugar water. I am talking about doing something that really connects you with your people. It’s rare, but it’s doable.
I just want to lay it down here that today I did none of these things, in fact I did the opposite of all these things. That’s ok. Some days are going to be like that. But at the least, let’s be aware of it.
As always, I”d love to know more about how you deal with the sunday scaries in the comments below! ; )
