‘Sunday scaries’ are real. Here’s how to get rid of them for good

Read this list of tips and tricks on how to eradicate the 'Sunday scaries,' that feeling of impending doom as the workweek creeps back up on you.

Achieving a healthy work/life balance is already a challenge, as work increasingly bleeds into personal time.

The reward for making it through another long week is the weekend, when many try to squeeze in as much as possible, whether it’s cleaning up around the house, reading a book, bingeing a new TV series or spending time with family and friends.

Weekends are already too short, so the last thing we need is something that takes precious time away from us. As Sunday progresses, a dark cloud moves in, bringing with it a sense of dread as you begin thinking about the week ahead. Enter: the Sunday scaries.

If you’re not familiar with the term, the Sunday scaries is a form of anticipatory anxiety — a feeling of nervousness or fear that sets in as you transition from the weekend to the workweek. The intensity of it varies from person to person, from feeling a mild sense of unease to triggering your fight-or-flight survival instincts. People who experience the Sunday scaries also report restlessness, irritability, insomnia and digestive issues.

While it may not be a frequent topic of conversation with your friends and co-workers, Sunday scaries are fairly common.

A 2018 survey conducted by LinkedIn found that 80 per cent of respondents experienced it. For millennials and Gen Z, it’s by a whopping 90 per cent. Another survey pinpoints 3:58 pm as the average start time, with 88 per cent of participants reporting that they experience anticipatory anxiety every week.

You may feel like there’s no way to escape this weekly bout of anticipatory anxiety, but there are ways to cope and ultimately eliminate the feelings altogether. Here are 10 ways to reclaim more of your weekend by getting rid of the Sunday scaries for good.

There are several triggers for the Sunday scaries, with juggling large workloads, balancing professional and personal to-do lists, and thinking about the tasks that weren’t completed the previous week as the leading causes, according to the LinkedIn survey. For some, it’s stress over an upcoming presentation or deadline, and for others, it’s returning to a high-pressure or toxic work situation. It feels like a never-ending cycle that can’t be broken, but the good news is that once you identify the sources of your Sunday scaries, there are ways to make them a thing of the past.