If you spend half your weekend preemptively mourning your return to work or school on Monday, or catch stress and nervousness ballooning in your chest come Sunday evening, you know the feeling: the Sunday scaries, a funny name for something that feels a lot like doom. Defined by one expert as “feelings of intense anxiety and dread that routinely occur every Sunday,” a recent survey found that about 75% of workers in the United States experience these feelings.
Israa Nasir, a therapist and author of the forthcoming book Toxic Productivity, tells Teen Vogue that what we might think of as the Sunday scaries is actually anticipatory anxiety. The beginning of a work or school week, with deadlines and to-do lists looming, can create a “sense of impending anxiety.” In popular culture the term might refer particularly to dread of Monday morning, but, Nasir clarifies, we can experience it after a vacation, leave from work, or any time we have to return to work or school.
We crawled out from under our own Sunday scaries to ask experts where these feelings come from and how we can cope with this kind of stress.
Is there a difference between Sunday scaries and anxiety?
If you begin a workweek feeling anxious about something specific like a presentation, an interview, exam, or other factors that feel high-stakes, that’s a pretty typical reaction, Nasir says, and is different from clinical anxiety. A certain degree of Sunday scaries or anxiety is normal.
But if nothing anchors the anxiety, that’s another story. “If I were to say, ‘Hey, what are you feeling anxious about?’ and your response is, ‘Oh, just work,’ then we need to look into what about work is making you feel this way,” Nasir explains. Is it discomfort with coworkers? Your boss? Impostor syndrome? The workload? Though the Sunday scaries are often perceived as an individual problem, Nasir thinks it’s important to understand that, sometimes, these feelings are a normal reaction to a harmful work environment.
Nasir suggests tracking patterns to build awareness of when you start feeling bad. If stress or nervousness flares up every Sunday, make note of it. If that worry impacts how you function over the weekend or your ability to sleep, note that too. The data collection can help you have informed conversations with a doctor, therapist, or even in the workplace.
If you’re experiencing debilitating symptoms that affect how you show up to work or in relationships for more than four weeks, Nasir says, that could be a red flag that something bigger than the usual Sunday scaries is at play.
Where do these feelings come from?
Just as a person can experience these feelings in different contexts — Who among us hasn’t wondered if we’re still capable of doing a job after having time away? — we can also have them for different reasons. “I would say maybe one source is work itself,” says Meag-gan O'Reilly, cofounder and CEO of Inherent Value Psychology. If you’re experiencing dread about work, it could tell you something about that environment.
O’Reilly also brings up what she calls “internalized capitalism”: Needing to work is a “very coercive condition for living,” she says, because we have to work to provide for our basic needs. So much of internalized capitalism is grounded in scarcity, urgency, and lack, she adds. And there are also factors that make it feel impossible to take time off at all.
Ask yourself what you’re really worried about beneath the Sunday scaries, she suggests: Is it measuring up? What do you actually want? Especially for young workers, O’Reilly says, you want to channel drive in affirming ways.
Haley Cobb, PhD, an assistant professor of industrial and organizational psychology at Louisiana State University, does research surrounding the “ideal worker” myth. This is the belief that “there is a person who can put work ahead of all else and be wholly devoted to work,” Dr. Cobb explains. In the 1990s, she tells Teen Vogue, researchers began to pick apart this notion, realizing it "was best embodied by a white, male breadwinner who had a wife or caregiver to stay at home and take care of all the unpaid responsibilities.” It’s a white, Western ideal, she notes, which undermines who we think of as a “good worker” and is not reflective of the modern workforce.
Consider the norms in your workplace. Generally speaking, if you have a boss who goes on vacation, sets an out-of-office message and adheres to it, that signals to workers that they really can take a break. But when a leader says they’re OOO but continues working anyway, Dr. Cobb points out, that signals to workers that they should be available too. If the expectation is that you are always on, of course it’s going to feel more stressful when you aren’t.
A lack of boundaries around work can also be a factor in having anxiety. Sunday can be a time when we’re in a non-work space, Dr. Cobb says, but a lot of us work on Sundays anyway. “I think it can put us in this place where we're kind of on, but not really, and sometimes being in that liminal state can be stressful,” she explains. “Because we don't have those clear lines around, Okay, which person am I right now? What time am I living at this point?” Disengaging from work or practicing psychological detachment can help stop that spiraling feeling.
How do we combat the Sunday scaries?
O’Reilly, who often helps clients go on mental health leave and return to work, talks about the possibility of a “ramp up”: "Can you do part-time or even quarter-time to part-time to 75% to full?” she asks. She also considers how to make Mondays feel more humane. Could you negotiate a later start time? Are there chances to slow down in the morning and have a good breakfast? If you know you’re going to have a hard time, O’Reilly suggests, try to give yourself more compassion and, when possible, schedule more ease into the day.
Similarly, Nasir encourages having significant activities outside of work. “It's really important to have something that is meaningful to you, that is aligned with your values and interests, and requires commitment,” she says. In addition to nourishing you, she notes, it can actually improve productivity.
Dr. Cobb suggests setting time aside at the end of the week, or even Monday mornings, to assemble a to-do list for the week ahead. Some overwhelming feelings might come from pressure to get everything done. Putting time aside to map out what needs doing — as well as carving out time for yourself — could be a strategy that helps stop ruminative thoughts as you can remind yourself there is already a plan.
If you experience the Sunday scaries and are around friends, family, kids, or partners, Dr. Cobb emphasizes, they can probably sense that you're stressed or irritable. Sometimes also thinking about how stress impacts those around us can be a powerful reminder to make your to-do list and then try to stay in the moment. “Work doesn't need more of our time than it already takes," says Dr. Cobb, "so I think it's important to find ways to pay attention to our well-being.”
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