Your Weekly Midlife Crisis - The Sunday Scaries

The sunday spookies, the sunday scaries, that uncomfortable knot in our stomach that affects most if not all of us.

Urban Dictionary has the following as the literal definition:

"The feeling you have after a long week of work followed by a Saturday full of binge drinking, when Sunday hits you question your entire existence. "

For those of you who aren’t familiar with what this is, It's a feeling of dread, fatigue, angst, worry, etc that typically arises only on Sunday. When you wake up Sunday at noon from your weekend bender and first thing on your mind is-

"Ah shit the weekends over, I didn't even do anything!" hungover as all hell, hoping you can find your keys so you can get to work tomorrow. Which sets in more dread, because now you're thinking about how horrible work in general is.

The Sunday Scaries aren't naturally occurring like a menstrual cycle. They're psychological. And there are in fact some WEIRD people out there... who apparently are actually HAPPY and know how not to STRESS OUT ?!?!? *sarcasm

By my deduction, the scaries can actually be a double edged sword. The first thing I've learned to do when faced with an usual feeling (something I can't trace to its' origin) is to ask myself WHY. WHY are you feeling like this? WHAT could possibly have induced it? After doing so I realized the Sunday Scaries could just be our brains telling us "hey, we didn't really do what we should've accomplished lately" or "Remember all these horrible tasks, deadlines and meetings you have to somehow manage by Tuesday!"

Realizing these sorts of things are anxiety-inducing. Of course you're not happy about returning to work Monday. Of course you ruminate about your entire life more than any other day. Sundays are usually spent doing anything BUT the activities we usually engage in to distract us from our daily stressors. My point is, this phenomenon could potentially be a double-sided sword.

Nobody likes feeling crappy, nobody likes being reminded of their less-than-fulfilling office job. But it's a reminder from our subconscious that we need to take inventory of our lives pretty often to ensure we're covering all our bases. If we didn't, we'd never know what drags us down individually.

If sunday has you feeling anxious or blue - try not to fixate on the actual feeling itself.
Ask yourself 'Why am I feeling like this? what can I do to lessen/avoid this? How can I brighten up my week?"

Don't let the Sunday Scaries get you down, use them to your advantage.
And if you're one of those lucky ducks who doesn't really get that unfortunate weekly sensation- enjoy your sunday!