What Are the Sunday Scaries: Meaning, Definition, & More!
Ah, Mondays. They are arguably everyone’s least favorite day of the week because it means it’s time to get back to work and tackle other real life responsibilities, which, let’s be honest, can be very stressful at times.
So much so that the mere anticipation of Monday can make you feel anxious on Sunday and keep you from enjoying your time off. This is often referred to as the “Sunday scaries.” It’s something we can all relate to and it’s definitely not fun to experience.
So what’s the solution? We’ve got you covered with these seven easy things you can do to keep those pesky Sunday scaries at bay.
Learn more: The best skin care products for tired, stressed skin
What are Sunday Scaries?
Whether we know it or not, at some point or another we’ve probably gotten a case of the Sunday scaries. If you’re still wondering “What is Sunday scaries?”, you may recognize the feeling of anxiety, dread, or stress that can pop up on Sunday afternoon, night, or on any day of the week.
The Sunday scaries, also known as the “Sunday blues,” usually occur as reality sets in and the upcoming work week looms. But really, the Sunday scaries can happen any day of the week.
In fact, experiencing the Sunday scaries on Sunday afternoon or on Sunday nights is very common. One informal survey from LinkedIn showed that around 80% of the people surveyed felt some sort of anxiety and fear on Sunday night. That means that whether or not you’ve experienced the Sunday blues, likely your close friends and colleagues have had to manage their own anxieties related to their job, relationships, financial stability, office tasks, or other responsibilities. 1
For many of us, the Sunday scaries are temporary and resolve themselves once we start ticking off the boxes on our task list. But for some of us, the Sunday scaries can be debilitating. This deep fear and anxiety on Sunday nights can lead us into depression and prevent us from enjoying our usual activities. That’s why it's incredibly important to recognize the Sunday scaries when they start to creep up on us and manage these feelings before they take hold of our lives.
8 Tips To Stop Sunday Night Anxiety
We’ve gathered the top 8 tips so you can manage Sunday night anxiety, minimize your fear and dread in the evenings, and say goodbye to the Sunday scaries.
1. Plan Out Your Week On Sunday Evening
Oftentimes, the source of our Sunday scaries or Sunday blues is the number of items we have pending on our to-do list. It’s way too easy to feel overwhelmed by our calendar and all of the things we need to get done that week.
Planning out your week ahead of time can take so much pressure off of your mind on Sunday nights. You can plan your schedule far in advance on Friday or wait until on Sunday afternoons. Just carve out an hour or so to sit down with your calendar and to-do list and map out what you need to get done and when.
No matter how much you need to get done, don’t fill up your schedule with as many things as possible. Be realistic about what you feel you can get done in one day and stick to it. Make sure you also leave some free time for unexpected things that pop up while you’re working in the office and schedule in some self-care time as well.
This ritual seems so simple but it will ensure you start your week stress-free because you know that you’ve allotted enough time to get it all done. This is also a great time to set intentions for how you want your week to go to make sure you kick things off with a positive mindset.
2. Clean & Organize To Soothe Your Sunday Afternoon
You might not realize it, but the state of your living space makes a big impact on the way that you feel. Pay attention to when your space is cluttered and messy, likely your mind will feel scattered as well.
To diminish the Sunday scaries, set yourself up for a good week, and get your mental health on the right track, don’t let the weekend slip away without organizing your space. Take some time on Saturday or Sunday afternoon to tidy up your home and do a few chores.
We know that most people don’t look forward to doing household chores on the weekend, but you don’t have to do a deep clean. Just make sure your things are put away where they should be. This will create a sense of calm throughout your space which will in turn make you feel calm and in control, minimizing you Sunday scaries so you can get off to a good start on Monday
It’s helpful to make a tidying up ritual that you do every night to keep the clutter from piling up. Just set a timer for 10-minutes during the evening, put on some music, and do a quick clean up. You’ll thank yourself in the morning when you wake up to an organized home.
Sundays are a good time to stock and reorganize your refrigerator with all of your favorite treats, including Taut Liquid Collagen. This liquid marine collagen drink not only tastes good, it helps you look good, too. It’s packed with a high percentage (13,000mg) of maximum strength collagen peptides which have been harvested from wild-caught red snapper fish from the Indian Ocean. The nano-sized collagen molecules are small enough to immediately enter your bloodstream, trigger your body’s natural ‘wound repair’ response, and encourage your skin’s fibroblasts to produce collagen on their own. It’s a revolutionary way to transform your skin from within.
As your skin produces its own collagen, you’ll notice fewer wrinkles and fine lines, improved skin elasticity, and increased hydration.
It also contains skin-loving ingredients like hyaluronic acid, grape seed extract, vitamin C, ceramides, vitamin B6, and salmon DNA to protect your existing collagen from free radical damage and fight signs of aging at the source. Sip your way to smoother, healthier, and younger-looking skin!
More helpful reading: How much collagen per day?
3. Leave the Sunday Scaries Behind by Making Monday Fun
Another thing you can do to beat the Sunday scaries is insert more joy into your Monday. By giving yourself things to look forward to on Monday, you’ll likely wake up excited for the day, instead of full of dread and anxiety.
While you’ll probably still have to spend the day at your office job, there are little things you can do on Monday to make the day more enjoyable and relieve your stress. Maybe you treat yourself to a coffee from your favorite coffee shop or get up a bit earlier to exercise and meditate. These may feel like short term treats, but the benefits will add up in the long term, trust us. Getting a head start to the work week and practicing a sacred morning ritual is a very powerful way to release those unpleasant feelings from the Sunday scaries .
You can also schedule moments of fun and joy throughout your day, even while you're at the office. You can go for a walk with a friend during your lunch break, listen to your favorite podcast during your commute, or reward yourself at the end of the day by cooking a nice dinner. The more joyful moments you bake into your day, the better.
4. To Combat the Sunday Scaries, Get Plenty of Sleep
How well we sleep directly affects how well we feel and perform during the week. While we sleep, both our mind and body are able to refresh and recharge. And, when we don’t catch enough Z’s, it can affect our mood, anxiety levels, and even lead to other symptoms and health problems. Learn more about sleep and beauty from RenewSkin Inc.
We understand that having the Sunday scaries can fill you with so much dread, worry, and anxiety that falling asleep may be a challenge. One habit that can help when you feel like the Sunday scaries are regularly keeping you up at night is to go to bed at the same time every night.
Our bodies work on their own internal clock called the “circadian rhythm.” This 24-hour internal clock is what keeps us awake and alert throughout the day and asleep at night. By keeping this clock consistent, we make it easier on ourselves to fall asleep, even when we’re faced with fear, dread, anxiety, and the Sunday scaries.
In order to keep our internal clocks running smoothly, we should fall asleep within the same 20-minute window every evening (yes, even on the weekends). And, not only is falling asleep at the same time important, but waking up at the same time also helps keep our circadian rhythm properly aligned. 2
More helpful reading: How to remove dark circles under eyes
5. On Sunday Nights, We Practice Self-Care
Weekends are intended for rest and relaxation, not stress and Sunday scaries. It’s important to recharge in order to dive into the new week feeling refreshed and recharged. You have to allow yourself some time and space over the weekend to fill your cup back up so you have enough energy to pour into your week.
Taking your entire Sunday to just chill is ideal but with the busyness of life, that’s not always possible. Make an effort to squeeze in some self-care time every Sunday. Self-care isn’t something that you should put off—treat it like you would any other appointment and actually do it.
Whether it means you take time to catch up on your favorite Netflix show, attend a yoga class, talk to a friend or loved one, or dedicate time to your favorite creative hobby, you’ll notice a huge improvement in your mood (and experience bit less of the Sunday scaries) by channeling your sunday anxiety and fear into “me time.”
Another popular way to get rid of the Sunday blues is by taking a moment to relax with your own at home spa day. That could mean drawing a bubble bath, painting your nails, giving yourself a lymphatic body massage, or applying a face mask, like our Taut Collagen Mask.
The Taut Collagen Mask is the perfect way to relax and conquer the Sunday scaries. This heavenly sheet mask contains hydrolyzed collagen molecules that are small enough to penetrate into your pores and give you plump, hydrated, and younger-looking skin in only 20 minutes.
To use this collagen mask, simply wash your face, lay the mask over your skin, and let the collagen essence sink deep into the layers of your skin. It’s the perfect way to treat your skin before the upcoming workweek!
5. Be Fully Present to Avoid the Sunday Scaries
The Sunday scaries usually come from worrying about the future. And most of the time, we worry about things on Sunday that will probably never happen. So the amount of time you spend experiencing the Sunday scaries ends up being a huge waste of energy that you could have spent doing something productive or just relaxing.
Bring some mindfulness into your weekend, especially on Sunday, and focus on being present and in the moment. When you do, you’ll feel the Sunday scaries melt away. When you focus on the “now” you’ll end the weekend feeling like you actually made the most out of your time off instead of feeling overwhelmed with stress, fear and anxiety of the week ahead.
6. Don’t Leave Your To-Do List For the Weekend
When you have a hectic week, what most people tend to do is leave all the things that they weren’t able to get to throughout the week for the weekend. Then, what ends up happening is that they try to get it all done on Sunday and run out of time leaving them feeling behind and even more stressed. Don’t overestimate what you’ll have time for over the weekend.
Instead, keep a master list of all the things you have to do—maybe it’s laundry, grocery shopping, errands, etc.—and do one task per day so they don’t pile up at the end of the week. One of the best things you can do to avoid feeling the Sunday scaries over the items on your task list is by breaking each item into smaller tasks. This way, each project or responsibility will feel more manageable. As a result, you are much more likely to get them done rather than procrastinate.
7. Figure Out Why You Feel the Sunday Scaries
If you’ve tried all of these tips and tricks for combating the Sunday scaries and you still have major anxiety every time Monday rolls around, then maybe it’s a deeper issue. One sign that the Sunday scaries are becoming a deeper issue is if your anxiety begins earlier than Sunday night. You may also notice that your anxiety occurs alongside other symptoms like fatigue, trouble concentrating, and irritability.
Perhaps your job or career path isn’t lighting you up or maybe you just have way too much on your plate and you’re not putting your needs first.
Take some time on Saturday or Sunday to reflect on this and try to figure out what is causing the Sunday scaries. You can journal, meditate, talk to friends, get professional help from a therapist, and take walks to clear your head and tap into your intuition. Once you identify the cause, you can start taking action steps to make it better.
Let Ms. Magnifique Erase Any Sign of Stress From the Sunday Scaries
Mondays do not have to be scary and bliss-filled Sundays are possible. By implementing these tips into your routine, Sunday scaries will soon be a thing of the past and you can go back to living your best life over the weekend.
Besides taking over your life, the Sunday scaries can take over your skin. Unfortunately, stress and anxiety from the Sunday scaries can play a number on your skin by accelerating premature aging and causing dryness, making your complexion look dull, wrinkled, and washed-out.
To combat the effects of the Sunday scaries on your skin, following a skincare routine with products that can get the job done is essential for going back to looking and feeling your best. That’s exactly why we’ve designed our Ms. Magnifique Transformation Program. This luxurious, skin-reviving bundle comes with a 24-day supply of our Taut Liquid Collagen Drink, 5 of our Taut Collagen Masks, and 1 box of Taut Bright Bye-Bye Dark Spots, our skin-enhancing, detoxifying supplement that fights skin damage from excess free radicals, repairs cell degradation, and stimulates collagen production for a lighter, brighter, and healthier complexion.
Within just 3 weeks of using this skincare bundle, you’ll notice firmer, more radiant skin with fewer wrinkles and a youthful, luminous glow. It’s never too late to give a new life to your skin!
Want to find out the best Transformation Program for you and your skin? Take our skin care quiz here!
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