Stress Mangement and Mastery: How to Defeat Sunday Night Syndrome > NetSparsh

Home
>
Stress Management
>
Stress Mangement and Mastery: How to Defeat Sunday Night Syndrome

Stress Mangement and Mastery: How to Defeat Sunday Night Syndrome

Picture the following scene:

It's Sunday evening, the weekend is winding down and you're beginning to think about the work week ahead. What are your feelings?

Do you find yourself excited and challenged, looking forward to another week of doing something you love? The most fortunate among us get to feel that way on a regular basis.

Or are you instead feeling something else, perhaps anxiety or even dread? That's a special kind of anxiety and stress I call "Sunday Night Syndrome."

All of us experience some form of SNS from time to time. What's important is how often and how severe it is.

Mild Sunday Night Syndrome

In most people, the anxiety usually begins Sunday evening, but it passes quickly and is gone by the time you arrive at work. This feeling is probably the result of working continuously for five days a week and having only two days off during which to recover.

What to do:

Relax and remember: The feeling will pass.

Rent a movie, play a game, enjoy being with family and friends.

Moderate Sunday Night Syndrome

The next stage of SNS is characterized by increasing anxiety as the work week approaches. The anxiety begins earlier in the day and doesn't pass as easily as mild SNS.

You begin to stay up later and later on Sunday night, in the hope of keeping Monday morning from arriving. As a result, you feel tired and sluggish on Monday, which leaves you ill-equipped to deal with your feelings and your work.

Other symptoms include increased irritability and inattentiveness around family and friends, as well as deteriorating work performance. Colleagues and supervisors may begin to notice changes at this point.

What to do:

In addition to the above suggestions, make sure you get to bed early enough to be rested the next day.

Identify things about your job that you can feel good about, or even look forward to.

As crazy as it sounds, some people have found that going into the office or doing some work at home seems to help.

If going into the office is not possible, being as prepared as possible can help.

Severe Sunday Night Syndrome

The third level of SNS doesn't wait until Sunday to arrive. It begins Saturday or even Friday after work.

By the time Sunday evening rolls around, folks with severe SNS are experiencing strong anxiety and dread.

Some people become physically ill at the prospect of another work week. Depression is common at this point, as well as drinking too much alcohol.

What to do:

What underlies your emotions and reactions? If you don't examine this issue, the feelings might just grow stronger.

It could be time to consider a change, either in the details of your job or perhaps an entire change of job or career.

Consult a career counselor to look at your options.

Make sure you are doing something, from talking about it to physical exercise, in order to relieve the stress.

You might want to seek counseling to help you manage the stress, emotions and decisions involved.

Remember: If it's hurting you, it's not likely to be helping anyone else.

What's more, there are three books I've recommended before that you might find useful:

"Chicken Soup for the Soul at Work" by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen

"Heart at Work" by Jack Canfield and Jacqueline Miller

"Care Packages for the Workplace" by Barbara Glanz

All of us experience some form of Sunday Night Syndrome from time to time. It's how we respond that makes the difference.

Visit SecretsofGreatRelationships.com for tips and tools for creating and growing a great relationship. You can also subscribe to our f*r*e*e 10 day e-program on how to enrich your relationship today, from relationship coach and expert Jeff Herring.

In The News:

This RSS feed URL is deprecated, please update. New URLs can be found in the footers at https://news.google.com/news

Refinery29
Is This The Best Way To Handle Stressful Life Events?
Refinery29
Eva Stubits, PhD, a Houston-based clinical psychologist who specializes in stress management, says that it helps you feel like you have a hand in what's going to happen, and it gives you a sense of purpose. So planning is partly about feeling as if you ...

http://www.we-ha.com (press release) (blog)
West Hartford Women in Networking to Hold Time Management Presentation
http://www.we-ha.com (press release) (blog)
Stacey Zackin, a specialist in time and stress management, will address the West Hartford Women in Networking on Thursday, July 26. Submitted. West Hartford Women in Networking invites interested women to the July meeting featuring Stacey Zackin, Ph.D, ...

The Herald Journal
Women in Business discuss stress management techniques
The Herald Journal
On Tuesday, Groll provided a 30-minute presentation on stress management. “Women in business know a lot about stress,” Groll said. “Women, we like to be able to say, 'Yes, we can do it! … without realizing the effect that it takes on our health ...

U.S. News & World Report
4 Ways Mindfulness and Meditation Can Help You at Work
U.S. News & World Report
Stress not only takes a toll on your emotional and physical health at work, but the toxicity can spill over into your home life. Stress management can help you maintain emotional stability and reduce stress that surfaces in either your personal or ...

and more »

Integrative Versus Alternative Cancer Therapy: Know the Difference and Which Can Help
Curetoday.com
One of the “central targets” for integrative therapy is managing stress, as that can trickle down to other healthy activities. High stress and anxiety levels can cause sleep disruptions, a lack of motivation to exercise, poor food choices and less ...

Southern Cross
Discuss "Stress management the key to reducing violence in rural communities"
Southern Cross
Comments. Discuss "Stress management the key to reducing violence in rural communities". Please note: All comments made or shown here are bound by the Online Discussion Terms & Conditions.

Critical Incident Stress Management
Ada Herald
The Critical Incident Stress Management team, “…helps people be resistant, to be resilient, and recover from critical incident stress,” say a flyer explaining the CISM services. “During times of critical incidents, the normal coping mechanisms most ...

UMN News
Research Brief: Social stress linked to disease of aging and shortened lifespan
UMN News
Ultimately, the goal would be the development of efficacious therapies based both on psychological stress management and senotherapeutic treatments. Support for this study was provided by a R01 grant from the National Institutes of Health and grants ...

and more »

WTMJ-TV (press release) (blog)
Construction stressing you out? We've got you covered
WTMJ-TV (press release) (blog)
Psychologist John Weaver, an expert on stress management, said that's common. "We plan for everything to go the way it should - so we end up thinking there won't be any delays, any difficulties," Weaver said. "When we hit a delay and haven't planned ...

Bad bosses are killing your profit
New Hampshire Business Review
Imagine how high the average employee's stress level needs to be, on an ongoing basis, for him or her to make the serious decision to quit their job for no other reason than to escape a negative environment they have little or no control over. Most ...

Google News

Stress Mangement and Mastery: How to Defeat Sunday Night Syndrome

Stress Management Stress Management