The Sunday afternoon slump is quite common and yes, it’s work’s fault: this is the “Sunday syndrome”

It’s Sunday afternoon and a strange feeling begins to press on your chest. You realize that in a few hours you will be back at your job and an inescapable sadness begins to overwhelm you. It doesn’t matter whether you like your job or not, the feeling is there and can lead, depending on the person, to anxiety, anguish, a feeling of emptiness, melancholy and even fear, according to several articles published on the subject.

This is the ‘Sunday syndrome’, a malaise that, according to a 2018 LinkedIn study, affected 80% of the professionals surveyed in the United States, and which in Spain we know more popularly as the Sunday slump. It is a kind of post-vacation syndrome on a small scale, and its causes can be diverse.

a sudden change. The transition from leisure and relaxation on the weekend to the work routine, obligations and deadlines is always a difficult time. People who experience Sunday syndrome anticipate this discomfort by thinking about how hard the start of the week will be, and that leads them to feel anxiety or sadness about something they are not yet experiencing. All this intensifies if, in addition, the professional is not comfortable in his job.

The change from Sunday to Monday can generate sadness and anxiety even among the unemployed and retirees, since it is not just a personal change, but a cultural one: Monday marks the end of leisure, recreational activities and collective free time as a society . Therefore, a similar discomfort can be experienced both in a week full of tasks and in one empty of chores, according to El Confidencial.

High workload. Another cause that can cause the appearance of this syndrome is an excessive workload. If the change from leisure to work is already difficult in itself, it is much more so when the professional knows that a mountain of tasks awaits him with short and strict deadlines.

The stress that this situation produces makes the person unable to avoid thinking about everything they have to do, and the anxiety that this causes leads them to have unrealistic negative thoughts, so they tend to imagine that things will be worse than usual. what will actually come out later, explains Simon Rego, director of psychology training at New York’s Montefiore Medical Center, to CNN.

Guilty feeling. Sunday afternoon is also the time when many recap their weekend and realize they haven’t done things they had planned, which often leads to guilt when it comes to obligations: “ I said that I was going to clean the house and in the end I left the cane. I’m a mess”.

That feeling of guilt can also be experienced in another way: “My weekend was not as good as the others, I am wasting my free time.” For this reason, Rego recommends not looking at social networks on Sunday afternoon if you have this feeling. Or, in the case of doing so, make sure that the comparisons with the people you are following are objective: it is possible that they have enjoyed the same thing this time that you experienced another week in which they stayed at home.

moment to reflect. Another possible cause of Sunday syndrome is that Sunday afternoon is one of the few times of the week when many professionals can stop to reflect on their lives and wander after five or six hectic days, according to Marisol Delgado. , specialist in psychotherapy by the European Federation of Psychologists Associations (EFPA), in SModa.

Despite the fact that Saturday is also a day off, many people use it to do housework, go shopping and carry out their main leisure plans. On Sunday, on the other hand, most shops are closed and quieter activities are usually carried out, so professionals tend to reflect more on their careers and their purposes, which can lead them to think about everything that causes them discomfort at work.

Image | Andrew Neel

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The Sunday afternoon slump is quite common and yes, it’s work’s fault: this is the “Sunday syndrome”

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by Pablo Rodriguez.