Note 82: Your Sunday Anxiety Is a Sign of Something You Haven't Admitted Yet

This Sunday edition of Notes to Her looks at the weekly dread that settles in before Monday even starts. After reading a Wall Street Journal article on rising Sunday anxiety, Yaya is bringing the Sunday Scaries Notes back twice a month, and this first one asks what your dread is actually pointing to. She breaks down the four most common sources, from an overloaded workload to the meeting where you stay quiet, and gives you a ten-minute exercise you can do before dinner tonight.

Inside this Note:

• Why the Sunday scaries show up looking productive, and why working harder doesn't quiet them
  
  
• What a FlexJobs survey of more than 2,100 workers found, including that 57 percent get the Sunday scaries and nearly one in four get them every week
  
  
• The four sources behind the dread: workload, your manager, work-life balance, and your team
  
  
• How staying quiet in meetings can turn Sunday into a confidence conversation
  
  
• What it costs you when the dread becomes normal
  
  
• How to tell when the dread is really burnout
  
  
• A ten-minute do, say, or rest exercise for tonight
  
  

If the dread arrives every single week no matter which task is on your plate, the Burnout Recovery Blueprint was made for you. Download it here: https://theconfidentlyher.com/burnout-blueprint 

Save this Note for the next time Sunday afternoon starts to tighten, and send it to the friend who is already drafting Monday's emails in her head.

What is Notes to Her?

Notes to Her: The Daily Peptalk is your ten-minute or less boost of confidence and clarity. Hosted by Yaya, a confidence and mindset coach for women ready to stop overthinking and start showing up boldly, each short episode gives you a mindset reset, a dose of encouragement, and one actionable tip to keep your momentum going, no fluff, just real talk and daily pep.

Yaya: 00:14

Hey, girl. Hey. Welcome back to Notes to Her, the daily pep talk. I'm Yaya, your confidence and mindset coach, and welcome to a special episode of Notes to Her, the Sunday Scaries edition. So Merriam Webster, yes, the Merriam Webster, the dictionary people, recently added Sunday Scaries to their dictionary, which tells you how many of us have felt this long enough that it needed an official definition.

Yaya: 00:40

And if you've been here since earlier this year, you might remember that I did a few Sunday scary additions, so I'm bringing them back, and here's why. Last week, I was reading an article. It was a Wall Street Journal article about Sunday anxiety and how it is on the rise. Workloads keep growing, job security feels even shakier, and more of us are spending our Sundays on work messages than we were a few years ago. Reading that article honestly made me think of you sitting there on a Sunday afternoon, your mind already on Monday's meeting.

Yaya: 01:13

So twice a month, I'm gonna be here on a Sunday to help you with those anxious feelings. You know exactly when they hit two. It's usually around three or four in the afternoon, and the weekend isn't technically over yet. However, your mind has already left for Monday. You're running through those emails that you haven't opened yet, replaying a conversation from Friday, and wondering if you're prepared enough for a meeting that you haven't even looked at yet.

Yaya: 01:36

I think the Sunday Scaries deserve better than just being outworked or ignored because it's information about your week, and Sunday is a good day to let them tell you what they know. So get comfortable, grab your tea or a cocktail, and let's walk through this together. Now the Sunday Scaries usually show up looking productive. You decide that 03:00 on a Sunday afternoon is the perfect time to clear out your inbox. You write emails and save them as drafts so nobody gets bothered on their day off.

Yaya: 02:18

You rearrange your calendar, you make a to do list that no one could finish in a week, and suddenly the pantry needs reorganizing too. Your body gets involved as well. Your chest feels tight, your breathing gets shallow, and you snap at somebody you love over something small, like the way they loaded the dishwasher. You're sitting at the table with your family, and you're somewhere in the middle of Monday's calendar. Now I understand why this happens.

Yaya: 02:46

Doing something feels better than sitting with the feeling once your mind starts racing about that week ahead, and getting ahead on your task feels like the responsible answer. But can I tell you something? My first picture of Sunday Scaries actually came from my mom. Now if you know my mom in real life and you were listening to this, do not tell her that I'm telling you this because if she finds out, she's gonna come to me and be like, girl, why are you telling my business? So keep this between us.

Yaya: 03:13

Okay? But it's true. I learned about Sunday Scaries from someone who actually had them long before I knew that they had a name. And, actually, I didn't get them myself for most of my career. They found me in my last couple years of my corporate life, and when they showed up, I knew exactly what I was looking at because I had already seen it.

Yaya: 03:35

But I kept going because you know when you are in the thick of things, you just figure a way to wade through the water until you can figure out how to get out. So I'm curious, and I'm asking you directly, whose Sunday do you remember? Was it a parent? Maybe a friend? Maybe the version of you from me a few years back?

Yaya: 03:54

Maybe it's you now. Hold that picture for a second because you're about to hear some numbers that say a lot of women are living through this right now. Now here's a number that stopped me. Flex jobs surveyed more than 2,100 workers this year, and 57% of them said that they get the Sunday Scaries at least some of the time, nearly one in four of them every single week. Think about that for a second.

Yaya: 04:23

Almost one in four people is bracing for the week before it even started, week after week, and a lot of those Sundays get spent somewhere other than a Sunday because your mind is already worried about Monday. Now if you're one of these women, you have probably tried the usual fixes, a better planner, a Sunday reset routine that you saw online, a promise to yourself that this week you'll get far enough ahead that the feeling can't catch you. Have you ever noticed the feeling usually shows up anyway? Getting ahead of a task doesn't answer the question that the feeling is asking you. The dread is pointing to something specific, and until you look at what it is, it's gonna keep coming back no matter how many items you have crossed off your list.

Yaya: 05:13

That dread almost always points to one specific thing even when it feels like a general fog over your entire week. I've seen this with the women that I coach. If we slow down and I ask them what the dread is actually about, they usually find the answer within the first few minutes because some part of them has always known what it is. Now Flexjob also asked people what drives their Sunday Scaries, and four answers came to the top. Workload or unfinished tasks, their manager, work life balance, and coworkers or team dynamics.

Yaya: 05:51

Those are four very different problems, and each one of them needs its own response, which is why pushing through the feeling never works. So I wanna take you through them one at a time. If it's workload, picture the list that follows you around. Could one person finish that list in the time that you have? Sometimes the answer is no, and a stack of work that can't fit inside the week will make anybody enjoy Monday.

Yaya: 06:18

Trust me because I know that one all too well. A better Sunday routine can't fix that. A conversation with the person who assigns the work might, especially one where you ask which two things matter the most if everything can't happen. Now if the problem is your manager, notice what your body does when you picture their name showing up in your notifications. Does your chest tighten?

Yaya: 06:44

Do you start drafting a reply in your head and at home that you will never actually send? I actually had a client in the past, and every time I would receive an email or a message from her, my body would tighten up. That was a sign to me that something in our relationship was not right. Because the reaction that you have tells you something about how safe it feels to work for that person, and it deserves your attention. You can't change how another person manages, but you can decide what you need from them and how you'll ask for it.

Yaya: 07:18

And I'd rather you ask that on a quiet Sunday than in the middle of a super tense Monday. Now if you're dealing with work life balance, the dread might be grief. The weekend went by in a blur of errands and obligations, and you never got to rest. So by Sunday evening, you realized that the time you were counting on isn't coming back, and that kind of dread is asking more of your own life, and as high to your schedule won't give you that. Now if it's the team, think about the meeting that you're walking into.

Yaya: 07:52

Is it one where your ideas get talked over? Is it one where you feel like you have to prove yourself all over again? Is it the one where you've learned so it's safer to just keep your thoughts to yourself? That last one is where I wanna slow down because it connects to everything that we talk about here on Notes to Are. Now in that same survey from FlexJobs, eighteen percent of workers said that they have stayed quiet in a meeting even though they had something to contribute.

Yaya: 08:21

15% said that they kept their camera off to feel less involved, and nearly one in five of them said that they have skipped an optional meeting altogether, and I don't blame them. But listen, I read those numbers and I thought about every woman who was ever sat in a meeting with a good idea and decided to keep it to herself, including me. You know the moment, you have a thought, and you start rehearsing how to say it. You wait for a pause, you wonder if it's smart enough, if someone's already said it, if you sound like you're taking too much of everyone's time. The pause comes and goes, and then somebody else says something close to what you were thinking, and the room nods.

Yaya: 09:01

And then you're driving home with a quiet ache because you never said it. Now think about what your body learns from a week like that. It learns that Monday is where you shrink. By Sunday afternoon, your body starts bracing, and the dread you feel may be less about the work and more about the version of you who's about to sit through that meeting again and swallow her idea. Now I'm not saying this to make you feel worse because I've been there.

Yaya: 09:28

I'm saying it because this kind of dread is a confidence conversation, and confidence is something that you build one small moment at a time. So the next time you feel the Sunday tightness, ask yourself if there's a moment in the week ahead where you already know that you're gonna hold yourself back. Knowing about that moment on a Sunday gives you time to prepare one sentence that you're willing to say out loud. One sentence is enough to start, your voice gets stronger every time you use it, and the quieter every time you don't. Now a little preparation can also genuinely help.

Yaya: 10:05

Spending twenty minutes on a Sunday to write down what Monday looks like can take the edge off a little bit, especially when the drag comes from feeling behind. Many people find that getting their thoughts out of their head and onto paper lets them enjoy the rest of the day. So if that works for you, keep it, and also set a stopping time before you start so that the twenty minutes does not swallow your entire afternoon. The trouble starts when Sunday work becomes a way for you to avoid looking at the feeling. So if you work every Sunday to quiet the dread, your brain learns that Sunday is also a workday, and the source of the dread never gets touched.

Yaya: 10:42

Next Sunday, the dread is back, and now it has a bigger pile to point at. Maybe you're working through your Sundays because your jaw feels less secure than it used to, and getting ahead feels like protection. And that's a real fear, and it also deserves a real answer. Staying busy through every Sunday hasn't made it safer for you so far, and it's cost you the one day that your body gets to exhale. And here's something that we don't mention.

Yaya: 11:09

The dread can start to feel normal once it shows up every single week. You stop asking if it has to be this way, and you start building your life around it. You stay in on Sunday evenings. You go to bed early, but you don't really sleep. You start Monday always hard, which makes Monday harder, which makes the next Sunday heavier.

Yaya: 11:29

It also changes how you show up for people around you. Your partner starts asking what's wrong, and you're like, oh, nothing. Your kids ask you to play a game, and you say in a minute, and the minute turns into an hour of you scrolling through your inbox. Your friend texts you to see if you wanna go to dinner and you decline because you're saving your energy for a week that's going to take all of it. Over time, a lot of women stop noticing how much of their weekend belongs to Monday.

Yaya: 11:56

The weekend gets shorter, the dread starts earlier, First Sunday afternoon, then Sunday morning. Then eventually, some women tell me that it creeps into their Saturday night. And that's a real cause that is worth looking at directly because hours of low grade worry every week add up a lot in your life, and you deserve to know what it's pointing to. Now there's also one more source of Sunday dread that we haven't talked about, and it's the one that doesn't fit neatly into a survey answer because it can sit underneath all of those others. So if the dread arrives every single week, no matter which task is on your plate, if a vacation only gives you a few hours of relief before it creeps back, and if you're exhausted, irritable, or sleeping badly on Sunday nights, and finding that even things that you used to enjoy take effort, your body may be telling you that it has been running on empty for a long time.

Yaya: 12:56

That's burnout, and it is common among capable, ambitious women, because the women who care the most about doing things well are often the ones going long after they have run out of fuel. Raising my hand here. Now I'm a coach, and I'm not a doctor, so if your sleep, your health, and your mood is taken to ruin, please talk to a professional as well because they can help you. Now because I've experienced burnout two times, I created the burnout recovery blueprint. For women who are listening to this and can feel her shoulders drop because she's recognized herself.

Yaya: 13:31

It's there when you are ready to stop waiting for a vacation to fix it and start recovering on purpose. So the link is in the show notes if you wanna grab it. But I wanna talk about what you can do this Sunday and what you can do moving forward. I wanna give you a simple way to use this feeling instead of fighting it. It takes about ten minutes, and you can do it before dinner.

Yaya: 13:56

So first, I want you to name it. Grab a piece of paper or maybe the Notes app in your phone and finish this sentence. I'm dreading blank because blank. Write the first thing that comes to mind even if it feels small or silly because the first answer is often the real one. Second, sort it into three piles.

Yaya: 14:21

Do, say, and rest. If it's a task, it goes in the do pile, and you write the very first small step that you're gonna take on Monday morning. If it's a conversation, it goes into the say pile. You write the first sentence you say to that person even if you aren't ready to say it yet. If you're exhausted, it goes into the rest pile.

Yaya: 14:45

And I want you to put a real block of rest on your calendar this week with the same respect that you will give a meeting with your boss. Third, pick one. Choose one thing you're gonna do before bed tonight and leave the other piles for later in the week. Maybe it's sending a two line message asking your manager which priority comes first. Maybe it's writing down a sentence you'll say in the Monday meeting.

Yaya: 15:09

Maybe it's going to bed forty minutes earlier. Then on Monday, notice what happened. If you took that one step or just showed your body that on Sunday, dread can lead somewhere useful, you'll notice how the filling will start to loosen. It rarely disappears in a single week, so I won't lie to you when telling you that it will. Most women find that it gets a little quieter each Sunday once they start doing this, and they respond to it instead of outworking it.

Yaya: 15:39

Now I know some of you might be thinking that you don't have ten minutes on a Sunday to do this because you're already feeling behind, But look at where your Sundays have been going instead. Hours of worry usually cost you more than ten minutes of looking at that feeling directly. So take a breath with me. I want you to picture Monday morning. What shows up first?

Yaya: 16:03

Is it a person, a task, a feeling? If a friend told you that she's been dreading Mondays for two years, would you tell her to buy a better planner, or would you ask her what is she afraid will happen? Ask yourself the same thing. What are your Sunday scaries telling you about the week? Give yourself one honest answer.

Yaya: 16:25

You only need to name it tonight. Now I hate to say this because it sounds so much like AI language, but your Sunday Scaries is information, information about what your week ask of you and what it takes from you. Some Sundays, the answer is a workload that needs a conversation. Some Sundays, it's a moment in a meeting where you need to picture yourself practicing using your voice, and some Sundays, it's a body that has needed rest for longer than you have a minute. Every answer gives you something that you can act on, and you can act on any of them without having anxiety or a stressful Monday.

Yaya: 17:06

Your Sunday Scaries know something that you haven't admitted yet, and this Sunday, want you to ask them what it is. So make sure you are subscribed to Notes to Her so that you do not miss out on the next note. We're gonna be talking about the woman that you've always been and the reminder that you were built for more. So I'll see you in the next one.