111. 6 Reasons You Get the Sunday Scaries
It is possible to stop dreading the week ahead. This week, I zoom into why we feel dread and provide methods for processing these emotions. With compassion for our emotions, we can be present in the week ahead.
There are common factors that contribute to stress and emotional burden in our work environment. By prioritizing our emotional and physical health, we can take actions that allow us to reprioritize our time, avoid burnout, and overcome overwhelm.
This week, I share six tactics for identifying why you experience dread towards your upcoming week. With these coaching tools, you can navigate through your emotions and find effective approaches to tackle your week. Remember, if you are feeling anxious about the week ahead, you are not alone, and there are options available to you. Let's uncover the root causes of our overwhelm and tune in today.
Do you feel overwhelmed by the amount of work you have, but struggle to get it all done and finish work on time? Do you find that your calendar is full of meetings with limited time to actually execute your work? My free masterclass is available right now and will explain why delegating feels so hard, three things that get in your way of delegating, and five simple steps to help you delegate more. Get it by clicking here.
If you’re not as happy as you want to be, feel like you’ve lost your purpose, or want to have more free time and feel less overwhelmed, I can help. My one-on-one coaching program is about to open up, and it is designed to help women just like you change the way you currently feel in your life. Meeting with me one-on-one every week for 12 weeks will help you trust yourself, feel confident in your decisions, and get your time back without hindering your career. It will change everything. Click here to sign up for the waitlist or join the program now.
What You Will Discover:
Why you dread the week ahead.
How to identify your anxiety.
Tools for finding acceptance and control.
Why doubt can keep you from your inner knowledge.
Resources:
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Full Episode Transcript:
Hey you all, I’m Marissa McKool, and you’re listening to the Redefining Rest Podcast for Public Health Professionals. Here we believe rest is your right. You don’t have to earn it, you just have to learn how to take it and I’m going to teach you. Ready? Come along.
Happy Monday, everyone. Are you feeling happy today? Are you feeling dread and anxiety about your work week? Were you in the Sunday scaries yesterday? Don’t worry, we’re going to address it all. Today I’m actually feeling really great. Most of my calendar is coaching calls with my clients and my one-on-one coaching program. Those are my absolute favorite days. My clients are amazing. Some of the changes they’re making, some of their transformations are so mind blowing, I love to see it. I love to be a part of it.
Actually just before I jumped on this call, at the halfway mark when I’m working with someone we do kind of a big reflection of what have you learned, where have you grown, all of that. And I was so proud of my client when they were sharing what they learned, where they’d grown, some of the things they shared was they have less anxiety. They feel overwhelmed less of the time. They’ve finally gotten to things they’ve been putting off for a long, long time. They are following through. They are being committed. They are more problem solution oriented than just giving up.
They are so much more aware of their thought patterns. It's just absolutely astonishing how much progress and change you can make in such a short amount of time when you have the tools and when you have the support. So today for me has actually been great. I haven’t been having any dread but yesterday was a different story. Yesterday was one of those days where everything seemed like they were going to be going great. I was having a nice light day and I was feeling good.
Someone said something to me and it really irked me. Has that ever happened to you, someone texts you, a coworker says something, maybe your dad calls and says something? And it throws the vibe off. It just irks you the wrong way and you’re annoyed. Now, you being annoyed or however you feel is because of your thoughts about it, not what they said, of course, always, but that happens to all of us. It happened to me yesterday, totally threw off my whole day.
I coached myself, I allowed the feelings. I moved through getting defensive and attached and working myself up. But I’m sharing this to say, coaches are humans just like you. I get upset, I get annoyed, that’s human life. Today we’re going to talk about the Sunday scaries and Monday dread which is also very human. It’s a very common experience, but I want to walk through the six reasons you are having this experience and what you can do about it so it doesn't happen as often.
So you can go into your Monday feeling empowered, feeling optimistic, feeling calm, feeling confident rather than waking up already exhausted, dragging yourself through the morning. So Sunday scaries or Monday dread, I think they’re really describing the same thing, where you spend Sunday feeling anxious and dreading Monday or even Monday morning you wake up in dread. Sundays you're not really able to enjoy your day, they’re no longer part of the weekend to relax. It feels like you just have Saturday because Sunday is just emotional turmoil.
And again, we've all been there. I used to go to that place, I used to kind of live in this space all the time. I asked those of you who follow me on Instagram, how often you feel this way? And 27% of you, almost a third said every week, 36% of you said sometimes and 36% said never. And that 36% that said never, that’s amazing. We’re going to get all of you there because 63%, over 50% of you feel the Sunday scaries or Monday dread either every week or sometimes and we are going to change that.
So there are six reasons you might be feeling this way. And there might be more than six but these are the most common six I coach on and I see, especially in public health. The first is, it’s related to a specific event on your calendar. Maybe it’s a presentation you have to give. Maybe it’s the performance review meeting you have with your boss. It’s something specific and the anxiety you feel is actually coming from that one event. It just feels all-consuming. And it’s blurring how you feel about the whole week.
It’s making you dread the whole week, but sometimes it’s only about that one event, especially for those of you who responded to my poll, that you only feel it sometimes, this could be part of it. I want you to name that one specific event you feel anxious about. Call it out, name it, bring it to the forefront. Rather than just sitting in the generality of feeling dread or anxiety, ask yourself, is there just one thing that I really feel anxious about? If there is one thing less on my calendar, what do I wish it was?
If this one meeting or this one presentation or this one task wasn't happening this week would I be feeling dread? Would I be feeling anxious? Just doing that alone can bring so much relief because if you recognize, okay, it's not the whole week, it’s this one meeting, it’s just that one piece, that one hour, then you can feel in more control. You can feel calmer and more confident.
When you see that 95% of the week you don’t feel anxious about, then the other 5%, you can allow the anxiety without having it to consume you because you know it won’t last forever. And you can coach yourself through it. It’s only an hour, I can get through an hour. Maybe I can prepare for it. I can just allow the anxiety. Saying those coaching things to yourself to help you move through that.
The second reason is when you feel overwhelm, just looking at your calendar or your to-do list. A lot of you feel this way every single week. You look at your calendar and immediately feeling anxious. You look at your to-do list and immediately feel overwhelm. For those of you who responded to my poll, and by the way, if you don't follow me on Instagram, come hang out, it’s a good time. Public health coach is my handle, come follow, let’s hang out, chat, send me a DM, all that good stuff.
But those of you who did respond that you feel that every week, this is probably one of the reasons. You might be thinking over the weekend or Sunday, I have so much to do this week. I have such a busy week. And what's happening is your letting your calendar be in control of you, as if you have no choice. That’s not true, you have a choice. You get to decide what to do or not to do each day, what to do item, what task to work on or not, what meeting to say yes to or not.
There is no have to, you choose to or choose not to. Your calendar does not cause your overwhelm. Your to-do list does not create your anxiety, your thoughts do. When you're thinking, I have such a busy week, I can’t get all this done, I have so much to do, this is going to be impossible, that creates your overwhelm and anxiety. If instead you are thinking, I can figure this out, I decide what to do, I don’t have to do all this, I can say no. You wouldn’t feel overwhelmed. You would feel empowered, in control and calm.
So I want you to notice what you are believing when you look at your calendar, what you are thinking when you look at your tasks, what are the thoughts you’re thinking? Because those thoughts will either create your overwhelm and anxiety and dread or help you feel confident, calm and in control.
The third reason is there might be something from last week you're trying to suppress, maybe last week you made an error in a presentation. Maybe you got negative feedback on your paper and you never actually dealt with how you felt about it, whether you felt embarrassed or shame or guilt or anxious. And you’ve just been suppressing it, ignoring it, resisting it. You’ve been trying to distract yourself. You've been trying to distract yourself, trying to pretend it didn’t happen, trying not to think about it.
And any time you do think about it, you feel this sinking in your stomach or this knot in your stomach or a fast beating heart or sweaty hands. And you immediately try to run away from that sensation. Not Processing that is creating dread. You’re bringing dread into this week or the next week because of that because you haven’t processed your feelings. You're holding on, you haven’t accepted what has happened with compassion for yourself.
It's like you know, when you’re swimming in a pool, or kids are swimming and there’s like a big floaty beachball? If you’re trying to keep that beachball underwater, there is a lot of resistance you’re getting. It’s a lot of work. And eventually that ball is going to come up and hit you in the face. And that’s kind of what's happening here, you’re resisting, you’re pushing down how you feel about whatever happened and it's creating dread for this week. You have to process how you felt so you don’t get hit in the face by that beachball when it pops up.
Accept what happened without shame or guilt. If you have a coach, if you have a therapist, this is a great thing to do with support. Give yourself grace and compassion. Don’t try to run from it or avoid it, work through it. Whether working through it is just processing emotion, whether it's dropping the shame and blame, whether it's learning from it, can look like a number of things. It doesn't look like distracting or avoiding. You can leave that in the past but you have to work through it first and process it so it doesn't drag into the next week.
The fourth reason. So for those of you, I want you to think, those of you who only sometimes feel Monday dread or Sunday scaries, how often does this happen when you get back from a vacation or a three day work week? Let's say you go on vacation, your summer vacation or the three day weekend, recently we had Memorial Day. And then you feel dread coming back to work. Maybe you don’t feel this dread every week but actually you feel it most often after vacations or three day weekends.
Usually what I find this means is you actually don’t get enough rest regularly. You don’t prioritize yourself on the week to week, you don’t give yourself the time to do leisure activities, to do things that bring you joy, to have downtime, whether that's because you actually end up working all weekend or some of the weekend. So you actually don't use the regular weekends for rest and joy and time for yourself. And you really only get that on vacation or because you’re not giving yourself regular rest, not just from work but maybe all weekend you’re trying to get all your chores done.
Maybe you’re not working in an office sense, but you believe you have to get all your chores done and all your home responsibilities and run all the errands and do all the projects. So then when you do have a three day weekend, you give yourself permission to use one, two or all three of those days to just relax and enjoy and do things that bring you joy. Then you come back and dread ‘real life’.
If you were regularly getting rest every single week, every day, if you were prioritizing yourself, if you were giving your mind and body what it needs, if you were finding joy, if you were giving yourself space, you probably wouldn’t experience this dread, Monday dread, Sunday scaries after vacation, because you know you will get rest throughout the week. It won’t be a grind, it won’t be a hustle, you have space, you have time, you have things you’re looking forward to, things just for yourself. You have downtime.
Right now your brain’s almost grabbing on for dear life to the vacation you just took or the three day weekend because that feels so scarce and rare. But when you get regular rest, when you prioritize yourself every week, when you give yourself downtime each day, when you give yourself permission to do nothing regularly, even if there’s a list of chores or work tasks then you wouldn't feel that way. When you have regular and sustainable and consistent rest, you don’t experience that dread after a vacation.
Now, it doesn't mean you would necessarily be jumping for joy and being like, “Yes, I can't wait to go back to work, I’m so excited.” Maybe, but really what it means is you wouldn’t be drowning in overwhelm or anxiety or dread. You know, oh my gosh, Wednesday, I have my girl’s night, or Thursday I’m taking a long lunch. Or I know if I get overwhelmed or if there feels like there's too much, I will tap out, I’ll walk away from my desk. I’ll reprioritize. I know I'm going to give myself a half day on Friday to just relax, make it easy.
You’d have more to look forward to in your week, than just work chores, work chores, no fun, no time, no me. When you have integrated time for you and rest and downtime in the week you don’t have to use vacation and a three day weekend as that lifeline.
The fifth reason. It might be related to a specific person or people especially if you experience this dread weekly. It might be related to someone specific at work. Maybe it’s your boss or a coworker or someone else. That's why when that person is maybe out on leave all week, maybe they're doing a site visit all week or they’re on vacation, you don’t feel dread or anxious about the week. You actually feel lighter and more relaxed about going to work. Maybe you think your boss micromanages or a coworker always is asking you for help all the time and you dread this.
Your dread is not caused by them or what they do or what they say, it’s created by your thoughts about them. They don’t cause your anxiety or your overwhelm or your dread, your thoughts do. Now, this doesn’t mean you have to condone what they do or don't do. It doesn’t mean you have to be best friends with them. But it also doesn't mean you have to attach to what they say or do. You don’t have to dread it. You don’t have to get so worked up about it. You don’t have to let it ruin your week. They don’t cause your feelings, your thoughts do.
Recently I've been working with a client who when we started to work together was really struggling with their boss, being around their boss. They dreaded going to work every week. And this week they told me for the first time they were able to go to work without hyper focusing on their boss. They were able to read an email from their boss and not immediately get worked up, they weren’t dreading work anymore, not at the same level.
They were not necessarily like, “yeah, I want to be best friends with my boss.” But they also weren’t spending all day draining their energy, resisting their boss, getting frustrated, counting all the ways they think they’re wrong. Their boss didn't change, my client accepted that their boss was not going to change, that they can't force them to change and they don't need to. That allowed them have a different emotional experience no matter what their boss does or doesn't do.
Accepting the people in your life or people at work who you might find annoying or frustrating or you disagree with, accepting they are who they are, they’re not going to change and you can't force them. And focusing on what's in your control instead, allows you to dictate how your week goes, not someone else, not your thoughts about someone else.
When you are able to manage your mind about the people you work with so you decide to go into the week feeling confident and in control and calm no matter how they show up, no matter what they do, that’s empowerment. That’s confidence, that's the ability to eliminate Sunday scaries.
Okay, the last one, number six. If you are experiencing harassment, discrimination, oppression, you probably are experiencing some dread, anxiety about the week. We have to acknowledge that the public health workforce itself operates under systems of oppression, was built on them. It continues to function with them, from white supremacy to the patriarchy, toxic capitalism and more. Your dread may be stemming from experiencing harassment or discrimination or a bias at work, whether that sexism, ableism, fat phobia or something else.
These issues that happen within the walls of the public health workforce within our organizations are not addressed nor talked about enough but they are real. So if you are experiencing them at work, if your office promotes this or if specific people are acting in a way that promotes this, of course, you’d feel dread for the week or anxious. And then many of you who might be experiencing this, you might be doubting yourself saying, “I shouldn’t speak up or maybe that’s not really happening, or maybe that’s not what they meant. Am I overreacting? Am I making too big of a deal?” Those little thoughts.
Because systems of oppression use gaslighting to make those who are experiencing oppression or harassment or discrimination doubt themselves, question themselves so they keep themselves small, so you don't speak up. And I’ve coached a lot of people on this, that’s a big deal, it comes up. And that’s where coaching can come in. Coaching is not about telling you what action to take. For one person it be the best action to quit their job for their mental health without having another job lined up. For another person it might be to advocate and lead change in the organization.
For someone else it might be to stay at the job so they continue getting the health insurance for their chronic health issue until they can find another job. For another person might be to transfer departments. I don't know what the right choice is for you, only you know that. But when you’re doubting yourself and questioning yourself, if you’re stuck in dread and anxiety, it can be very hard to access your inner knowledge of what's best for you, of what all the options could be, of what you want to do.
The work here is for you to be able to create confidence and self-empowerment and self-trust to figure out what is right for you, whether you do that with a coach, a therapist, a mentor or someone else, even on your own because there really are two sources of dread here. Of course, one is driving the experience of whatever harms you may be experiencing or may exist in your office. And the second is the dread that you feel from being stuck, of feeling stuck, as if there’s nothing you can do. That isn’t true.
Part of the reason you feel stuck is because of that voice in your head of doubt and uncertainty and distrust of yourself, which is what systems of oppression want you to hear, want you to feel. And once you’re able to reestablish self-trust and create confidence in yourself and believe you can figure it out, then you can decide what's best for you and what to do, how to get unstuck and what that looks like for you. So you don’t have to experience dread or anxiety each week.
Okay, you all those were the six reasons you might be experiencing Sunday scaries or Monday dread. Before I let you go, a few very, very exciting announcements of helpful resources that are coming up, that are coming down the pipeline, I want to make sure you are aware about. The first is actually a resource that’s already available. If you have not yet taken my completely free masterclass called How to Delegate to Reduce your Workload, I want you to sign up. We’ll leave a link in the show notes. It’s completely free, it’s only 15 minutes.
And it will help you reduce your workload so you have more time for you, whether or not you manage other staff, you don’t have to be a supervisor to benefit from taking this course. The second piece is we are having a podcast giveaway pretty soon, I think in a couple of weeks the announcement will officially come out, so keep your eyes and ears open for them
And lastly, in July I'm opening up enrollment for a new multi week time and productivity course happening in August. I’ll share more of the details soon. But this includes private coaching at a much lower cost than my one-on-one coaching program. It's going to be similar to the How the Patriarchy Robs you of your Rest course we did back in January as far as the structure. So you’re going to have private one-on-one coaching. You’re also going to get weekly tools and videos and teachings to support you at a much lower cost than my kind of intensive one-on-one coaching program.
This is part of my commitment to make support, to make coaching financially accessible for more people. So if you’ve wanted to get more help, if you’ve wanted to work with me but financially you didn’t think you could afford it, this course will be a great option for you. So make sure you're on my email list to get notified about all the details and when it opens up when I finally release that. We will have a link in the show notes or you can head to mckoolcoaching.com for all these resources and to stay up-to-date on all the exciting things, free, low cost and otherwise. So with that I’ll see you all next week.
If you found this episode helpful then you have to check out my coaching program where I provide you individualized support to create a life centered around rest. Head on over to mckoolcoaching.com, that’s M-C-K-O-O-L coaching.com to learn more.
Happy Monday, everyone. Are you feeling happy today? Are you feeling dread and anxiety about your work week? Were you in the Sunday scaries yesterday? Don’t worry, we’re going to address it all. Today I’m actually feeling really great. Most of my calendar is coaching calls with my clients and my one-on-one coaching program. Those are my absolute favorite days. My clients are amazing. Some of the changes they’re making, some of their transformations are so mind blowing, I love to see it. I love to be a part of it.
Actually just before I jumped on this call, at the halfway mark when I’m working with someone we do kind of a big reflection of what have you learned, where have you grown, all of that. And I was so proud of my client when they were sharing what they learned, where they’d grown, some of the things they shared was they have less anxiety. They feel overwhelmed less of the time. They’ve finally gotten to things they’ve been putting off for a long, long time. They are following through. They are being committed. They are more problem solution oriented than just giving up.
They are so much more aware of their thought patterns. It's just absolutely astonishing how much progress and change you can make in such a short amount of time when you have the tools and when you have the support. So today for me has actually been great. I haven’t been having any dread but yesterday was a different story. Yesterday was one of those days where everything seemed like they were going to be going great. I was having a nice light day and I was feeling good.
Someone said something to me and it really irked me. Has that ever happened to you, someone texts you, a coworker says something, maybe your dad calls and says something? And it throws the vibe off. It just irks you the wrong way and you’re annoyed. Now, you being annoyed or however you feel is because of your thoughts about it, not what they said, of course, always, but that happens to all of us. It happened to me yesterday, totally threw off my whole day.
I coached myself, I allowed the feelings. I moved through getting defensive and attached and working myself up. But I’m sharing this to say, coaches are humans just like you. I get upset, I get annoyed, that’s human life. Today we’re going to talk about the Sunday scaries and Monday dread which is also very human. It’s a very common experience, but I want to walk through the six reasons you are having this experience and what you can do about it so it doesn't happen as often.
So you can go into your Monday feeling empowered, feeling optimistic, feeling calm, feeling confident rather than waking up already exhausted, dragging yourself through the morning. So Sunday scaries or Monday dread, I think they’re really describing the same thing, where you spend Sunday feeling anxious and dreading Monday or even Monday morning you wake up in dread. Sundays you're not really able to enjoy your day, they’re no longer part of the weekend to relax. It feels like you just have Saturday because Sunday is just emotional turmoil.
And again, we've all been there. I used to go to that place, I used to kind of live in this space all the time. I asked those of you who follow me on Instagram, how often you feel this way? And 27% of you, almost a third said every week, 36% of you said sometimes and 36% said never. And that 36% that said never, that’s amazing. We’re going to get all of you there because 63%, over 50% of you feel the Sunday scaries or Monday dread either every week or sometimes and we are going to change that.
So there are six reasons you might be feeling this way. And there might be more than six but these are the most common six I coach on and I see, especially in public health. The first is, it’s related to a specific event on your calendar. Maybe it’s a presentation you have to give. Maybe it’s the performance review meeting you have with your boss. It’s something specific and the anxiety you feel is actually coming from that one event. It just feels all-consuming. And it’s blurring how you feel about the whole week.
It’s making you dread the whole week, but sometimes it’s only about that one event, especially for those of you who responded to my poll, that you only feel it sometimes, this could be part of it. I want you to name that one specific event you feel anxious about. Call it out, name it, bring it to the forefront. Rather than just sitting in the generality of feeling dread or anxiety, ask yourself, is there just one thing that I really feel anxious about? If there is one thing less on my calendar, what do I wish it was?
If this one meeting or this one presentation or this one task wasn't happening this week would I be feeling dread? Would I be feeling anxious? Just doing that alone can bring so much relief because if you recognize, okay, it's not the whole week, it’s this one meeting, it’s just that one piece, that one hour, then you can feel in more control. You can feel calmer and more confident.
When you see that 95% of the week you don’t feel anxious about, then the other 5%, you can allow the anxiety without having it to consume you because you know it won’t last forever. And you can coach yourself through it. It’s only an hour, I can get through an hour. Maybe I can prepare for it. I can just allow the anxiety. Saying those coaching things to yourself to help you move through that.
The second reason is when you feel overwhelm, just looking at your calendar or your to-do list. A lot of you feel this way every single week. You look at your calendar and immediately feeling anxious. You look at your to-do list and immediately feel overwhelm. For those of you who responded to my poll, and by the way, if you don't follow me on Instagram, come hang out, it’s a good time. Public health coach is my handle, come follow, let’s hang out, chat, send me a DM, all that good stuff.
But those of you who did respond that you feel that every week, this is probably one of the reasons. You might be thinking over the weekend or Sunday, I have so much to do this week. I have such a busy week. And what's happening is your letting your calendar be in control of you, as if you have no choice. That’s not true, you have a choice. You get to decide what to do or not to do each day, what to do item, what task to work on or not, what meeting to say yes to or not.
There is no have to, you choose to or choose not to. Your calendar does not cause your overwhelm. Your to-do list does not create your anxiety, your thoughts do. When you're thinking, I have such a busy week, I can’t get all this done, I have so much to do, this is going to be impossible, that creates your overwhelm and anxiety. If instead you are thinking, I can figure this out, I decide what to do, I don’t have to do all this, I can say no. You wouldn’t feel overwhelmed. You would feel empowered, in control and calm.
So I want you to notice what you are believing when you look at your calendar, what you are thinking when you look at your tasks, what are the thoughts you’re thinking? Because those thoughts will either create your overwhelm and anxiety and dread or help you feel confident, calm and in control.
The third reason is there might be something from last week you're trying to suppress, maybe last week you made an error in a presentation. Maybe you got negative feedback on your paper and you never actually dealt with how you felt about it, whether you felt embarrassed or shame or guilt or anxious. And you’ve just been suppressing it, ignoring it, resisting it. You’ve been trying to distract yourself. You've been trying to distract yourself, trying to pretend it didn’t happen, trying not to think about it.
And any time you do think about it, you feel this sinking in your stomach or this knot in your stomach or a fast beating heart or sweaty hands. And you immediately try to run away from that sensation. Not Processing that is creating dread. You’re bringing dread into this week or the next week because of that because you haven’t processed your feelings. You're holding on, you haven’t accepted what has happened with compassion for yourself.
It's like you know, when you’re swimming in a pool, or kids are swimming and there’s like a big floaty beachball? If you’re trying to keep that beachball underwater, there is a lot of resistance you’re getting. It’s a lot of work. And eventually that ball is going to come up and hit you in the face. And that’s kind of what's happening here, you’re resisting, you’re pushing down how you feel about whatever happened and it's creating dread for this week. You have to process how you felt so you don’t get hit in the face by that beachball when it pops up.
Accept what happened without shame or guilt. If you have a coach, if you have a therapist, this is a great thing to do with support. Give yourself grace and compassion. Don’t try to run from it or avoid it, work through it. Whether working through it is just processing emotion, whether it's dropping the shame and blame, whether it's learning from it, can look like a number of things. It doesn't look like distracting or avoiding. You can leave that in the past but you have to work through it first and process it so it doesn't drag into the next week.
The fourth reason. So for those of you, I want you to think, those of you who only sometimes feel Monday dread or Sunday scaries, how often does this happen when you get back from a vacation or a three day work week? Let's say you go on vacation, your summer vacation or the three day weekend, recently we had Memorial Day. And then you feel dread coming back to work. Maybe you don’t feel this dread every week but actually you feel it most often after vacations or three day weekends.
Usually what I find this means is you actually don’t get enough rest regularly. You don’t prioritize yourself on the week to week, you don’t give yourself the time to do leisure activities, to do things that bring you joy, to have downtime, whether that's because you actually end up working all weekend or some of the weekend. So you actually don't use the regular weekends for rest and joy and time for yourself. And you really only get that on vacation or because you’re not giving yourself regular rest, not just from work but maybe all weekend you’re trying to get all your chores done.
Maybe you’re not working in an office sense, but you believe you have to get all your chores done and all your home responsibilities and run all the errands and do all the projects. So then when you do have a three day weekend, you give yourself permission to use one, two or all three of those days to just relax and enjoy and do things that bring you joy. Then you come back and dread ‘real life’.
If you were regularly getting rest every single week, every day, if you were prioritizing yourself, if you were giving your mind and body what it needs, if you were finding joy, if you were giving yourself space, you probably wouldn’t experience this dread, Monday dread, Sunday scaries after vacation, because you know you will get rest throughout the week. It won’t be a grind, it won’t be a hustle, you have space, you have time, you have things you’re looking forward to, things just for yourself. You have downtime.
Right now your brain’s almost grabbing on for dear life to the vacation you just took or the three day weekend because that feels so scarce and rare. But when you get regular rest, when you prioritize yourself every week, when you give yourself downtime each day, when you give yourself permission to do nothing regularly, even if there’s a list of chores or work tasks then you wouldn't feel that way. When you have regular and sustainable and consistent rest, you don’t experience that dread after a vacation.
Now, it doesn't mean you would necessarily be jumping for joy and being like, “Yes, I can't wait to go back to work, I’m so excited.” Maybe, but really what it means is you wouldn’t be drowning in overwhelm or anxiety or dread. You know, oh my gosh, Wednesday, I have my girl’s night, or Thursday I’m taking a long lunch. Or I know if I get overwhelmed or if there feels like there's too much, I will tap out, I’ll walk away from my desk. I’ll reprioritize. I know I'm going to give myself a half day on Friday to just relax, make it easy.
You’d have more to look forward to in your week, than just work chores, work chores, no fun, no time, no me. When you have integrated time for you and rest and downtime in the week you don’t have to use vacation and a three day weekend as that lifeline.
The fifth reason. It might be related to a specific person or people especially if you experience this dread weekly. It might be related to someone specific at work. Maybe it’s your boss or a coworker or someone else. That's why when that person is maybe out on leave all week, maybe they're doing a site visit all week or they’re on vacation, you don’t feel dread or anxious about the week. You actually feel lighter and more relaxed about going to work. Maybe you think your boss micromanages or a coworker always is asking you for help all the time and you dread this.
Your dread is not caused by them or what they do or what they say, it’s created by your thoughts about them. They don’t cause your anxiety or your overwhelm or your dread, your thoughts do. Now, this doesn’t mean you have to condone what they do or don't do. It doesn’t mean you have to be best friends with them. But it also doesn't mean you have to attach to what they say or do. You don’t have to dread it. You don’t have to get so worked up about it. You don’t have to let it ruin your week. They don’t cause your feelings, your thoughts do.
Recently I've been working with a client who when we started to work together was really struggling with their boss, being around their boss. They dreaded going to work every week. And this week they told me for the first time they were able to go to work without hyper focusing on their boss. They were able to read an email from their boss and not immediately get worked up, they weren’t dreading work anymore, not at the same level.
They were not necessarily like, “yeah, I want to be best friends with my boss.” But they also weren’t spending all day draining their energy, resisting their boss, getting frustrated, counting all the ways they think they’re wrong. Their boss didn't change, my client accepted that their boss was not going to change, that they can't force them to change and they don't need to. That allowed them have a different emotional experience no matter what their boss does or doesn't do.
Accepting the people in your life or people at work who you might find annoying or frustrating or you disagree with, accepting they are who they are, they’re not going to change and you can't force them. And focusing on what's in your control instead, allows you to dictate how your week goes, not someone else, not your thoughts about someone else.
When you are able to manage your mind about the people you work with so you decide to go into the week feeling confident and in control and calm no matter how they show up, no matter what they do, that’s empowerment. That’s confidence, that's the ability to eliminate Sunday scaries.
Okay, the last one, number six. If you are experiencing harassment, discrimination, oppression, you probably are experiencing some dread, anxiety about the week. We have to acknowledge that the public health workforce itself operates under systems of oppression, was built on them. It continues to function with them, from white supremacy to the patriarchy, toxic capitalism and more. Your dread may be stemming from experiencing harassment or discrimination or a bias at work, whether that sexism, ableism, fat phobia or something else.
These issues that happen within the walls of the public health workforce within our organizations are not addressed nor talked about enough but they are real. So if you are experiencing them at work, if your office promotes this or if specific people are acting in a way that promotes this, of course, you’d feel dread for the week or anxious. And then many of you who might be experiencing this, you might be doubting yourself saying, “I shouldn’t speak up or maybe that’s not really happening, or maybe that’s not what they meant. Am I overreacting? Am I making too big of a deal?” Those little thoughts.
Because systems of oppression use gaslighting to make those who are experiencing oppression or harassment or discrimination doubt themselves, question themselves so they keep themselves small, so you don't speak up. And I’ve coached a lot of people on this, that’s a big deal, it comes up. And that’s where coaching can come in. Coaching is not about telling you what action to take. For one person it be the best action to quit their job for their mental health without having another job lined up. For another person it might be to advocate and lead change in the organization.
For someone else it might be to stay at the job so they continue getting the health insurance for their chronic health issue until they can find another job. For another person might be to transfer departments. I don't know what the right choice is for you, only you know that. But when you’re doubting yourself and questioning yourself, if you’re stuck in dread and anxiety, it can be very hard to access your inner knowledge of what's best for you, of what all the options could be, of what you want to do.
The work here is for you to be able to create confidence and self-empowerment and self-trust to figure out what is right for you, whether you do that with a coach, a therapist, a mentor or someone else, even on your own because there really are two sources of dread here. Of course, one is driving the experience of whatever harms you may be experiencing or may exist in your office. And the second is the dread that you feel from being stuck, of feeling stuck, as if there’s nothing you can do. That isn’t true.
Part of the reason you feel stuck is because of that voice in your head of doubt and uncertainty and distrust of yourself, which is what systems of oppression want you to hear, want you to feel. And once you’re able to reestablish self-trust and create confidence in yourself and believe you can figure it out, then you can decide what's best for you and what to do, how to get unstuck and what that looks like for you. So you don’t have to experience dread or anxiety each week.
Okay, you all those were the six reasons you might be experiencing Sunday scaries or Monday dread. Before I let you go, a few very, very exciting announcements of helpful resources that are coming up, that are coming down the pipeline, I want to make sure you are aware about. The first is actually a resource that’s already available. If you have not yet taken my completely free masterclass called How to Delegate to Reduce your Workload, I want you to sign up. We’ll leave a link in the show notes. It’s completely free, it’s only 15 minutes.
And it will help you reduce your workload so you have more time for you, whether or not you manage other staff, you don’t have to be a supervisor to benefit from taking this course. The second piece is we are having a podcast giveaway pretty soon, I think in a couple of weeks the announcement will officially come out, so keep your eyes and ears open for them
And lastly, in July I'm opening up enrollment for a new multi week time and productivity course happening in August. I’ll share more of the details soon. But this includes private coaching at a much lower cost than my one-on-one coaching program. It's going to be similar to the How the Patriarchy Robs you of your Rest course we did back in January as far as the structure. So you’re going to have private one-on-one coaching. You’re also going to get weekly tools and videos and teachings to support you at a much lower cost than my kind of intensive one-on-one coaching program.
This is part of my commitment to make support, to make coaching financially accessible for more people. So if you’ve wanted to get more help, if you’ve wanted to work with me but financially you didn’t think you could afford it, this course will be a great option for you. So make sure you're on my email list to get notified about all the details and when it opens up when I finally release that. We will have a link in the show notes or you can head to mckoolcoaching.com for all these resources and to stay up-to-date on all the exciting things, free, low cost and otherwise. So with that I’ll see you all next week.
If you found this episode helpful then you have to check out my coaching program where I provide you individualized support to create a life centered around rest. Head on over to mckoolcoaching.com, that’s M-C-K-O-O-L coaching.com to learn more.
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