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hey there everybody and welcome to this presentation on reducing sunday night anxiety
this is part of the new quick start guide series and i'm your host dr donnelly snipes
what is sunday night anxiety well it's that dread that washes over you when monday morning is almost
here it can come from a variety of factors but a lot of times it's caused by anticipating the worst
from the upcoming week thinking about all those meetings that you really don't want to go to all
the stuff that you've got to do fears that you may not be able to meet expectations or maybe there's
some tasks that you're being told you have to do that you feel ill prepared for or that are very
uncomfortable for you challenging co-workers there are a variety of things that you can focus on
and just like anything else in life our brain is designed to focus on more attention on the threats
as opposed to the benefits of things so your brain goes to those things that you may be dreading
and and pays more attention to those and does not highlight the positives so what can you do
about it well acknowledge your feelings your feelings are real that they are what they are
so being mindful acknowledging them is the first step the next thing that you can do
is unhook from them you acknowledge your feeling i'm dreading uh the upcoming week
okay then you unhook by saying i'm having thoughts that are that i'm dreading the upcoming week so
you can unhook from those and you can say okay i have these thoughts here what can i do with them
positive affirmations is one of the things that you can try to do remember your brain pays
attention pretty much effortlessly to the negative things to the things that you're dreading to the
things that cause anxiety in you but it doesn't automatically pay attention to the good things
so you can also turn your attention to the good things that you expect that week maybe you're
going to get to see some co-workers that you really like or you've got a project that's finally
going to be finished whatever the good things you expect make sure to pay attention to those not to
minimize the stuff that you don't like but to help balance it out to recognize that it's not all bad
you can also think about things good things that have happened last week and then throughout the
week even throughout each day stop and be mindful of okay what are the good things that happened
today what is making my day more pleasant and these can all be journaling prompts hence the
little jp at the end the next thing that you can think about or focus on or journal about
is your ability to handle the suck and i'm sorry there are just some days that suck
and it's important to recognize that yes it's unpleasant but you've gotten through them before
whether it is an eight-hour meeting been through those uh whether it is you know a whole day's
worth of things that you don't want to do or when i worked in community mental health we
would regularly have audits and those could be very stressful but i would focus on my
ability to get through those and how could i see them as challenges instead of burdens
you can also explore the things that you are dreading in terms of the dialectics looking at
the good with the bad i really don't want to go to work and have to go through sit through this
eight hour meeting because you know eight hours is a really freaking long time however i am grateful
to have a job and hey maybe i can bring some of my paperwork and work on that throughout the
meeting so you can embrace the dialectics you can figure out ways to make it more tolerable
you can modify situations to lessen the dread what can you do to make things more amusing maybe you
can in a meeting you can sit by a friend maybe you can bring paper and doodle you know maybe
not coloring crayons and everything but if you bring paper you can doodle or for me i make lists
there are a lot of different things that you might be able to do in situations i hate doing
progress notes it's just one of those things i don't like doing them so thinking about ways that
i can modify doing some of my paperwork i put on a video on the computer while i'm doing my paperwork
i'm not paying a whole lot of attention to it but it's in the background and it helps me feel
more relaxed and it makes it less unpleasant so i can i pair something i don't like with something
i do like you can have what's and you can journal about that what are different ways you can modify
the situations you hate in order to make them more palatable you can create a karma box or
what some people call a god box and you can write down your stresses and your anxieties
on index cards or pieces of paper and put them in that box and say you know what i'm just going to
put this over here right now and literally put that anxiety up on the shelf one of my
favorites because i'm a kid at heart is blowing bubbles two benefits to blowing bubbles number
one it forces you to deep breathe and breathe slowly which can trigger your rest and digest so
it can help trigger the relaxation response but you can also envision your stresses in each one
of those bubbles so think about something that you're stressing about and then blow a bubble
and watch it float away and then pop so you can see it just disappear into the atmosphere
thought stopping or redirection is something else you can do and you can journal about this what are
three or five ways that are if you find effective in order to thought stop basically tell yourself
no i'm not going to think about that and redirect because when you stop thinking about it then you
got to do something else so i'm going to not think about this and i'm going to turn my attention to
you know what are three or five things that you can turn your attention to
another cause of sunday night anxiety is burnout work environments and i'm not going
to talk a lot about this right now because i have an entire other video on burnout work environments
and some things in the burnout work environment you cannot change sometimes you can have an
attitude adjustment about them sometimes you can embrace the suck sometimes you need to look for
a new job so there are different things that you can do depending on the characteristics of
your burnout work environment sometimes you are stuck in that environment for a period of time
and it's figuring out how you're going to make the best of a really bad situation i've been there
and you know seeing this light at the end of the tunnel i knew i had to stay in this
position for at least another four months because i wasn't going to leave the job in under a year
so how did i navigate that and that's something that only you can answer for yourself
you can talk with your supervisors you can talk with human resources you can try to
resolve some of these issues but burnout work environments do tend to create an attitude of
dread on sunday night and finally a lack of rewards just going through the daily grind
can be dread provoking so to speak it's just another week another day another dollar
whatever you want to say if you're not focusing on rewards or if they're not rewards throughout
the week it can seem honorous to have to go through and just trudge along through the same
stuff different day so scheduling fun throughout the week and even throughout the work day you
know what can you do that is fun that is funny that is lightens the mood that encourages um
cooperation whatever it is that can make your environment a little bit more pleasant
and also help you look forward to work instead of dreading it on sundays
another tool you can use is developing hardiness commitment control and challenge
your job is only one aspect of your life what happens during the week there are lots
of things there's family there's um you know doctor's appointments there's shopping there's
all kinds of things but identifying the things that are important in your rich
and meaningful life that you're committed to is really important because you need to
figure out the best way to use your energy to nurture those things that you're committed to
control is the second aspect you look at those things in your life to about to which you're
committed and you identify what aspects of those are within your control what can you do to nurture
those things and make them be the way you want them to be so to speak and challenge is viewing
obstacles viewing problems as challenges or opportunities to improve the next moment instead
of seeing them as something that is onerous again see it as something that is inspiring that brings
out your curiosity and your creativity to think how can i solve this how can i make this better
finding meaning another one of those journaling prompts think about what are the benefits of your
job it may just be a paycheck you know sometimes that's all the only benefit there is to a job
but hopefully there are other things that are beneficial in your job and what aspects of your
job do you like you know again hopefully there are several things but identifying any aspects
that you like so you can focus on those instead of focusing only on the things that you don't like
evaluate the effects of your sunday night negativity another journaling prompt what are the
benefits to your sunday night anxiety what in what way does that help prepare you for the week in
what way does that help you build up your energy for the week the answer to those is it doesn't
it wears down your energy it inhibits your sleep so there's really not a lot of benefit to sunday
night anxiety there is nothing that you can do on sunday to change the future because
you can't predict the future practicing mindfulness on sunday living in the moment
focusing on those things in your life other than work which happens on monday focusing on those
things in your life to which you're committed and using your energy on those things which takes us
to the final journaling prompt how could you use that energy that you usually spend with sunday
night anxiety and dreading the upcoming week and worrying about what's going to happen how
could you use that energy to nurture those things that are important to you that you're committed to
for some more in-depth videos you can look at the one on best practices for anxiety treatment
at all ceus.com slash anxiety dash tx which is short for treatment and you can also look at
the one on burnout i told you there was a whole other long video on it and that's at all ceus.com