Feeling the Sunday night blues

Are you feeling the blues?

It’s not uncommon to feel what’s been called the Sunday night blues. Unlike a desperate desire to play a rousing 12 bars on a Sunday evening, the Sunday night blues is a pervading feeling of dread, often caused by not enjoying your work or study.

In this post I’d like to explore some of the strategies that we can use to alleviate the effects of the Sunday night blues!

Identify the cause

Identifying why you’re feeling down before the start of a new week is important. The key is to ensure that it’s not just a one off. Often you can feel blue if you have overdone it at the weekend or not done enough, drunk too much, or not eaten properly. Once we can safely eliminate these factors as the cause we can more safely say that the cause is our upcoming working week.

It’s crucial to analyse and break down the reasons why your upcoming week is filling you with dread. For today, we’ll focus on some of the most common.

• You’re in the wrong job
• Routine is getting you down and you need more variety in your working life.
• You have things coming up that you’re nervous about such as meetings, projects or presentations.
• You don’t like the people you work with, and/or are being intimidated or bullied in the workplace.

Dealing with the problem

If you’re truly honest with yourself, identifying the cause can be the easy bit. Actually dealing with the problems is where it can get a bit tricky.

• You’re in the wrong job – Try and think about the elements of your working life that you have enjoyed and work out what it is that you don’t enjoy. Are there personal interests that you would like to incorporate into your working life? Working out what makes you tick, might be the key to improving your happiness at work.
• Routine is getting you down – See if there are opportunities within your workplace that you could develop. Are there any new projects that you could get involved or are there any  secondments coming up. Sometimes a change really can be as good as a rest and you never know where an opportunity may lead. Remember though, variety doesn’t have to come from the workplace, taking up a hobby or volunteering could work just as well!
• You have things coming up that you’re nervous about such as meetings, projects or presentations – If you’re feeling dread because of upcoming meetings or projects it’s probably your mind telling you that you haven’t adequately prepared. If this is the case you might need to step up your game and do some preparation! If you’re feeling this due to being thrown in at the deep end and you’re not being given enough support, consider whether you can discuss this with your manager.
• You don’t like the people you work with, and/or are being intimidated or bullied in the workplace – If it’s the former and you just don’t get on with people at work consider whether you can tackle this and build on your relationships. Personality clashes do happen but sometimes they aren’t terminal and can be worked on. The latter is a more serious situation and if this is the case you need to tackle it head on and get some support. In your workplace you may have a harassment officer that you can talk to in confidence. You could also approach your HR department for a chat about your situation. Whatever you do don’t suffer in silence!

Are you feeling the Sunday night blues and don’t know what to do?

Or, have you managed to fight off the Sunday night blues by making a change in your life?

Please comment below and let us know your stories!