Sunday Blues in Your Head
Wise administrators and lounges philosophers have long taught that every day has its own emotions. Your week progresses from Monday to Wednesday to Friday, thank goodness, moving on to Sunday blues, also known as Sunday Scaries or Sunday Sads. You are going through this crisis over the weekend because you know everyone is facing it. Except for some of them.
The Sunday blues is a cultural given; sites like Bustle , BuzzFeed , The Muse , Real Simple , HuffPost , New York Times, and even Lifehacker have written on how to deal with them. I asked Dr. Ali Matta, clinical psychologist and host of The Psych Show on YouTube, about the science behind this phenomenon. It turns out that there are not many of them.
Dr. Mattu points to a telephone survey of 340,000 respondents that found no strong “daytime effects” other than improved weekend mood. This study found no significant difference between the average Saturday and Sunday mood among people. While earlier studies found evidence for the Sunday Blues, the authors of this study blamed small samples, mostly college students, for the findings.
“It’s also just a tricky area to study,” says Dr. Mattu. “All of these conclusions depend on how you ask people about their emotions. We are terribly imprecise when it comes to remembering how we felt in the past and predicting how we will feel in the future. ” He points to other research showing that people adjust their memories of everyday mood according to stereotypes such as Blue Monday or TGIF.
Of course, none of this means you can’t be sad on Sunday, even for all the reasons cited on the internet: hangover, FOMO, disappointment at the weekend, fear of a new work week. The Sunday Blues is real to those experiencing it, but it is not inevitable. So go ahead and try to beat them.