Monday Morning Dread

[Satchmo Distel]

Did you experience Monday morning dread during your schooldays? Do you experience it now, even if you work at home on Mondays (I do!)? At what time on a Sunday would/does it typically start and is it more likely to be linked to anxiety and depression generally?

My answers: I experienced Monday morning dread at a much earlier age than I experienced what I recognize today as clinical depression. If anything, the latter evolved from the former. Like many people, I would connect it to specific TV shows. If I was in a really bad way, it would start as early as the end of Grandstand (Saturday, 5.05pm) but usually it would start around 'Songs Of Praise' (Sunday, 6.40pm) or maybe a few hours earlier, after 'Weekend World' (1pm, Sundays).

Sometimes my worst day of the week was Tuesdays (sadistic gym teacher) so the dread I experienced on Sundays actually got worse on Monday nights.

The inability to get rid of this dread even though I work from home and even enjoy my job has to be some form of reflex that I will have until I retire. It is way beneath my rational mind.

[Patrick Thistle]

I used to dread Mondays when I started going to secondary school. That got worse as time went on and it got really bad during my GCSEs. As I've said a few times on various pandemic threads, for all that some kids may be negatively impacted by not going to school, I would have loved having to stay home and not deal with the hostile climate that started on the bus. The assumption that going to school is the best thing for kids really depends on the kids, I think. (And I know some kids aren't safe ar home. I'm grateful that I was.)

I have felt work dread too, usually at a higher intensity but only for short periods of time. If I know there's lots of meetings and people are playing silly buggers and creating problems. I think there's a definite link to depression. If I'm not feeling balanced then the dread feelings are a definite tell even before I notice other more obvious things like extreme tiredness. I have learned not to let my imagination get away from me and catastrophise situations, which helps.

[diggedy derek]

It used to be Last Of The Summer Wine started for me. I'm not sure what time that would have been, but then.

[E10 Rifle]

I never work on Monday so don't get it, though now I've got a second job as a primary school teaching assistant it could return.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

It's funny but now that Sundays in lockdown literally feel like living in exile on a prison island I quite look forward to Mondays. Our Programme's weekly lifecycle is quite relaxed on a Monday - it's our catch up, tidy up and planning day before things get hectic Tuesday to Friday. Plus, our Programme Director is a Leeds fan and I'm looking forward to taking the piss tomorrow.

[Satchmo Distel]

I'm wondering if I'm the only one who feels dread that's irrational because I actually have nothing to fear on Mondays and this is purely a ghost of trauma I had 40+ years ago. I'm not saying the dread is crippling but it's a definite knot in the stomach that doesn't go until Monday afternoon.

[Gangster Octopus]

I've said it before, and I'll probably say it again; Monday depression started with the end of the Hit Parade run-down and the opening bars of Sing Something Simple...

[Eggchaser]

I get ratty from about 5 p.m. onwards on Sunday. I think it"s because I think there will be at least two complaining clients and several moany ones when I open my emails and pick up my phone messages on Monday.

[3 Colours Red]

24/7 during my entire time in secondary school. Mercilessly bullied to the point where they had to employ a psychologist just for me. Don't want to go into any more detail; it gets quite dark.

[Janik]

Basically no, I've never had it. The worst is trepidation over something that I know could be actively bad coming up at work, but that is only very occasional and also very specific - there has to be an actual issue that would be difficult to explain driving it. I don't remember ever having it back at school.

I think I've said before that I don't appear particularly vulnerable to depression. Reading other people's contributions makes me realise how fortunate I am that that seems the case.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Never at work, but at school for sure. I spent weekends in a state of denial. This meant from Friday afternoon to Sunday evening I didn't want to think about it, or have anything to do with it (the latter included never doing any homework.)

[WOM]

My Monday dread would start around 5 PM Sunday when the Bugs Bunny / Road Runner Hour would start and I could smell Sunday dinner cooking. I hated school and had usually put off some project or homework all weekend and I could now feel the chickens coming home to roost.

[Satchmo Distel]

My problem is currently increased by setting essay deadlines for Sundays, meaning I spend a chunk of Monday either failing some shit work or chasing missing work by threatening to fail it, both of which I find stressful for several reasons (such as this student is wasting a space in my class which could have gone to someone who deserved it but was COVIDed or had to drop her studies for money reasons).

[S. aureus]

I don't think that I've ever had it. I do get upset with myself that I haven't managed to achieve everything that I should have over the weekend (household chores and all), but that's not from school.

[anton pulisov]

My parents would watch Antiques Roadshow.

And the little HOOOMMMMEEWOOORK HOMEWOOORRRKK HOMEWOOORRK voice would go off in my head.

School is shite.

[San Bernardhinault]

As much as I ever had it, it was sometime after sport finished on a Sunday (football, Sunday Grandstand, John Player Special 40 over league, Ski Sunday, whatever) and around when Songs of Praise started and I realised that I hadn't done my homework.

[tee rex]

I've said it before, and I'll probably say it again; Monday depression started with the end of the Hit Parade run-down and the opening bars of Sing Something Simple...

I remember that from the old board. And yes, I felt physically ill when hearing that sound, and if anybody wants to kidnap and torture me now, that sound will do it.

For TV, it would be the closing theme of the Big Match and the LWT logo. Bob Gardam - your name was The End.

[Amor de Cosmos]

A friend sent me a CD, 'The Best of Sing Something Simple' for my birthday this year as a joke. When I opened the package my stomach sank and I felt the same terror I did at fourteen years old.

[Hot Pepsi]

It’s awful. Work sucks

[Sporting]

24/7 during my entire time in secondary school. Mercilessly bullied to the point where they had to employ a psychologist just for me. Don't want to go into any more detail; it gets quite dark.

I both sympathise and empathise.

Monday morning often started for me with the Sunday evening bath. (As for many other households showers were a foreign invention.) As the bathwater got colder, and when I started to get bored of sticking my big toe into the tap, then the prospect of Monday morning loomed larger. Waking up in the night to discover that I had two more hours in bed was a sort of sad consolation.

[ursus arctos]

Was Sunday Morning Dread a thing in Sudan?

[Sporting]

Was Sunday Morning Dread a thing in Sudan?

Depended on whether one was lucky to have the Saturday off as well! In the south schools had a traditional Saturday and Sunday weekend.

[DCI Harry Batt]

It’s awful. Work sucks

Same here.

It doesn't have much to do with any specific content, for me. I mean, knowledge of upcoming particular awfulness will feature and aggravate, I suppose. But it's much more about the general hideous frustrating alienating pointlessness and worse of work generally, mixed up with where my head's a right now.

As for school - I don't remember getting it then, but I don't remember a lot. School was odd, mostly easy but at times pretty rotten, for me. It got worse over time. Mind you, I'm bloody glad I went when I did and not now.

[Jah Womble]

'New-term morning dread' was worse, but yeah, Monday mornings were pretty grim. School years were bleak. (Until sixth form, perhaps.)

I had to go in on a Saturday as well, so 'morning dread' was basically six times a week.

[Sporting]

New-term morning dread' was worse

God, yes, especially after the summer hols.