Well, hello there, and welcome to another episode of the Terry Cole show that I want to start with a question.

How do you feel as your weekend starts coming to an end?

What about when you're approaching Sunday evening?

Do you ever have a sense of dread or anxiety about the work week ahead?

Well, if you said yes, then you might just be experiencing the Sunday scariest, which is a real thing, y'all.

So in this episode, I'm going to be defining Sunday scariest and giving you some tips so that you can decode why you might be feeling that Sunday anxiety.

So if you are new to this podcast, I want to say welcome. My name is Terry Cole.

I'm a licensed psychotherapist and I am the author of Boundary Boss, which you can get at boundary boss book.com.

And I want to take a moment to say thank you for hanging out with me today, because as always, you being here when you could be anywhere really does warm my heart.

If you want to support the show, please rate it, please review it or subscribe on Apple podcasts.

I always love to shout out to our listeners. So I want to say here's a quick shout out to Patricia who left a five store review on Apple podcasts.

It says great healing show. Terry's voice is soothing and her words are wisdom. That's how I would describe this podcast. Well, thank you so much, Patricia. I super appreciate your kind words now on to today's content.

This is the Terry Cole show and as you might have guessed, I'm your host, Terry Cole. For over two decades, I've been a licensed psychotherapist, love and boundaries expert, and I'm also the founder of the rail of revolution and boundary bootcamp.

On this show, I'll bring you simple strategies based on practical psychology, inspiring expert interviews, and my own insights and observations from my time on the front lines in the fascinating world of entertainment, empowerment, and mental health.

Now let's get going with today's episode.

What are the Sunday scaries? Let's just start from that place.

So sometimes this is referred to as the Sunday night blues. So this describes a feeling of dread or anxiety that starts on Sunday in anticipation of your work week ahead.

And now listen, it could for you, it might start the moment you wake up or it might not happen until later in the day or more towards evening or it might get progressively worse throughout the day because it's really it's different for everyone.

So it can really present with the same signs as anxiety, which is a racing heart, headache, sweating, a sense of dread or impending doom, you might have an upset stomach, problem sleeping, you might be shaking, you might feel depressed, you might have resentment or anger, sadness, loneliness, there's a whole bunch of things that happen when we are feeling anxious. So that's kind of the physical and emotional aspect of it.

So what's the difference between the Sunday scaries and a diagnosable anxiety disorder? Well, here's the biggest difference is that the Sunday scaries are predictable, right? They happen on Sunday and they cause what they cause is like identifiable anxiety. That's what we call it. Meaning you're feeling anxiety about the work week going to work. Maybe you have a job you hate. Maybe you have an abusive boss. Maybe you have a big presentation.

But it's sort of specific. And that really isn't true for generalizing anxiety disorder or different diagnoses for depression. We don't really see necessarily that cause and effect. So that is how we know that it's the Sunday scaries and not just an anxiety disorder.

The question is how normal is this? And you know, there was a study done in 2017 or keep a month that's pre pandemic. And according to that survey that NBC actually shared 76% of Americans at that point self reported having really bad in quotes Sunday night anxiety.

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