Why Do I Dread Monday Mornings

For a lot of people, the hardest part of the week is not a difficult meeting or a long shift. It is Monday morning itself. The alarm goes off, the room is still dark or just turning grey, and before your feet even touch the floor, a heavy feeling settles in. You are not ill. Nothing terrible has happened. Yet the thought of getting up, getting ready, and going back to work feels far harder than it should. By Tuesday the feeling has usually faded, and by Friday it is gone completely. Then Sunday evening comes, and the heaviness returns, as if the week were starting all over again.

This feeling is so common that it has a nickname in many countries: the Monday blues. Surveys and workplace studies keep finding the same thing — Monday is the day people report the lowest mood, the most tiredness, and the least enthusiasm for work. It is not because Mondays are always harder than other days. Often the work on a Monday is no heavier than the work on a Wednesday. The dread comes from the change itself: from free time back to scheduled time, from rest back to demands, from your own rhythm back to someone else’s clock. This article explains that change in plain words, so the feeling makes sense and stops feeling like a personal weakness.

What Monday Morning Dread Actually Feels Like

Monday dread is not one single feeling. It is a mix, and it looks a little different for everyone. For some people it is mostly physical: heavy eyes, a slow body, a head that feels foggy for the first hour. They move through their morning routine like they are wading through water. For others it is mostly in the mind: a tight feeling in the chest, a stream of small worries about the day ahead, a wish to stay under the blanket for just ten more minutes. For many people it is both at once, and the two feed each other. The tired body makes the thoughts darker, and the dark thoughts make the body feel even heavier.

The feeling often starts before Monday itself. Sunday evening is the usual starting point. The weekend is still going, but the mind has already moved on to the week ahead. Dinner tastes a little less enjoyable. The evening feels shorter than it is. Some people find they cannot settle to a film or a book, because part of their attention is already counting the hours until the alarm. Others go to bed early to escape the feeling, then lie awake thinking about the morning. By the time Monday actually arrives, it can feel as if you have already spent half the night worrying about it, which makes the morning even harder.

It helps to know that this pattern is normal. A week has a shape, and the human mind responds to shapes. After two days of freedom, the return to structure is a real change, and real changes take energy, even small ones. You are not dreading Monday because you are lazy or because you hate your life. You are responding to a switch from one way of living to another, and that switch happens every single week. People who love their jobs can still feel it. People who are good at their jobs can still feel it. The dread does not mean the job is wrong. It usually means the transition is sharp, and the transition is the part that can be softened.

The Weekend Shift: How Two Days Off Change Your Rhythm

One of the biggest reasons Monday feels hard is that the weekend quietly moves your body clock. On Saturday and Sunday, most people sleep later, eat at different times, stay up later at night, and move through the day without a timetable. That is the whole point of a weekend, and it is healthy to rest. But the body keeps a rhythm, and it adjusts to whatever you do for two days in a row. When Monday comes with its early alarm, the body is still running on weekend time, and the gap between the two clocks feels like tiredness.

Sleep researchers have a name for this gap: social jet lag. It works a little like the jet lag you feel after a long flight, except the journey is only from your weekend to your weekday. If you sleep until nine or ten on Sunday and then have to wake at six on Monday, your body is being asked to wake three or four hours earlier than it did the day before. No wonder the first hour feels foggy. The body has not had time to catch up, and it will not catch up until later in the day, or even until Tuesday, when the weekday rhythm has had a chance to settle again.

Food and drink play a part in the weekend shift too. Weekends are when people eat bigger meals, eat later in the evening, and drink more than usual — more sweet drinks, more tea or coffee at odd hours, and for some people, alcohol. A heavy late meal on Sunday night can leave you waking up feeling full and sluggish rather than rested. A lie-in on Sunday morning can push lunch later, which pushes dinner later, which pushes bedtime later, and suddenly the whole day has slid forward by two hours. None of these things is wrong on its own. A weekend is meant to be enjoyed. But the size of the slide matters: the further your weekend moves from your weekday pattern, the harder Monday morning feels.

The way to soften this is not to give up the weekend. It is to keep one or two anchors steady. Waking up within about an hour of your weekday time on at least one weekend day, for example, keeps the gap small. Eating breakfast at a roughly similar time helps too. These are not strict rules, and they do not need to be perfect. They are simply ways to keep the distance between Sunday and Monday short, so the step back into the week is a small step instead of a leap.

Sunday Night: When Monday Starts Before Monday

If Monday morning is the hardest hour of the week, Sunday night is often the hardest evening. The dread that arrives on Sunday night has a special quality to it, because it is dread about something that has not happened yet. You are sitting at home, safe and comfortable, and still you feel uneasy. That is because the mind is very good at rehearsing the future. It runs through the week ahead like a film: the alarm, the journey, the pile of messages, the first task, the meeting you are not looking forward to. Each scene adds a little more weight, and by bedtime the whole week can feel like a mountain, even though it is really just five ordinary days.

Sunday night worry is often at its worst when the week ahead is unclear. If you do not know what Monday will bring, your mind fills the gap with worst cases. A vague sense of “there will be a lot to do” feels much heavier than a clear list of three or four tasks. This is why one of the simplest Sunday evening habits is also one of the most useful: taking five minutes to write down what Monday actually holds. Not a grand plan for the week, just a short note — the first thing to do, the one meeting, the one thing that needs an answer. When the week is written down, it stops being a fog and becomes a set of ordinary tasks, and ordinary tasks feel far lighter than fog.

There is another reason Sunday nights feel heavy, and it is easy to miss: the weekend is ending, and endings are sad even when nothing is wrong. Two days of freedom, rest, family time and choice are coming to a close, and the mind mourns that a little. That is not a sign of a bad life. It is a sign that the weekend mattered to you. People who spend their weekends doing things they enjoy feel this more sharply, not less, because they have something good to leave behind. Naming that feeling helps. Instead of saying “I am dreading Monday”, it can be truer to say “I am sad the weekend is over, and Monday is the first day without it.” The second version is kinder, and it is also more accurate, which makes it easier to carry.

The Week Ahead Feels Bigger Than It Is

Part of Monday dread comes from how the mind sees the week. On Monday morning, the whole week stretches out ahead of you: five days of work, five early alarms, five journeys, and all the tasks that go with them. Seen all at once, from the starting line, the week looks enormous. By Wednesday, the same week looks much smaller, because half of it is already behind you. The work has not changed. Only your view of it has changed. Monday is the day when the week is at its longest, and that length is part of what makes the morning feel heavy.

The mind also has a habit of collecting every worry of the week and placing it on Monday. A task that is due on Thursday, a conversation that might happen on Wednesday, a deadline at the end of the month — on Monday morning, all of them can feel as if they are due today. They are not, but the mind does not always keep dates straight when it is tired and the week is fresh. This is another reason a short written plan helps. When the Thursday task is written next to Thursday, it stops sitting on Monday’s shoulders. The week becomes five separate days again, instead of one huge wall.

Another thing that makes the week look big on Monday is tiredness itself. When you are tired, everything looks harder. A task that would take twenty minutes on a fresh Wednesday afternoon can look like an hour’s work on a foggy Monday morning. That is not the task changing; it is your energy changing how the task looks. Knowing this is useful, because it means the heaviness you feel at eight in the morning is not a reliable measure of the day. By ten or eleven, after you have moved, eaten, and done one small thing, the same day often looks much more manageable. The morning feeling passes. It almost always does, and remembering that it passed last week, and the week before, can make this Monday a little easier to bear.

Sleep, Food and the Monday Morning Body

Sleep is the single biggest factor in how Monday morning feels, and it is the one most people can improve the most. The pattern is familiar: a late night on Friday, a lie-in on Saturday, another late night, and then Sunday night, when the mind is busy and sleep comes slowly. By Monday, the body has had two nights of shifted sleep and one night of worried sleep, and it is running on less rest than it needs. Poor sleep makes attention weaker, patience shorter, and small tasks feel bigger. It also makes mood lower, which makes the dread feel stronger. The tiredness and the dread feed each other in a circle, and breaking the circle usually starts with the night before.

A regular sleep time is the most useful habit here, and it does not need to be perfect to help. Going to bed at roughly the same time each night, including weekends, keeps the body’s clock steady, so Monday morning is not a shock. Keeping the bedroom dark and cool, and putting screens away a little before bed, helps sleep come more easily. A warm drink, a short read, or a few quiet minutes can signal to the body that the day is ending. These are small things, and they sound too simple to matter, but sleep is one of those areas where small, steady habits add up to a large difference over a week.

Food matters on Monday morning too. Many people skip breakfast on Mondays because they are in a rush, or because they do not feel hungry when they wake up tired. Then by mid-morning they feel shaky, irritable, and even more tired. A simple breakfast — something with steady energy, like bread, eggs, yoghurt, or fruit — gives the body fuel after the night’s fast and helps the morning feel less like a struggle. Water matters as well. After a night of sleep, and especially after a weekend of richer food and drink, the body is often a little short of water, and that shortage can show up as tiredness and a headache. A glass of water with breakfast is a small habit that costs nothing and often helps more than people expect.

Movement is the third part of the Monday morning body. After a weekend that may have been mostly rest, and a night of lying still, the body wakes up stiff and slow. A short walk — even ten minutes on the way to work, or a few minutes of stretching before leaving the house — wakes the muscles up and lifts the mood a little. It does not need to be exercise in the formal sense. It only needs to be movement, because movement tells the body that the day has begun, and the body responds by becoming more alert. Many people find that the dread fades fastest on the mornings when they walk part of the way, rather than going straight from bed to a seat.

Routine, Meaning and the Job Itself

Sometimes Monday dread is not really about Monday at all. It is about the job, and Monday is simply the day the job starts again. If the work feels dull, if the days blur together, or if you cannot see why your work matters, then the return to it each week will feel heavy. This is worth being honest about, because pretending the problem is only sleep or timing will not fix it. A job that feels meaningless is tiring in a way that rest cannot cure. The mind needs a reason to get up, and when it cannot find one, the morning feels like a weight.

That does not mean the answer is to quit or to find a completely different career. For most people, the more useful question is smaller: what part of the work feels heaviest, and is there one small change that would lighten it? Sometimes the heaviest part is the first hour, when messages and tasks arrive all at once. Sometimes it is a particular task that keeps being put off. Sometimes it is the feeling of being alone in the work, with no one to talk to. Each of these has a small answer: a clear first task for Monday morning, a decision to finish the dreaded job first, a short chat with a colleague at the start of the day. Small changes do not fix a job that is deeply wrong, but they often make a decent job feel much lighter.

There is also the question of what the weekend is for. If the weekend is spent only recovering from the week — sleeping, resting, and getting ready for Monday — then Monday can feel like the end of a rest stop rather than the start of a new week. People who protect one enjoyable thing for the weekend, something they look forward to, often find Mondays easier, because the weekend felt like living, not just recovering. And people who keep one small pleasant thing for Monday itself — a favourite breakfast, a walk with a friend, a lunch they enjoy — often find the morning easier too, because Monday is no longer only about work. It has one good thing in it, and that one good thing gives the mind something to move toward instead of something to run from.

Monday Morning Itself: The First Hour

There is also something to be said about the first hour of Monday itself, because it is often the hardest hour of the whole week, and the rest of the day is easier once it is over. The first hour is when everything arrives at once. The alarm, the cold room, the rush to get ready, the journey, the pile of messages that collected over the weekend, and the first task of the day all land within sixty minutes. No other hour of the week is quite so crowded. By Tuesday, the morning has a rhythm to it: you know what to expect, the messages are caught up, and the day starts more gently. On Monday, the morning is a restart, and restarts are always harder than continuations.

The journey to work plays a part in this too. On Monday, the roads and trains are full again after a quiet weekend, and the journey feels longer and more crowded. A delayed bus or a slow train on a Monday morning can feel like a personal insult, even though it is just an ordinary delay. That is because the first hour is when your patience is thinnest: you are still waking up, your mood is still low, and any small obstacle feels larger than it is. A journey that would be a minor annoyance on a Wednesday can feel like a real setback on a Monday, and it can colour the whole morning.

What helps the first hour most is making it simpler the night before. Laying out clothes, preparing a bag, knowing what breakfast will be, and knowing the first task of the day all take decisions out of the morning. A Monday morning with fewer decisions is a lighter Monday morning, because every decision you make while you are still half asleep costs energy. Some people also find it helps to give the first hour a small pleasure of its own: a favourite drink, a short walk instead of the whole journey by bus, or a few minutes of quiet before the messages begin. The first hour will probably never be the best hour of the week. But it does not have to be a wall. With a little preparation and one small kindness, it can become a doorway instead — something you walk through, rather than something you have to climb over.

What a Normal Week Looks Like, and When to Notice More

For most people, Monday dread follows a familiar weekly shape. Sunday evening is uneasy. Monday morning is heavy. By Monday afternoon, the feeling has eased. Tuesday feels normal, and by Friday the week feels almost easy. Then the weekend arrives, the rhythm shifts again, and the cycle repeats. This shape is so common that it is almost a normal part of working life. A single heavy Monday is nothing to worry about. A heavy Monday every week, which fades by Tuesday, is also very common, and it usually means the transition is the problem, not the job and not your health.

What is more useful is to notice the pattern over a few weeks. Does the dread stay strong all week, or does it lift by Tuesday? Is it worse after weekends when you stayed up very late, and lighter after weekends when you kept a steadier rhythm? Is it worse when the week ahead is unclear, and lighter when you know what Monday holds? A short note once a week — just a line or two about how Monday felt and what the weekend was like — can make these links visible. Once you can see the link, the next step is usually small: one change, kept for a few weeks, to see whether it helps.

There are times when it is sensible to pay closer attention. If the dread does not lift during the week, but stays heavy day after day, that is different from the usual Monday pattern. If it starts to limit your daily life — if you cannot sleep on Sunday nights at all, if you feel low most of the time, or if getting to work feels impossible rather than just hard — then it is worth speaking with a healthcare professional. General information in an article can explain a common pattern, but it cannot look at your own situation. A conversation with a doctor or another healthcare professional is the sensible next step when the feeling keeps growing, or when it comes with other changes that worry you. Asking for that help is not a weakness. It is the same kind of sensible step as fixing a leaking roof before it gets worse.

My Take:

If you ask me what I think about dreading Monday mornings, my honest answer is that it is one of the most human feelings there is, and it deserves more kindness than it usually gets. Nobody stands up on a Monday morning, feels heavy and slow, and thinks, “How wonderful, I am lazy.” They think something much harsher, and that harshness is the part I want to push back against. Dreading Monday does not mean you are weak, or ungrateful, or bad at your job. It means you are a person with a body clock, a weekend you enjoyed, and a week that starts with a sharp change. That is not a flaw. That is how people work, and I think we should say so plainly instead of letting millions of people start every week by quietly blaming themselves.

The part of this topic I keep coming back to is the weekend shift, because I think it explains more than people realise. We treat Saturday and Sunday as a complete break from the rules — sleep late, eat late, stay up late — and then we are surprised when Monday feels like a shock. But the body does not know it is Monday. It only knows that yesterday it woke at nine and today it woke at six. That three-hour gap is real, and it is felt in the bones, in the eyes, in the mood. I do not think the answer is to ruin the weekend by keeping it as strict as the working week. A weekend should feel like a weekend. But I do think keeping one anchor steady — waking within about an hour of your normal time on at least one of the two days — is one of the kindest things you can do for your Monday self. It is a small gift from Sunday you to Monday you, and Monday you will notice it.

I also think Sunday night deserves more attention than it gets. Most of the advice about Mondays is about Monday morning: get up earlier, eat breakfast, exercise. But by Monday morning, the dread has already had hours to grow. It grew on Sunday evening, while you were sitting on the sofa, half-watching a film and half-counting the hours until the alarm. That is where I would start, if I were helping a friend. Five minutes on Sunday evening, a pen and a piece of paper, and a short note about what Monday actually holds: the first task, the one meeting, the one thing that needs an answer. That is all. It sounds too small to matter, and that is exactly why people skip it. But a week that is written down is a set of ordinary tasks, and a week that is only imagined is a fog. Fog is always heavier than tasks, because fog has no edges and no end. Writing the week down gives it edges, and edges make it possible to see that Monday is just one day, not the whole week wearing a Monday mask.

There is something else I want to be honest about, and it is the question of meaning. A lot of Monday dread is about sleep and rhythm, and that part can be softened with small habits. But some of it is about the job itself, and no sleep habit will fix a job that feels empty. I think people know this about themselves, and I think they avoid saying it because it feels too big. If your work feels meaningless, if the days blur together, if nobody notices whether you do it well, then Monday morning will feel heavy no matter how well you slept. I do not think the answer is always to leave. Leaving is a big step, and big steps made on a tired Monday morning are rarely good ones. But I do think it is worth asking the smaller question first: what is the heaviest part, and can one small thing change it? Sometimes the answer is a clearer first task. Sometimes it is finishing the dreaded job before anything else, so it stops sitting on your chest all day. Sometimes it is a short talk with a colleague who makes the day lighter. These are small answers, and I know they sound small. But most working lives are not changed by one grand decision. They are changed by a dozen small ones, made one week at a time, until the week feels different.

I also want to say something about the weekend itself, because I think we use our weekends badly, and then we blame Monday for the result. If the whole weekend is spent recovering — sleeping, resting, catching up on chores, getting ready for Monday — then the weekend was not really a weekend. It was a rest stop between two stretches of work, and a rest stop is not enough to make a person feel alive. I think everyone needs one thing in the weekend that is theirs: something they look forward to, something that has nothing to do with work or chores, something they would miss if it were taken away. It does not need to be expensive or impressive. A walk with a friend, a meal cooked slowly, a game, a visit, an hour with a book — whatever makes the weekend feel like living rather than recovering. When the weekend has one real joy in it, Monday feels different, because you are leaving something good behind, and that is a much better feeling than leaving nothing behind.

And I think Monday itself deserves one good thing too. Most people build their Monday around nothing but work: alarm, rush, journey, tasks, and then the long wait for Tuesday. No wonder the morning feels like a wall. If Monday has one small pleasure in it — a breakfast you actually like, a walk part of the way, a lunch with someone whose company you enjoy — then the mind has something to move toward. I know this sounds almost too simple, and I know that on a truly bad Monday it will not be enough on its own. But over weeks and months, the habit of giving Monday one good thing changes what Monday means. It stops being only the day the weekend ends, and becomes a day that has something of its own. That is a real change, and it costs almost nothing.

I want to say something about the comparison trap too, because I think it makes Monday dread worse than it needs to be. On a Monday morning, it is easy to look at other people — colleagues who seem bright and energetic, friends who post cheerful pictures, people who claim they love Mondays — and conclude that something is wrong with you. I do not believe those pictures. Everyone has a Monday face and a Monday feeling, and most people are simply better at hiding it. The colleague who looks energetic at nine o’clock may have felt exactly like you at seven, and got through it with coffee and habit. The friend who posts a cheerful picture may have taken it on Saturday. Comparing your inside feeling with someone else’s outside appearance is a losing game, and Monday morning is the worst time of the week to play it. Your dread is not evidence that you are behind. It is evidence that you are normal, and normal is a much kinder word than people give it credit for.

There is one more thing I believe about this topic, and it is about patience. We live in a time when every problem is supposed to have a quick fix, and Monday dread is sold quick fixes all the time: a new routine, a new app, a new morning habit that will change your life in seven days. I do not trust any of them. The weekly cycle is old and deep, and it does not change in a week. It changes slowly, one small habit at a time, over a month or two. Keep a steadier sleep time for three weeks and see. Write down Monday’s tasks on Sunday evening for a month and see. Protect one joy for the weekend for a few weeks and see. One change at a time, not five, because five at once becomes none by Friday. That is my view, and I stand by it: slow, steady, and honest beats loud and fast, every time.

I also think it is worth saying what I would tell a friend who asked me about this directly. I would tell them to stop calling themselves lazy, because that word is doing more damage than Monday ever did. I would tell them to look at their Sunday night first, not their Monday morning, because that is where the dread is born. I would tell them to write the week down, to keep one anchor steady across the weekend, to eat something real in the morning, and to walk part of the way if they can. I would tell them to keep one good thing for Monday itself, and one good thing for the weekend, so that neither end of the week is empty. And I would tell them that if the heaviness does not lift by Tuesday, week after week, or if it starts to limit their daily life, then the right move is a conversation with a healthcare professional, not more willpower. That is not a failure. It is what a sensible person does when a pattern keeps growing, and I would respect them more for doing it, not less.

In the end, my view is simple. Monday mornings feel heavy because the week has a shape, the body has a clock, and the change from freedom to structure is real. That heaviness is not a verdict on your character, and it is not a sign that your life is wrong. It is information: your body asking for steadier sleep, your mind asking for a clearer plan, your week asking for one small joy. Listen to it early, act gently, and give the changes a few weeks to work. The week will still begin on Monday, and Monday will probably never be your favourite day. But it does not have to feel like a wall. With a steadier weekend, a written plan, and one good thing to look forward to, it can become what it actually is: one ordinary day, at the start of an ordinary week, and that is something a person can walk through without dread.

One more thought, because I think it matters: the way we talk about Mondays shapes how Mondays feel. If everyone around you groans about Monday, jokes about hating Monday, and counts the days until Friday from Monday morning, then dread becomes the expected feeling, and expecting it makes it stronger. I am not saying you should pretend to love Mondays. Forcing cheerfulness is just another kind of acting, and it is tiring too. But I do think there is a middle way between groaning and pretending: simply treating Monday as an ordinary day. Not the worst day, not the best day, just a day with work in it, breakfast in it, a walk in it, and an evening in it. When Monday stops being a symbol — of the end of freedom, of the weight of the week, of everything you would rather not do — and becomes just a day, it loses much of its power. The dread was never really about the day itself. It was about everything we piled onto the day, and some of that pile we can put down ourselves.

I would also say this to anyone whose Mondays feel heavy: pay attention to what Tuesday feels like. If Tuesday is fine, and Wednesday is fine, and only Monday is hard, then the problem is almost certainly the transition, and transitions can be softened. That is genuinely good news, because it means you do not need a new life. You need a steadier Sunday night, a written plan, a morning with fewer decisions, and a little patience. But if every day feels like Monday — if the heaviness never lifts, if the week has no lighter days in it at all — then the honest answer is different, and it is not a sleep habit or a breakfast. It is a proper conversation with someone who can help, whether that is about the job or about your health. Knowing which of these two situations you are in is the most useful thing you can learn from your own week, and it is worth a few weeks of honest noticing to find out.

And one last practical thought: keep the experiment small. Pick one change — just one — and keep it for three weeks. A steadier Sunday bedtime, a written Monday plan, a walk part of the way to work. One change, three weeks, and a short note each Monday about how the morning felt. At the end of three weeks you will know more about your own Mondays than any article can tell you, including this one. If it helped, keep it and add another. If it did not, try a different one. That is how a heavy Monday slowly becomes an ordinary Monday — not by a grand plan, but by a few small, honest experiments, kept long enough to show what they can do.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does I dread monday mornings happen to me?

It happens because Monday is a sharp change, not because something is wrong with you. After two days of sleeping later, eating at different times and living without a timetable, your body clock is running on weekend time, and Monday’s early alarm asks it to shift several hours in one night. At the same time, your mind is looking at the whole week at once, so five days of work can feel like one huge wall. The dread usually fades by Tuesday once your rhythm settles, which is a sign that the transition is the problem, not you.

Is I dread monday mornings something I should worry about?

Most of the time, no. Feeling heavy on Monday morning and lighter by Tuesday is one of the most common patterns in working life, and it usually comes from the weekend shift in sleep and routine, not from a health problem. It is worth paying closer attention if the heaviness does not lift during the week, if you cannot sleep on Sunday nights at all, or if the feeling starts to limit your daily life. In those cases, speaking with a healthcare professional is the sensible next step.

Can small daily habits really help with I dread monday mornings?

Yes, and they are usually the most useful answer, because the problem is mostly about rhythm and clarity. Keeping a steadier sleep and waking time across the weekend keeps the gap between Sunday and Monday small. Writing down Monday’s first tasks on Sunday evening turns a foggy week into a short list of ordinary jobs. A simple breakfast, a glass of water, and a short walk in the morning help the body wake up. None of these is dramatic, but kept for a few weeks, they usually make Mondays noticeably lighter.

When should I speak with a healthcare professional about I dread monday mornings?

Speak with one if the dread stays heavy all week instead of lifting by Tuesday, if it keeps growing over several weeks, or if it starts to limit your daily life — for example, if Sunday nights become sleepless every week, if you feel low most of the time, or if getting to work feels impossible rather than just hard. General information can explain a common pattern, but only a healthcare professional can look at your own situation, so asking for that help is the right move when the pattern worries you.

Does I dread monday mornings happen to many people?

Yes, it happens to very many people, including people who like their jobs and are good at them. Monday is the day people most often report low mood, tiredness, and little enthusiasm for work, and the pattern is so common that it has a nickname in many countries. It is not a sign that you are unusual or behind. It is a normal response to the weekly switch from free time back to scheduled time, and most people feel it in some form.

What can I do in general when I dread monday mornings happens?

Start with the night before, not the morning itself. On Sunday evening, write down what Monday actually holds, so the week becomes a short list instead of a fog. Keep your weekend sleep and waking times within about an hour of your weekday times, so Monday is a small step rather than a leap. On Monday morning, eat a simple breakfast, drink some water, and walk part of the way if you can. Keep one small pleasant thing for Monday itself, and give the changes a few weeks, one at a time, to show what helps.