It's 4 PM on Sunday. Monday is coming. The dread isn't proportional to what's actually on your plate — it's a vague, heavy, full-body anxiety about the transition. If you have ADHD, Sunday scaries hit different.
Why Sundays are uniquely hard
Time blindness makes the weekend vanish. Friday, the weekend felt infinite. Now Monday appeared out of nowhere and you're not ready.
Transition difficulty amplifies the dread. The weekend-to-weekday shift is one of the biggest context switches of the week. It involves shifting from unstructured time (your agenda) to structured time (someone else's). That loss of autonomy triggers resistance.
Anticipatory overwhelm. You're not dreading Monday. You're previewing the entire week as a single wall of tasks rather than a sequence.
What helps
Sunday evening preview (10 minutes max). Look at Monday only. Not the week. What's the one thing that matters? Write it down. Close the planner.
Prepare Monday's launch. Clothes out. Bag packed. Morning routine steps visible. Fewer decisions tomorrow morning = less activation energy required.
Sunday wind-down ritual. Something that signals "the weekend is ending and that's okay." A specific show, a walk, a meal you only make on Sundays. A transition structure your brain can't build alone.
Stop catching up on Sundays. Protect at least half of Sunday as rest. The undone things can move to Monday. They'll survive.
Sunday scaries are your brain sounding an alarm about an unstructured transition. Build a bridge (preview, prep, ritual) and the alarm quiets. Not disappears — quiets. That's enough.