by Deniz Sidali, M.A.

Every late Sunday afternoon I start to get sullen, pensive and withdrawn. I would start to havefeelings of dread knowing that the weekend was nearly over, and that my busy week would startonce again. Not that these thoughts were clinically relevant, but it felt almost like a milddepression. For years I had never shared this experience with others because I thought theywould view me as immature, lazy,  or foolish. I wasn’t a grade school student being pressured byher parents to turn in early for bed to wake up Monday morning for compulsory classes. I am a bloody doctoral student in a clinical psychology program who wants to pursue higher education for crying out loud. It wasn’t until one of my fellow, hard working peers in graduate school casually mentioned to me that she too has “the Sunday night blues”.  Initially I felt relieved that others shared this Sunday night blues experience.

It wasn’t just me that disliked Mondays, there were others as well.  The problem wasn’t with me but with Mondays. So all I had to do was find a way to avert Mondays. Great, so I proceeded to reason, well what if one day I could afford to work four days a week and start work on Tuesday. Would that make me feel less depressed Sunday evening? Well, not really because there have been times when I have purposely taken off and did not have to do anything on Monday, and I still felt the blues on Sunday evening. So I came to the realization that taking off every Monday from now until I retire wouldn’t help ease the Sunday evening blues experience.

This is what is referred to as the practical solution in REBT, where people believe if only I could fix this stressful situation then my life would be complete and better. It is the situation and not me that is making me feel this way. When in fact I know this is not the case. As Ellis liked to refer to Epictetus, “Men are disturbed not by things, but by the views which they take of them”. So its not actually Monday or the thought of Monday that is causing me to feel sad. It’s what I have been telling myself over the past few years since attending school, which has caused me to experience these blues.  Although I found a kindred spirit who espoused the Sunday night blues, there were probably hundreds if not thousands of others who didn’t feel down Sunday night or who waited with anticipation for Monday to comearound. I have, like everyone else, a choice. I don’t have to wake up on Mondays. I don’t have to go to school to further my education. I don’t have to do anything. No one is forcing me to work or attend school. I choose to do these things. But sometimes these decisions can be accompanied by stress.

Mondays represented a trigger for various irrational beliefs which I kept telling myself to make me feel sad that the weekend was over. So what were some of the irrational beliefs I was repeating to myself? This was really hard to figure out at first because my irrational beliefs were so automatic that I didn’t think I had any.  I discovered I would repeat to myself, “This is awful. I can’t believe the weekend is nearly over.” This type of belief is referred to as awfulizing, an exaggeration of the negative consequences of a situation to an extreme degree, so that an unfortunate occurrence becomes “terrible”. I would also think, “I don’t think I can stand the fact that the weekend is almost over. I have so much I need to get accomplished this week, and I don’t know where to begin”. This belief is referred to as frustration intolerance (FI), which stems from demands for ease and comfort, and reflects an intolerance of discomfort.

Lastly, I would have thoughts such as, “I hope my week goes smoothly, and nothing bad happens”. This type of thinking is termed catastrophizing and it is similar to awfulizing.  This type of irrational belief would in turn cause me to feel anxious about mishaps occurring during the week.  In REBT, anxiety and depression are seen as unhealthy negative emotions; whereas, sadness and concern would be healthier negative emotions or replacements to describe my Sunday night blues experience.

So now that I have established how my various irrational beliefs (IBs) or thinking contributed to my feeling anxiety and depression, I can start challenging or disputing each IB. For my awfulizing IB, “This is awful. I can’t believe the weekend is nearly over”, what I am really saying is that it’s the worst thing in the world that the weekend is nearly over. Instead, a more healthier rational belief to dispute this IB would be, “It is unfortunate that the weekend is over, but it is not the worst thing in the world that it is”. For the frustration intolerance IB, I can rephrase it as “It is unpleasant that the weekend is over, but there is nothing to indicate that it is unbearable.” For the catastrophizing IB, I am most likely telling myself “My week should go smoothly, and bad things should/must not happen”. Whereas, a healthier rational belief to replace this statement would be, “It would be nice if my week went smoothly, but there is nothing stating that it must go smoothly”. And if I may add, there is no sense in worrying about something that hasn’t happened yet. This type of disputation is a process, and focusing on the process (i.e., repeating the healthier rational beliefs) will take time to achieve the means or end result of having a more tolerable form of Sunday night  blues or eliminating it altogether.

Deniz Sidali, M.A.