What is “Sunday neurosis”, or Why we are not happy about the weekend

On your day off, you can take a break from everyday work, do what you love, or just have a good time with family and friends. Why not be positive? But for some reason, completely inexplicably, many people are in a bad mood on Sunday. Psychologists have long studied this issue and know what’s going on. They even came up with a name for this phenomenon: “Sunday neurosis.”

Scientists from Harvard have determined that smart people are most prone to “Sunday neurosis.” Studies have shown that the higher the level of education, the higher the risk of ruined weekends. Their findings were confirmed by German psychologists. They approached the issue with German pedantry and studied it for 16 years. The work was called the “German Socio-Economic Group”.

Hamburg University professor Wolfgang Moennig studied information collected over more than a decade and a half from a survey of 34 thousand blue-collar workers, engineers, office workers and doctors. All these people said how happy they were with their lives. Their questionnaires were sorted by age, gender, marital status and education.

Moennig learned that men and women with a high level of education are less satisfied with their lives precisely at the end of the work week, on weekends. Among men engaged in intellectual work, the mood was on the rise on Monday and gradually decreased by Saturday and Sunday.

Highly educated women were also least satisfied with their lives on Sunday. For men with a low level of education, the difference in the level of happiness on different days of the week is not noticeable. The answer to this riddle has been found and it is not at all complicated.

There are several reasons. The first is that highly educated people value their weekends lower than workers. This is because they are used to structured days. The second reason is “according to Freud”. People who take their studies seriously still have childhood worries about the upcoming Monday. The third is similar to the second. On Sunday, specialists are filled with anxiety about the upcoming work week.

The problem of “Sunday neurosis” has existed for a long time. This question was first raised at the beginning of the 20th century by scientists Sander Ferenzi from Hungary and Viktor Frankl from Austria. By the way, both were devoted supporters of Freud's teachings. They studied why people with high intelligence have a bad mood on non-working days.

In their opinion, educated people lacked meaningful life on weekends. They believe that their life is not filled with enough meaning and this makes them sad. In other words, these people are suffering because they cannot create these days and are wasting their time.

How to deal with the problem? What to do if you find yourself with symptoms of “Sunday neurosis”? There is no need to worry. First of all, you should be happy that if this happens, then your IQ level is quite high. An intelligent person cannot stand idleness and constantly tries to occupy himself with something. And this is the main prevention of various anxiety and panic disorders, as well as neuroses of all stripes.

Life is action. Therefore, on your day off, occupy yourself with important things that you didn’t get around to during the week. This could be cleaning, car repair, training, or even visiting neglected relatives. All these activities will eliminate the appearance of “Sunday neurosis” and will bring undoubted benefits.

Now you know why it can be sad on the weekend. But there are other emotions that we feel but cannot explain.