The Sunday Night Insomnia
11:47 PM. Sunday.
I’m lying in bed staring at the ceiling fan going round and round, and my brain is doing that thing again. You know the thing. Where you close your eyes and instead of sleep coming, your entire to-do list for Monday starts scrolling past like it’s auditioning for a role.
Wake up. 6:30. Train at 7:15. Don’t forget to email Sarah back about the project. Did I lock the front door. Why is my left big toe numb. Did I leave the stove on. What if I die tomorrow. Did I lock the front door.
Sunday night insomnia, yeah. It’s a specific kind of torture.
Not the good kind of insomnia where you’re up because something fun is happening. Not jet lag insomnia where your body is just confused. This is the kind where you’re bone-tired, you know? Like physically dragging yourself around all weekend. You took the nap. You drank the sleepy tea. You did the whole “no screens after 9” thing for three days.
And still. Here you are. Eyes open. Heartbeat loud.
I want to talk about this because nobody does. Or people do but they laugh it off like “oh haha I’m just bad at Sundays.” Like it’s cute. Like it’s not actually ruining my entire week before it starts.
Here’s the thing about sunday night insomnia — it’s not really about Sunday night. Not really.
It’s about Monday.
It’s about Sunday being the last buffer between you and whatever is waiting on the other side. The job you tolerate. The inbox with 400 unread messages. The meeting with Dave at 9 AM that you already know will be 45 minutes of your life you’ll never get back. The Slack notifications that don’t stop until 7 PM.
My friend Jess calls it “Sunday Scaries” which I guess is the cute Gen-Z term for it. But sunday scaries doesn’t quite cover it either. Because scaries sounds like you’re scared of something. Like a spider or a clown.
This isn’t scared. This is dread. Heavy, sticky, sits-on-your-chest dread.
Last week I tried everything.
I put my phone in the kitchen at 9 PM. Read a book. Took a magnesium supplement my coworker swore by. Did some breathing exercises I found on YouTube. Drank warm milk like I was eight years old again.
Nothing.
I lay there at 11:30 PM, 12:00 AM, 12:47 AM, watching the clock on the microwave blink from across the room because I forgot to close my door all the way.
By 1:15 AM I was up making toast. Just standing in my kitchen in my underwear, eating peanut butter toast, staring at the fridge like it had answers.
It didn’t.
My mom called the next morning and I told her I couldn’t sleep. She said “well what did you do during the day?” Like it was a math problem. Like there was an equation. Drink water + no caffeine + dark room = sleep.
Mom, I’m sorry. There’s no equation for the way my chest tightens when I think about opening my laptop tomorrow.
She didn’t get it.
I didn’t really expect her to.
Okay wait. Let me talk about the actual physical part of this.
When the dread hits, my stomach goes first. It’s this weird tight knot right under my ribs. Not painful, just… present. Like my body is bracing for something bad even though nothing is actually happening.
Then my hands get cold. Always my hands. Even when it’s 78 degrees in my apartment.
Then the thoughts. God, the thoughts.
They start small. “Oh I should reply to that email.” Then “I should also prepare for the meeting.” Then suddenly I’m thinking about how I haven’t filed my taxes yet and what if I get audited and what if I lose my job and what if my apartment lease doesn’t renew and where would I even live and—
It’s 2 AM and I’m mentally packing boxes I don’t have.
Sound familiar?
Yeah I thought so.
I asked my therapist about this once. Her name is Diane and she’s very calm and uses words like “self-regulation” and “window of tolerance” a lot.
She said sunday night insomnia is actually super common. She said it’s basically your nervous system getting ready for the week. Like how animals pace before a storm. Your body doesn’t know the difference between “I have a meeting at 9” and “a tiger is chasing me.”
So the insomnia isn’t broken sleep. It’s your body trying to protect you.
Cool. Thanks body. Very helpful. Really nailing the survival mode stuff there.
She told me to try a “worry journal” where you write down all the things you’re anxious about before bed. Then close the notebook. Symbolic closure, she called it.
I tried it. I wrote “MONDAY IS COMING” in big letters across the top of the page.
It didn’t help. But it was funny.
She also told me that I’m “carrying anticipatory anxiety” which is therapist-speak for “you’re already worried about Tuesday on Sunday.” Which yes, Diane, thank you, that’s literally what I just said.
But she was nice about it.
Here’s what I think the actual problem is.
It’s not the insomnia.
It’s the week.
I don’t actually like my job. I mean, I don’t hate it. It’s fine. The people are nice. The work is fine. The pay is fine. Everything is aggressively fine in a way that makes me want to scream into a pillow sometimes.
But every Sunday night, my brain does this honest accounting of my life and the math doesn’t really add up to anything I want to be doing.
Forty more years of this?
Forty more years of Sunday nights like this one?
That’s the thing that’s keeping me up.
Not the email. Not Dave. Not the inbox.
The math.
I tried telling my partner about this. We were sitting on the couch last Sunday, both pretending to watch something, and I was like “I think I’m having a thing about Monday again.”
He said “yeah you do that every week.”
Cool. Thanks for noticing. Really helpful commentary.
Then he said “have you thought about maybe just… liking your life more?”
I love him. I really do. But sometimes I want to throw a pillow at his face.
Like it. Just. Like it. As if it’s a switch I forgot to flip. As if I’m just choosing to be miserable at 1 AM on a Sunday because I’m stubborn.
The worst part? He kind of has a point. About the choosing thing. I do spend a lot of my Sundays dreading the week instead of, you know, living my Sunday.
But also — who actually lives their Sunday? Who is out there having meaningful Sunday experiences at 4 PM on a Sunday afternoon?
Who are these people?
I want to meet them.
I want to ask them how.
My friend Maya said she fixed her sunday night insomnia by getting a job she actually likes. Cool. Thanks Maya. I’ll just quit my job and find a job I like. Easy. Simple. Why didn’t I think of that.
My other friend Theo said he fixed his by doing shrooms. I’m not doing shrooms on a Sunday night before a Monday, Theo. I have a meeting at 9.
I scrolled Reddit for like an hour looking at the r/insomnia subreddit and everybody’s just like “have you tried chamomile tea” and I’m like YES MOM I HAVE TRIED CHAMOMILE TEA.
Okay so here’s where I am right now.
It’s 12:23 AM Monday morning. I’ve been writing this for almost an hour. My tea is cold. The cat is asleep on my feet which is the only warm part of my body right now.
I’m tired. Like deeply tired. The kind of tired where your eyes feel gritty.
But I’m also kind of wired? Like my brain is humming. It’s this low buzz of anxiety that won’t quite turn off.
I know if I go to bed right now I won’t sleep. I’ll just lie there. And then I’ll wake up at 6:30 already exhausted and I’ll do the whole Monday thing on like 4 hours of broken sleep and by Tuesday I’ll be a zombie and by Wednesday I’ll catch a cold because my immune system is shot from all the cortisol, and by Thursday I’ll be having a small breakdown in the bathroom at work.
Then Friday will come and I’ll feel okay-ish.
Then Saturday will be this weird limbo where I don’t know what to do with myself because the structure is gone.
Then Sunday will roll around and I’ll be back here. Staring at the ceiling fan. Waiting for Monday like it’s a natural disaster I can see coming from miles away.
The cycle.
The stupid, predictable cycle.
I hate how predictable it is.
I hate that I know exactly how this Sunday night will go. I know at 11 PM I’ll start feeling it. I know at 11:30 I’ll try to fight it. I know at midnight I’ll give up and scroll my phone. I know at 12:30 I’ll feel guilty about scrolling my phone. I know at 1 AM I’ll put the phone down and try one more time to sleep. I know at 1:30 I’ll get up and make toast.
The toast is so predictable now it’s almost comforting. Almost.
There’s this thing I read somewhere — I think it was on TikTok, which is embarrassing — about how sunday night insomnia isn’t actually about sleep at all. It’s about resistance. You’re resisting the next week starting. You’re resisting the return to whatever you’re returning to.
And honestly? That hit me like a truck.
Because yeah. I am resisting. I’m resisting the version of me that has to be professional and productive and on. I’m resisting the small talk and the commute and the sitting at a desk for 8 hours. I’m resisting the part of my life where I don’t get to choose what I do with my time.
So my body just… doesn’t let me sleep into it.
It’s like my subconscious is throwing one last tantrum before Monday shows up.
Cool. Cool cool cool.
I’m not going to give you any tips at the end of this.
I’m not going to say “here are 7 things that helped me beat sunday night insomnia” or “try this one weird trick.” Because I don’t have one. I’ve tried everything. The supplements, the apps, the sleep masks, the meditation, the magnesium, the melatonin, the “no caffeine after noon” thing, the “journal before bed” thing, the “exercise during the day” thing.
I’ve tried it.
Some of it kind of helps. Like 5%. The kind of helps that you have to squint to see. Okay the magnesium gummies are kind of nice — my coworker Sarah gave me a bottle of the Nature Made ones, $14.99 at Target, and on the nights I take two of them around 9 PM I do fall asleep maybe 20 minutes faster. Which is not nothing. But it’s also not the cure I was looking for.
The 5% doesn’t really fix the 95%.
What I want to say is — if you’re lying awake right now, on your phone, reading this at 1 AM on a Sunday because you can’t sleep either—
I see you.
I’m there with you.
My ceiling fan is also going round and round.
My brain is also running the Monday simulation.
I’m also cold and tired and kind of hungry and a little bit sad for no reason I can explain.
We don’t have to fix it tonight.
Tonight we just have to get through it.
And then tomorrow we’ll do it again.
And that’s kind of depressing, I know. I’m not going to pretend it’s not.
But it’s also kind of honest. And right now, honest is the only thing I’ve got.
I’m going to go make toast now.
Tags: [“Sunday Night Insomnia”, “Sleep Issues”, “Anxiety Relief”, “Mental Health”, “Weekday Dread”]