There’s something about the beginning of the week that makes the beep of your alarm feel a little bit more jarring. The journey from bed to laptop seems more of a slog and opening your work emails is infinitely more daunting.

But it doesn’t just begin with hitting snooze (and again… and again) when your alarm goes off on Monday morning: feelings of dread can often kick in the days before Monday rolls around. Some call it the ‘Sunday scaries’, others simply refer to it as ‘that inexplicable feeling of mounting stress I start to feel as soon as 8pm hits on Sunday night’, but whatever you refer to it as, for many of us, emerging from the weekend into another work week with the humming of dread in the background is a universal – if inconvenient and undesirable – reality.

Loathe Mondays? 8 expert-approved ways to curb the dread and start thriving at the start of the week