Do You Suffer from Sunday Neurosis?

It’s a Sunday morning, and you have a free day ahead of you. But you’re already worrying about how you’ll fill it up--will you do errands, tinker around the house, make plans with friends? For many of us who work full-time, figuring out how to spend our free time becomes a job in itself. We eagerly await the arrival of the weekend, but when it finally comes, we feel threatened by the idea of being leisurely.

Many of us long for free time, but then fail to truly enjoy it. Why? Because we’re living in the imperative mood! We’ve been swallowed up by the quick tempo of our society. We must be doing something, anything, just to fill up empty time and relieve some indefinable sense of guilt. It’s what psychoanalyst Karen Horney has called “the tyranny of the should”: I should be doing this or I should be doing that--but above all, I shouldn’t waste time.

This behavior has been called the “Sunday Neurosis.” It attacks on weekends and vacations, when we’re faced with time on our hands. It makes us restless and almost panicky. But when Monday morning rolls around, we once again feel pacified.

Do some of these behaviors seem to describe you? If so, the following quiz may indicate whether your difficulty in managing your free time means that you have “leisure phobia.”