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At 4 p.m. on a Sunday, Hoang Hai, 23, went to a nearby spa after developing headaches.

He works in marketing for an import-export company in Ho Chi Minh City and earns VND15 million (US$570) a month.

Six months into the job, he says he routinely has a heavy workload, ranging from preparing documents to meeting clients. His fear of Sundays, accompanied by a headache, began about four months ago.The anxiety intensifies by evening.

He often tells friends “the weekend ends before I’ve even had time to rest,” The constant stress has disrupted his sleep so much that he only rests two hours on some nights.

He has also gradually stopped meeting friends. Whenever invited out, he declines because he “just wants to lie down and recover for the new week.” Consequently, he has become more irritable and less motivated at work, especially at the beginning of the week. He believes the situation stems from both personal factors and the workplace environment.

He admits he has not managed tasks efficiently, causing work to pile up and spill over into the weekend. At the same time, managers often assign major tasks on Friday afternoons and require reports to be ready for the Monday morning meeting, meaning employees are forced to spend much of their weekends working.

The U.S.-based Sleep Foundation found that a third of adults struggle to sleep on Sunday nights because of the “Sunday Scaries.”

A 2025 LinkedIn survey found that around 80% of workers experienced anxiety before the start of a new workweek. In Vietnam, posts about “hating Mondays” or “fearing Sundays” are widespread on social media. On TikTok, hashtags such as #SundayScaries and #danvanphong (office workers) attract millions of views.

Nguyen The Huy, a psychologist and director of Vietnam Mental Health Care Co. Ltd., says the “Sunday Scaries” are not a sign of laziness but a form of anticipatory anxiety.

“Many people begin to feel stressed because they anticipate the pressures that will return at the start of the week.”

The root causes include excessive workloads, KPI pressure, Monday meetings, and a culture of constant connectivity through messaging apps, which blur the line between workdays and days off. As a result, weekends are no longer a time for rest and recovery, but are spent waiting for pressure to return.

The condition is particularly common among young people in large cities, who face high living costs, career competition, and pressure to prove themselves.

If prolonged, the syndrome can lead to burnout, creating a vicious cycle in which anxiety causes insomnia, reduces work performance, leaves tasks unfinished, and builds even more pressure for the following weekend.

Minh Tam, 35, a communications employee in HCMC, often feels tense on Sunday afternoons when thinking about Monday briefing meetings.

“Sunday hasn’t even really started, and Monday has already arrived,” he says.

He spends half of Sunday catching up on sleep and the other half dealing with unfinished work. Notifications from work group chats constantly appear on his phone.

He says last week he had to work until 10 p.m. on Sunday. The situation has led him to turn down social invitations, while his family now avoids calling him on weekends because he is often busy with work.

Anh Tu, director of media company iGem, says he noticed the pressure affecting employees and decided to change the company’s operating approach. He introduced a rule banning work- messages on Sundays. If there are urgent issues, he handles them himself instead of passing them on to the staff.

Psychologist Huy says overcoming the condition begins with correctly identifying the underlying fear, which is anxiety about workloads, KPI, and meetings at the start of the week.

Company bosses should not dismiss the syndrome as merely a personal emotional issue, and should proactively watch for signs of burnout among employees, he says.

“Reducing pressure before the new workweek requires effort from both sides,” Huy said.

*Names of characters in the story have been changed.