Rainy Sundays
Some Sunday afternoons the rain sets in, the hours stretch out, and your mood sinks for no clear reason. Here are a few small things to try, and how to tell when it’s time to call your doctor.
Why gray Sunday afternoons can feel so low
A rainy Sunday afternoon can pull your mood down because it brings together several things that lower mood at once: dim light, long unplanned hours, time alone, and the week ahead coming into view. The rain started after lunch and hasn’t let up. The cars outside have their headlights on at three o’clock, and the kettle has boiled twice. Today your mood is low, and you couldn’t give a neighbor a reason that would sound like enough.
Sundays used to have a shape for a lot of people. There was church or a late breakfast, a big midday meal, a phone call to your mother, a ball game with the family, homework to check, and lunches to pack for Monday. Kids grow up, parents die, marriages end, jobs end in retirement, and the shape can thin out until the afternoon is just open hours. On a sunny day, you might fill them with a walk or the yard. On a gray one, most of those choices move indoors, and the house can start to feel small.
You might have the house to yourself, which can feel restful one week and lonely the next. You don’t have to turn the afternoon into a project. A low mood can feel ungrateful when the roof is sound and the tea is hot, but you can be thankful and heavy-hearted at the same time.
Weather, light, and the seasons
Gray weather and short days really can affect mood, and feeling lower on dark afternoons has a physical side. Daylight helps set the body’s daily clock, which guides when you feel alert and when you feel sleepy. On days with little light, many people feel slower, sleepier, and flatter, and a run of gray weeks can make that worse.
For some people, the change goes further. Seasonal affective disorder, a type of depression that comes back around the same time each year, most often starts in late fall or early winter and eases in spring and summer. People with it may sleep much more, crave starchy food, gain weight, pull away from others, and feel low most days for months. If your low Sundays bunch up from November to March year after year, mention that pattern to your doctor.
Doctors sometimes treat seasonal depression with a special light box used in the morning, along with talk therapy or medicine. Talk with your doctor before you buy or use one, because the right kind, the timing, and whether it’s safe for you depend on your eyes, your other health conditions, and the medicines you take. A brighter room and a walk in daylight are fine to start on your own.
Light helps even on an ordinary gray day. Switch the lamps on before the room gets dark, so the gray doesn’t take over. Move your chair closer to the window in the morning. If the rain lets up for half an hour, step out on the porch or walk to the end of the street, because outdoor light on a cloudy day is still much brighter than indoor light.
A low mood with no clear reason
A low mood doesn’t need a cause to be real, and you don’t need a reason before you’re allowed to feel it or mention it. People often expect sadness to come with an explanation, like bad news or an argument. Yours might have none. The shopping is done, the week was ordinary, and no bad letter came, yet the afternoon still feels heavy.
You don’t have to make it sound bigger to be believed, or smaller to look fine. “I’m low today and I don’t know why” is a full sentence and a fair thing to tell a friend. Sometimes a reason turns up later, like a date you’d forgotten, a poor night’s sleep, or a worry you’d pushed aside. Sometimes none does, and the mood lifts by Monday.
It can help to notice what’s around the low patch without trying to fix it yet. Ask yourself a few plain questions: Did I sleep badly? Have I eaten? Have I talked to anyone today? Have I been outside? Is a date coming up? Those questions have practical answers, and a sandwich or a phone call can change an afternoon more than you’d expect. If the heaviness is tied to a date, like the day someone died, read anniversary of a loss.
When a Sunday mood needs a doctor
An occasional low Sunday is part of ordinary life, and you can usually treat it with comfort and company. It’s time to call your doctor when the low mood starts to spread beyond Sunday. Make an appointment if any of these fit:
- The flat feeling shows up on more days than not, for two weeks or more.
- You’ve lost interest in things you used to enjoy, on sunny days too.
- Sleep doesn’t ease it, or you’re sleeping much more or much less than usual.
- Tomorrow regularly feels like a chore, and Monday mornings are getting harder to face.
- Your low stretches follow the seasons, year after year.
- You’re drinking more on long afternoons to pass the time.
You can keep the description simple: “Most weekends lately I feel flat from Saturday night to Monday, and it’s starting to spill into the week. I’d like to find out what’s going on.” Recognizing yourself in a page can’t tell you what’s happening, but your doctor can help you find out. Some causes of low mood, like thyroid problems or a side effect of a medicine, can be checked at a visit, sometimes with a simple blood test. The page on talking with your clinician has more on getting ready.
If you take an antidepressant or any other prescribed medicine, keep taking it as prescribed. A gray Sunday isn’t a reason to stop, skip, or change a dose. Write down what you notice and tell the doctor who prescribed it, in your own words. If the afternoon tips into a crisis, go straight to the care section at the end of this page.
A plan for a long rainy afternoon
The easiest way to get through a long gray afternoon is to plan a few small anchors for it ahead of time, ideally on Saturday or Sunday morning, before the mood sets in. An anchor is one fixed point in the afternoon, something you’ll do at a certain time no matter how you feel. Three or four are plenty.
One anchor can be a phone call at a set time. Ask a friend or a relative on Saturday: “Could I call you around three tomorrow? Sundays get long for me.” Then call, even if all you say is that the afternoon is heavy. A second anchor can be a warm meal you’ll make and eat at the table, like soup, eggs, or a baked potato, rather than grazing at the counter until dark.
Another can be a small task with a clear finish, which gives you a sense of done on a day that has few of them. Clean one drawer, polish one pair of shoes, sort one stack of photos, or pot one plant. Keep it to about 30 minutes. Wash your cup and put it away when you’re done, so the kitchen looks the way you want to find it on Monday.
Movement helps too, if your body’s up to it. Walk under an umbrella for 10 or 15 minutes, walk laps of an indoor mall, or stretch on the living room rug to a few songs you like. A short burst of movement often lifts a flat mood for a while, even when it doesn’t fix the whole day.
For the open hours between anchors, choose comfort on purpose. Have a book ready, a radio program you like, a jigsaw puzzle on the dining table, or an old movie. If you go to church or used to, a Sunday afternoon or evening service, in person or on the radio, can bring company and a familiar rhythm. The loneliness room has a whole page on Sundays if being alone is the hardest part of the day.
Some Sundays the plan falls apart by two o’clock. The friend doesn’t pick up, the soup burns, or the low mood is heavier than any drawer can fix. When that happens, shrink the plan instead of dropping it. Keep one anchor, the smallest one, like a cup of tea at the table at four, and let the rest go for today. Leave a voice message for the friend who didn’t answer (“No need to call back, I just wanted to hear a friendly voice”) and try someone else, or try again after supper. Lie down for half an hour if you’re tired, with a lamp on and the radio low, and then get up and eat something. A Sunday that went badly still tells you what to change next week: an earlier call, a different friend, a walk before the rain sets in. Write one line about it on the calendar so you’ll see it next Saturday.
When your mind gets critical
On a low afternoon, your mind may start criticizing you, and it usually helps more to let those thoughts pass than to argue with them. It may say you’re wasting the day, that other people are out having a nice time, or that a grown adult should be able to shake this off. Those thoughts feel like facts on a gray afternoon, and they usually sound less convincing by Tuesday.
You can answer them briefly and get on with your plan. “Maybe so, and I’m having a slow Sunday” is enough. So is “I’ll think about that on Monday,” followed by putting the kettle on again. Some people find it helps to write the harsh thought down on a scrap of paper and then write a fairer version under it: “I’m useless” becomes “I’m tired, it’s raining, and I did the dishes.”
If the people around you want a brighter report than you can give, their disappointment is theirs to manage. You don’t owe anyone a cheerful Sunday. For a short practice on speaking to yourself more gently on hard days, the page on talking with yourself gently when you’re low walks through one.
Sunday evening and the week ahead
For many people, the hardest hour comes after dark on Sunday, when the week ahead starts to loom. A little preparation can take some of the dread out of it. Around six or seven, lay out Monday’s clothes, set the coffee maker, check tomorrow’s calendar, and write down the first small task you’ll do in the morning. Then let the rest of the evening be easy.
Keep the evening light low and warm, and try to go to bed around your usual time instead of staying up late to put off Monday. If late nights on the phone are part of the pattern, the page on nights with the phone has ideas. If Monday mornings feel heavy before your feet touch the floor, read heavy mornings.
A good rainy Sunday, months from now, might still have a low patch in it. It might also have a three o’clock phone call, a bowl of soup at the table, one clean drawer, a walk under the umbrella, and an early night. Days like that tend to add up, and they make the next long Sunday easier to face.
For low moods that come back every winter, read Winter blues.
Learn more from trusted sources
These public health agencies explain depression, including the seasonal kind, in more detail than this site does.
- Depression from the National Institute of Mental Health covers the signs, the causes, and the treatments that help.
- Depression and older adults from the National Institute on Aging describes what depression can look like after 50 and how it is treated.
- Tips for staying connected from the National Institute on Aging lists practical ways to see and hear from people more often.
If you need care
If you’re in crisis in the United States, call or text 988 now, before you read any further. You don’t need a good reason or the right words, and you don’t have to decide whether a gray Sunday counts. If you’re thinking about dying or about hurting yourself, that’s a reason to call right now. If you’re outside the United States, call your local emergency number or a local crisis line. A real person can stay on the line with you.
This page is for education and can’t diagnose you or treat you. If you’re not in crisis but the heaviness keeps coming back, tell your doctor what your afternoons are like. Keep taking any prescribed medicine as prescribed, and talk over any change with your doctor before you make it. There’s more in the depression room and its depression FAQ, short definitions in the glossary (including depression and adjunct to care), and short answers in the FAQ. This page is not yet medically reviewed.