John came to see me because he had a "nameless dread" - a constant, nagging sense of anxiety.
"It's worst on Sunday evening", he said.
"It's there all through the weekend, but Sunday is when I feel it most.
It's really killing my family time.
I'm short-tempered, ratty, just not nice to be with.
My wife complains that I hide away for hours at a time, but she doesn't really understand".
John's problem was anxiety; what some therapists refer to as 'free floating anxiety', because it doesn't necessarily have a trigger.
John wasn't anxious about some specific event or problem; his anxiety just occupied space in his mind.
We all suffer from anxiety, to a greater or lesser degree.
Simply writing these notes, and focusing on John's depiction of his anxiety, is bringing some of my own anxieties to the surface.
Anxiety thrives on attention.
And therein lies the key.
Anxiety feeds on a "past focus", a remembering of past events.
Free-floating anxiety makes it particularly difficult to look forward to future happy events.
If a person's anxiety is related to something specific - a driving test, say - then at least there is an end point, a defined conclusion.
With free-floating anxiety we don't have this benefit : it just goes on and on, unless we do something about it.
One of the clues was in the timing : Sunday night anxiety is incredibly common, and it reflects just how much work-related stress we try to submerge.
It always surfaces somewhere - stress always will - and frequently damages families and people's social lives.
Work really is a challenge to our sense of perspective, and not because we're lazy; indeed, many of the people I see with work-related anxieties are positive over-achievers.
The difficulty is that work is its own little hierarchy, with social tensions and power battles, and many jobs are never really finished.
We take our work home with us because it's never clear that the job is done.
Managers take note : you really should tell every one of your direct reports, at the close of each day, that their work is done.
We all need to know this, and to have some clear boundaries in our lives.
Exposing all of this brought some interesting information out from John.
He used to love his job, but this anxiety is crippling him.
Worse, it is paralysing him, preventing him from working effectively.
And poor performance leads to yet more anxiety, coupled with guilt.
It's our old friend, the vicious cycle.
The first step in dealing with work-related anxiety is to open up the issue of 'escape'.
When we feel under threat, we have an instinctive desire to escape from the situation.
This is a survival instinct which doesn't serve us well in the modern age.
What John needed to do was to change his response to his situation.
When he has learned to deal with work-related stress more effectively, he will have a choice : stay, and be happy, or go to a new role, and be happy.
If he simply jumps, he risks moving from one unhappy situation to another, because he has never learned to deal with the stressful aspects of his role.
The second step is to open up a deep reservoir of calm.
Hypnosis is wonderful for this, because it allows the therapist to work on the client's unconscious mind in a very systematic way.
It's like going on holiday without the packing or the travel stress! Helping John to develop a reservoir of calm allowed him to regain his effectiveness.
Indeed, a calm mind is by far the most effective; people who take the time to develop calmness find that their work performance often improves dramatically.
A calm mind leads us to the third step : future focus.
It is simply impossible to be future focused when you are anxious.
When we are anxious, the last thing we want to do is look ahead.
Calmness generates time, which in turn means that we have 'head space' in which to contemplate happy, future events.
And planning happy, future events is like an inoculation against anxiety - it provides us with continuous support throughout difficult times.
John is in the same job, doing well.
His weekends are now far better utilised.
Perhaps most tellingly, his weekday evenings are, too.
He still works late occasionally, but he's more likely to finish on time and to spend time with the kids.
I'm sure that Sunday evenings aren't his favourite part of the weekend, but he doesn't dread Mondays any longer.
If you are having difficulty with 'Sunday Night Syndrome', why not take a positive step and consult a therapist? This is your life, and it is precious; work-related anxiety is, quite simply, a waste.
It's a waste of our creativity and our generosity of spirit.