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<\/p>\nThe psychologist Guy Winch\u2019s research is absolutely clear: in any given week 7.26pm on a Saturday evening is the peak moment of human happiness. You\u2019re well into the weekend but the best is yet to come. <\/p>\n
However, I am talking to Winch on a wet Monday morning and that\u2019s not so good. More men have stress-related strokes and, for men and women, more brain haemorrhages occur on a Monday than any other day of the week.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnfortunately, suicides on Mondays are more prevalent too,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Winch can help. His Ted talks on subjects such as \u201cHow to fix a broken heart\u201d have amassed 35 million views. His podcast, Dear Therapists (co-hosted with Lori Gottlieb, who wrote the bestselling book Maybe You Should Talk to Someone), involving real case studies, is also hugely popular.<\/p>\n
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The psychologist Guy Winch<\/p>\n
TOMERAPPELBAUM<\/p>\n
The 64-year-old is based in New York but has given presentations on stress management in 10 Downing Street and for the US government.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the light of Covid the UK government had created all these useful channels for getting health messages across. I said, \u2018Why not now use them to communicate what we know as regards ongoing issues: stress and burnout at work?\u2019\u201d he tells me.<\/p>\n
\u2022 How stressed are you? 14 steps to beat burnout<\/a><\/p>\n According to UK government figures more than 22 million working days were lost to stress, depression and anxiety in 2024-25. That\u2019s more than half the 40 million working days lost in total. <\/p>\n In America Winch says 120,000 deaths annually are stress-related: that\u2019s more than the death toll in the Vietnam War.<\/p>\n On a Monday morning that\u2019s all just too miserable and stressful to think about. Winch asks if I am susceptible to the Sunday blues. That\u2019s a hard yes. I\u2019ve had them since my school days. Of course I don\u2019t condone mass murder but whenever the Boomtown Rats song I Don\u2019t Like Mondays (about a girl involved in a school shooting) came on I thought, maybe we need to start the week on Tuesdays.<\/p>\n Winch proposes some interesting strategies, such as dressing up nicely or going out for pancakes on a Monday morning, so as to ease yourself into the week with something pleasurable. <\/p>\n \u201cIf you start the week thinking \u2018I hate my job and Mondays are terrible\u2019 then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Winch has written a new book full of stress-busting tips called Mind Over Grind, which is organised over a working week. I have some bad news: Tuesdays are not much better. Winch says that analysis of social media posts suggests our emotional state is even more negative than on Monday. After all, we\u2019ve survived one really hard day and there are four more to go till the weekend. <\/p>\n \u201cAnd low mood means your coping mechanisms must work even harder to manage your stress,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n What are these coping mechanisms? One of the main ones is to be analytical and realistic about your situation. Are you really that stressed? Winch gives the example of his client Priya, who claims her job is stressful 90 per cent of the time. But under close questioning it turns out only four hours out of 50 are actually driving her nuts.<\/p>\n \u2022 How to deal with stress in 2026: first \u2018swallow the frog\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cBeing clear about specific stressors can open opportunities for recovery,\u201d he says. \u201cRather than being overwhelmed by stress, even a very short restorative break can work wonders.\u201d<\/p>\n However, Priya is a Gen Zer and a self-confessed \u201cquiet quitter\u201d \u2014 she won\u2019t leave her job but is showing less commitment to it. The trigger for this attitude was being shouted at by her boss for getting the coffee order wrong. Are Gen Z stress thresholds lower than for older generations? <\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t like to see a whole generation as a homogeneous group but compared to boomers there is some evidence that young generations feel more vulnerable, not just to stress but emotionally in general,\u201d Winch says. \u201cResilience is built through challenge and, unfortunately, some modern parenting avoids challenges. As a result we see some Gen Z employees coming into the workplace expecting much more direct mentoring, coddling perhaps, from their managers. But then there is also an attitude of: why should I invest my energy in this company when AI, climate change and economic uncertainty mean \u2018who knows where we\u2019ll be in ten years?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n I have five children (three biological, two step) in their twenties and I fear one of them has quiet quit. How else could she possibly send me a text at 11am on a work day reading \u201cget yoghurt\u201d. Winch says quiet quitting is a fool\u2019s game. \u201cYou might regain some mental bandwidth by not working your hardest but then do what with it? If you look for a better job, fine, but most quiet quitters don\u2019t. They waste time while their peers climb the career ladder ahead of them.\u201d<\/p>\n I don\u2019t mind a bit of workplace hurly-burly but my stress peaks when engaging with faceless bureaucracies. Recently I\u2019ve been trying to get an enhanced check from the DBS (Disclosure and Barring Service) so I can volunteer. I tell Winch my experience has been Kafkaesque. He winces.<\/p>\n \u201cThat sort of language suggests you\u2019ve already given up,\u201d he warns. \u201cBut go on\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n \u2022 Workplace stress. There\u2019s a generation gap \u2014 and I know why<\/a><\/p>\n Near the end of filling in the fiddly and boring DBS online application I went to get my passport and the portal locked me out. Then it wouldn\u2019t accept my password or a new one when I tried that. Then the applicant support email wouldn\u2019t reply. An enhanced DBS check is supposed to ensure I\u2019m an upstanding citizen but the process is actually turning me into a homicidal maniac.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat exactly do you feel?\u201d Winch asks.<\/p>\n \u201cReally frustrated!\u201d<\/p>\n He encourages me to add more feelings to my palette \u2014 such as aggravated, irritated, annoyed, bewildered and, yes, stressed. <\/p>\n \u201cWhen you use more varied language to describe your state, you should experience an easing to it,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Next I need to reframe the aggravating process of logging onto the DBS portal not as something obnoxious but as a \u201cnuisance\u201d. A bit like the stock trader Tony, in Winch\u2019s book, who comes to dread interacting with a particular colleague. Winch encourages Tony to reclassify this as a minor irritation, maybe even a challenge to rise to.<\/p>\n \u201cBecause something that\u2019s seen as a challenge rather than a threat helps alter your body\u2019s stress response,\u201d he says. Under threat we secrete cortisol, a hormone that can cloud judgment. In the face of a challenge we secrete dopamine and adrenaline, which allow us to think more clearly and perform better. And then there is what Winch calls the Mind Whisperer Exercise.<\/p>\n \u201cInstead of saying to myself, \u2018I can\u2019t handle this stressful thing,\u2019 say \u2018this thing will be stressful but I can handle it,\u2019\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Finally, when you are ready to tackle the stressful task, do it immediately without procrastinating. In my case, I contacted the school where I was hoping to volunteer and told them to sort it out. You must tackle stressful tasks immediately otherwise you are letting down someone very important: your future self.<\/p>\n \u2022 Beat burnout! The 14 simple and surprising tricks used by experts<\/a><\/p>\n Winch\u2019s research shows that we tend to see our future selves as strangers \u2014 that\u2019s why we thoughtlessly inflict damaging things on ourselves by, say, smoking or drinking too much. We never really consider who he calls Tomorrow Guy or Next-Week Guy. <\/p>\n Winch suggests tackling stressful tasks without procrastinating<\/p>\n GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n \u201cWe sometimes dump a lot of stress on Next-Week Guy like he\u2019s another person,\u201d he says. Actually, not always. I\u2019ve already been in touch with Next-Week Guy and told him to throw a sickie, get on the sofa and watch Netflix because of all the crap I\u2019m planning not to do this week, but I take his point. <\/p>\n Winch is particularly instructive on the aftermath of stress \u2014 the dark rumination that often follows a bad day. Rumination also triggers a stress response and is associated with higher cardiovascular disease and cholesterol, not to mention elevated blood pressure. And that\u2019s before you get to what Winch calls \u201crumination surfing\u201d \u2014 going from one bad incident to another and succumbing to \u201cemotional dysregulation\u201d, a state in which one\u2019s negative emotional state feels out of control.<\/p>\n Winch\u2019s practice is in Manhattan. He won\u2019t tell me exactly what he charges but says it\u2019s \u201ca little bit more\u201d than the average $400-$500 per session many psychologists charge in the city. Just ruminating on that is stressful. However, he tells me about a single working mum client who also ruminates too much called Sally (Winch makes room for some reduced-rate sessions). She runs her life by spreadsheet (she wakes up at 5am for \u201clight therapy\u201d followed by a workout, cold shower, meditation, getting dressed and then cycling to work, where she starts at 7am). The trouble is, her immediate co-worker is inefficient and mendacious, so hitting the targets that would earn her a bonus is almost impossible. The language she uses while ruminating cannot be repeated in a family newspaper but she was clearly struggling.<\/p>\n \u201cConstant rumination was damaging her mental health so I suggested the \u2018memoir test\u2019,\u201d Winch says. \u201cSally\u2019s overall problem is very real but individual incidents \u2014 would they make it into her memoir if she wrote one? Instead it was better for her to focus energy on long-term solutions like developing work relationships that bypassed this obstructive colleague.\u201d<\/p>\n Winch has a second anti-rumination strategy: visualise each negative thought arising in your mind as a skunk jumping onto the sofa.<\/p>\n \u201cThen kick it out,\u201d he advises. \u201cSay \u2018no, no, no, you\u2019re not coming in!\u2019 out loud if you have to.\u201d<\/p>\n Winch was born in London and got a scholarship to study at New York University but he burnt out one year after starting work.<\/p>\n![\"Mature](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/\/aa76f716-d44f-4072-98e9-db267e37f51b.jpg\")
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