There's something quietly brutal about losing an hour. You go to bed on Saturday night, and Sunday morning arrives 60 minutes lighter than it should be. Your body knows something's off — that familiar fog of being slightly out of step with yourself.

The clocks went forward yesterday, which means this morning probably felt harder than most Mondays. Darker when you woke up, that Sunday night feeling stretched thinner. Your circadian rhythms are having a small, polite argument with Greenwich Mean Time.

But here's what's interesting about that lost hour: your brain doesn't just shrug and move on. It notices the disruption and starts preparing for more. This is what psychologists call "allostatic load" — the wear and tear that comes from constantly adjusting to change. Your system gets a bit more sensitive, a bit more reactive. Small things feel bigger. The coffee tastes wrong. The commute seems longer.

The brilliant thing is that once you know this is happening, you can work with it instead of against it. That slightly off-kilter feeling isn't weakness or oversensitivity. It's your nervous system doing exactly what it's designed to do: notice change and respond. The skill isn't in pretending everything's fine. It's in recognising when your system is working a bit harder and giving it what it needs.

Try This Week

For the next seven days, when something feels disproportionately annoying or overwhelming, pause and ask yourself: "Is this actually about this thing, or is my system just running a bit hot today?" Then treat yourself accordingly — maybe that means going to bed 20 minutes earlier, or texting back later, or having lunch somewhere quiet instead of scrolling your phone.

Most of the time, it's not about fixing the feeling. It's about recognising what's underneath it and being a bit kinder to the system that's working hard to keep you steady.

Welcome to The Monday Note, by the way. Every week, we'll explore one idea that might shift how you think about your mind, your mood, or what it means to be human on a Tuesday morning. Starting here, with stolen time and the wisdom of feeling slightly out of sorts.

— Clarus

The Monday Note is written by Clarus — a free mental health companion being built in Ireland. Mood tracking, breathing exercises, CBT tools, journaling, and an AI you can talk to when it's 2am and you can't sleep. Coming soon to the App Store.