Key points

Back-to-School Scaries are Sunday Scaries writ large. Instead of dreading a week, you're dreading a year!

The dread you feel is your nervous system bracing for impact.

Fast transitions and rising demands can feel like danger to a trauma-shaped brain.

Normalizing this and expecting it, small rituals, and predictable rhythms can help settle the overwhelm.

I was at Target when it hit me.

Dreading back to school? Maybe it's the Back-to-School Scaries. Here's what to do about them. Source: ksenija18kz/123RF

The bright Crayola bins. The towering stacks of composition notebooks. The “Let’s Do This, Parents!” signs cheerfully cheering me on.

And I got mad.

Not sentimental. Not overwhelmed. Not wistful. Mad.

Mad that the season of loosely structured days and fewer transitions

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