The commute is back on your calendar. Maybe it is two days a week, maybe five. And somewhere between the mandate email and your first badge-in, a knot of dread showed up that you cannot quite explain.
You are not being dramatic. Return-to-office anxiety is your nervous system reacting to a real change. As more companies call people back in, I am hearing about this from clients across San Francisco, especially in tech. Understanding what the dread actually is makes it much easier to handle.
Over the past few years, you built a setup that worked. You knew when you would exercise, when you could focus, when you would see people, and when you would not. Now the rules are changing again, and you did not choose the change.
Anxiety often shows up when control disappears, not because you cannot cope. The dread is not evidence that you are fragile. It is a predictable response to losing a system you relied on. In my work with clients, the people hit hardest by RTO are often the ones whose home routines were working best.
Commuting. Small talk. Open floor plans. Being visible while you work. None of these is dangerous, but together they are a lot of input, and it all returns on the same Monday.
After years of less of that, your system reads the office as loud even when it is quiet. That is not weakness. It is a normal recalibration, the same way your eyes need a minute when you walk out of a dark theater. Most people find the sensory piece fades within a few weeks. Knowing that in advance keeps it from feeling like proof that something is wrong with you.
Here is the part I emphasize most in sessions. The dread you feel imagining Monday is usually worse than Monday itself.
Your mind runs the hard version on a loop. The awkward hallway moment, the packed train, the afternoon energy crash. That rehearsal is its own kind of stress, and it happens on your couch, on Sunday night, long before anything real has occurred. If your worst hours are the night before, you are dealing with anticipatory anxiety, a close cousin of the Sunday scaries. The fix is not more mental rehearsal. It is noticing the loop and bringing yourself back to what is actually in front of you.
A few things I recommend to clients navigating a return:
Rebuild a routine on purpose. Decide in advance what your office days look like, down to the commute podcast and the lunch plan. You are restoring the sense of authorship the mandate took away.
Stage the re-entry where you can. If you have any flexibility, front-load the easier parts. One anchor day with a colleague you like beats three aimless days.
Name the anticipation. When the Sunday dread starts, say what it is. This is my mind rehearsing, not information about tomorrow.
Watch the burnout signals. If the return lands on top of an already depleted system, the anxiety compounds. We have written about how that shows up for tech workers in San Francisco specifically, and our practice offers therapy for burnout when it is more than a rough patch.
If the return to the office is hitting you harder than you expected, that is worth talking through. The therapists at Good Therapy SF work with San Francisco professionals who are navigating work stress, anxiety, and big transitions. Reach out to learn more.
Dr. Tom McDonagh, PsyD, is a licensed clinical psychologist and the founder of Good Therapy SF. He trained at Vanderbilt and completed his postdoctoral work at Kaiser Permanente. His practice focuses on anxiety, OCD, panic, and work stress, with a special focus on San Francisco professionals. Good Therapy SF is located at 870 Market Street, Suite 617, San Francisco, CA.
