Stress Cycle
The stress cycle is a three part cycle. There is
1. An activating event
2. The fight or flight response
3. The recovery phase
This Section is on the Activating Event
Since this is a site that has a mental health, wellness and recovery focus, this page is going to explore the stress cycle as it sometimes happens to a person who is or has received a psychiatric diagnosis as they end up caught (sometimes cycling and recycling) in the stress cycle.
For people who have a mental illness/psychiatric diagnosis, there may be multiple activating events that pile on top of one another. These events may look like:
- Being arrested
- Being arrested repeatedly
- Becoming involuntarily homeless
- Being unable to file needed paperwork because your thoughts are scrambled
- Receiving an unwanted diagnosis
- Receiving a wanted diagnosis
- Being told you are no longer able to take care of yourself
- Going to the hospital
- Being assigned a guardian
- Finding out that you are unable to work
- Being told you are no longer able to work
- Being underemployed due to a diagnosis
- And many more things that can happen
An activating event may be large or it may seem small. What is important is what the activating event means to the individual person.
Let's say you have friends who love to power shop; but for you shopping (any kind of shopping) is a struggle. You are with a group of friends who decide to stop and power shop for three or four hours. You are in a place where it is not easy to get home from. You aren't driving.
For people who love to power shop, this would not be an activating event. But for the person who …
- Doesn't feel comfortable in large open areas with lots of florescent lights
- Finds shopping to be a traumatic experience
- Doesn't like being in a crowd
- Hurts a lot to when they try to move
- Or just abhors power shopping
… this situation could well be an activating event.
At the store the person for whom this is an activating event would have to decide whether to stay and fight through the negative feelings that come up, or to leave the area; maybe catch a bus or taxi home or possibly call for a ride. (Any of these choices may label you a total wet blanket or start people talking about what you can or can't do).
Or the person could choose not to choose, and try to ride out the feelings without ever acknowledging that an activating event is occurring.
What makes it an activating event is the severity of the reaction the person has to the situation. If the situation doesn't trigger the flight or fight response, then it is not an activating event in the stress cycle. The feeling of discomfort may still be there, but the feeling of discomfort might not/does not have to escalate into activating the fight or flight response.
It can be incredibly stressful to find out that you are ill enough to receive a diagnosis. Depending on what you are told or what you believe to be true, you may or may not believe that recovery from a psychiatric diagnosis is possible. Your life may seem like a bad nightmare that you can’t get out of.
What makes the diagnosis traumatic are the beliefs and perceptions that come along with the diagnosis. Your attitude, beliefs and perceptions will affect how disabling an activating event may be.
If someone in your family or someone you know has a mental illness/psychiatric diagnosis, deals with it well and has a good quality of life, your belief that mental illness is the worst thing in the world may not be as strong. You may carry the hope that recovery is not just possible, but probable, and then the diagnosis might not be as terrible.
If, on the other hand, someone in your family or someone you know has a mental illness/psychiatric diagnosis and was made fun of, was never able to get a good quality of life, or has seen or experienced people with mental illness or psychiatric disorders who were unable to help themselves, then that activating experience may be very powerful due to feelings of hopelessness related to your prior experience.
Click here to go to the next section: Fight or Flight Response.