Stress Cycle

The stress cycle is a three part cycle. There is

1.       An activating event

2.       The fight or flight response (the response to the activating event)

3.       The recovery phase

This Section is about the Recovery Phase

Experiencing an activating event and the fight or flight response is an energy sapping series of events. Because of the high degree of tension involved and the adrenaline rush, a person can be left feeling exhausted.

It is not unusual for a person’s body to remain on high alert, sometimes for an extended period of time. Tension takes a lot of energy. Anxiety takes a lot of energy. Unresolved issues or situations that drag on and on take a lot of energy. It can end up being a fatiguing series of events.

Needing to take some time to recover from the physical and mental things that happen in our lives is normal. If a person experiences some kind of physical trauma, she or he may stay in a hospital or a nursing home for an extended period of time. She or he may come home and rest. For the body to heal, rest is important. Rest is a crucial part of the healing process.

Let's say you broke a couple of ribs in an accident of some kind. You would naturally choose to move slower, reach out more carefully and wait to heal before picking up the pace of life again.

Or you might break an arm falling out of a tree (or bed). You would naturally need to change or slow your lifestyle until the injury became less painful and your arm healed. Washing dishes with an arm in a cast is a challenge, and taking a shower can be a struggle at best.

Society understands that rest is needed in each of the above situations. The cast serves as a big reminder that people can see. In the case of the damaged ribs, the caution with which a person chooses to move or breathe is apparent.

When someone is trying to recover from an activating event that is mental or emotional, rest is also needed for a full recovery to happen, even though there is no pink or green cast to be seen. Activating events can be exhausting. Time to heal from physical, mental and emotional stress that happens is needed. Just because there is no cast, doesn't mean that you are able to run right out and pick up where your life left off, like there was no interruption.

When a person doesn't take or have the time or resources needed to heal, the stress cycle may or can occur repeatedly. This is often referred to as a revolving door (which is a cycle of re-occurring hospitalizations) by people who have this experience. 

The need for a long recovery cycle may explain why people sometime sleep 16 to 18 hours a day, unable to drag themselves out of bed. Due to the traumatizing event, rest is needed. Taking time to rest and recover (and needing that time to rest and recover) is a natural part of the recovery process.

This (needing a long recovery cycle) may be especially true, if stress becomes a conditioned response. Triggers associated with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder serve as one example of a conditioned response. Problems that seem unsolvable can also cause a longer recovery cycle, with more rest being needed.

Chronic illnesses and chronic health problems can also require a person to need more rest. Mental illness/psychiatric diagnosis is often seen as a chronic illness. A chronic illness is one in which symptom cycles over which a person seems to have little control happen again and again, and resolution is not expected. These cycles can be a continuous or constant stressor.

People who are willing and able to speak publicly about recovery are changing the way people think about mental illness as a chronic condition, thereby instilling the hope of recovery in others.