Completing the Stress Cycle Instead of Carrying Stress Into Tomorrow

Have you ever reached the end of a difficult day, dealt with the thing that was causing the stress, and yet still felt as though your body had not received the message that it was over? The meeting has finished, the difficult conversation has happened, the traffic is behind you and the deadline has been met, but your shoulders are still tight, your thoughts are racing and your body seems determined to remain on duty.

You may finally sit down to relax and discover that you cannot really settle. Instead, you keep checking your phone, replaying conversations, thinking about tomorrow or finding one more thing that needs to be done. Sometimes we deal with the thing that caused the stress without actually helping ourselves recover from the stress response itself.

This is one of the ideas I find particularly useful in Emily and Amelia Nagoski’s work on burnout and stress. In their book Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle, they make an important distinction between the stressor and the stress response. The stressor is whatever has activated us — conflict, uncertainty, workload, financial pressure, fear, caregiving, an uncomfortable memory or simply too many demands arriving at once. Stress is what happens inside the body as we respond to those demands.

That distinction matters because removing the stressor does not always mean that our body immediately returns to a settled state. The problem may be over, but the activation can continue.

Your Day Can Be Finished Before Your Stress Response Is

The human stress response exists for good reason. When our brain detects challenge, uncertainty or threat, several systems prepare us to respond. Our attention may narrow, muscles can tighten, breathing and heart rate may shift, and we can become more alert or reactive. Depending on the person and the situation, this may feel like anxiety, restlessness, irritability, urgency, anger or, at times, a sense of shutting down and disconnecting.

Ideally, periods of activation are followed by periods of recovery. The body mobilises when something needs our attention, and then gradually settles when the demand has passed. The difficulty is that modern life often gives us plenty of opportunities to activate but far fewer opportunities to complete that movement back towards rest and regulation.

The Nagoski sisters use the phrase completing the stress cycle to describe helping the body recognise that the stressful moment has passed and allowing the stress response to move towards completion rather than remaining indefinitely activated.

I find this framework very helpful, although I prefer not to interpret it too literally. We do not have a single internal switch that changes from “stress cycle incomplete” to “stress cycle complete”, and every uncomfortable sensation does not mean that stress is somehow physically trapped inside us. A more useful way of thinking about it is that after stress, our nervous system often needs an opportunity to recover.

That recovery may involve movement, breathing, rest, emotional expression, connection, grounding or simply enough time and safety for the activation to begin settling. The goal is not to force ourselves into perfect calm, but to help the system move.

Why We So Often Carry Stress Into the Evening

Many of the things that create stress today do not have an obvious beginning and ending. You may receive an irritating email and have to respond professionally. You may have an argument and then immediately need to make dinner. You may receive difficult news but still have several appointments to get through, or spend an hour sitting in traffic feeling increasingly frustrated with nowhere for that energy to go.

Even relatively ordinary days contain many moments in which we contain, delay or manage our reactions. We continue working when we are tired, remain polite when we are angry, stay focused when we are worried and move on to the next responsibility before we have properly processed the previous one.

Then we arrive home and expect ourselves to switch instantly into relaxation mode.

When that does not happen, we may wonder why we cannot sleep, why we are irritable with people we care about or why we suddenly want sugar, scrolling, shopping, alcohol, substances or some other quick way of changing how we feel. It is easy to interpret these urges as poor self-control when sometimes what we are experiencing is accumulated activation and an understandable desire for relief.

Stress and Recovery

This becomes particularly important in addiction recovery. Stress does not cause relapse in a simple or inevitable way, but it can increase craving, emotional reactivity and vulnerability to old coping patterns, particularly when stress is frequent, intense or combined with poor sleep, isolation or other pressures.

This does not mean that every stressful day places someone on the verge of relapse. It means that stress deserves to be taken seriously as part of recovery planning. If we repeatedly finish the day exhausted, activated and emotionally overloaded without any meaningful way of transitioning out of that state, the desire for fast relief may become stronger.

This is one of the reasons I believe recovery needs more than strategies for saying no to a substance or behaviour. We also need ways of helping ourselves come down from a difficult day, regulate strong emotions and recognise when our bodies are still carrying more activation than we realise.

You Cannot Always Think Your Way Out of a Body State

There is an important place for problem-solving. Sometimes we need to address the conflict, change the schedule, set the boundary, make the appointment, ask for help or make a practical decision. Thinking is useful when there is actually something to solve.

There is also a point, however, where more thinking becomes less helpful. When we are highly activated, sitting on the couch analysing the day over and over may simply keep us inside the experience.

This is where body-based regulation can be useful. The Somatic Healing and Nervous System Regulation in Recovery workbook makes a similar distinction between top-down approaches, which work through thoughts, beliefs, meaning and cognition, and bottom-up approaches that begin with breathing, movement, physical sensation and nervous-system regulation. The workbook includes practices such as grounding, pendulation, a “somatic safe harbour”, breathing exercises, movement, a wall push and tracking small changes in bodily state.

The point is not that the body is more important than the brain or that we should stop thinking. It is that regulation often works better when we include both. Instead of asking only, “What am I thinking about this?”, it can also be useful to ask, “What is happening inside my body right now, and what might help it shift?”

Look for the Shift, Not Perfect Calm

One of the things I particularly like about this approach is that the outcome does not need to be complete relaxation. If you begin a walk feeling intensely angry and return feeling mildly irritated, something shifted. If your jaw was clenched and five minutes later it is slightly softer, something shifted. If your thoughts were racing and now there is a little more space between them, that matters too.

The same principle can be useful with cravings and emotional overwhelm. If your craving was an eight out of ten and, after grounding or movement, it is now a six, that is meaningful information. You have not failed because the craving did not disappear; you have helped yourself move from one state to another.

This connects closely with something I use often in recovery work: small shifts matter. We do not have to regulate perfectly in order to benefit from regulation.

A Simple Practice for Completing the Stress Cycle at the End of the Day

You do not necessarily need another complicated evening routine. In fact, if stress management becomes a twenty-item checklist that leaves you feeling guilty when you cannot complete it, it has probably stopped serving its purpose.

Instead, experiment with a short transition period between the demands of the day and the rest of your evening. Begin by noticing what state you are actually in. Perhaps your mind is busy but your body feels exhausted. Perhaps you are restless and agitated, your stomach feels tight or your jaw is clenched. Perhaps you feel emotionally flat and disconnected rather than obviously anxious.

There is no need to fix the state immediately. Start by noticing it, then ask yourself what kind of response might match what you are experiencing.

If you feel full of restless energy, movement may help more than meditation. If you feel overstimulated, quiet breathing, a shower or reduced sensory input may be more appropriate. If you have spent the whole day containing emotion, you may need conversation, writing or space to cry. If you feel lonely, regulation may come through connection rather than another solitary self-care exercise.

Afterwards, check again. You are not looking for zero stress. You are simply asking whether your body feels even slightly different and whether rest, connection or clearer thinking feels a little more available.

Sometimes the Stressor Still Needs Attention

Completing the stress response does not mean pretending that everything is fine. You can regulate yourself and still need to address the situation tomorrow. You can breathe and still need to set a boundary, exercise and still need to change an unhealthy work environment, or ground yourself and still need professional support.

Regulation should never become another way of teaching ourselves to tolerate situations that genuinely need to change. Sometimes we need to work on the stress response, and sometimes we need to work on the stressor itself. Very often, we need to do both.

Be Careful About Turning Numbing Into Regulation

There is another distinction worth making, particularly in recovery: relief and regulation are not always the same thing.

Alcohol, drugs, compulsive eating, gambling, pornography, scrolling, overspending and other behaviours may change our internal state very quickly, which is part of what can make them so compelling. The nervous system learns that when discomfort reaches a certain level, a particular behaviour offers immediate relief.

The difficulty is that short-term relief can create longer-term consequences, and the original stress may still be waiting when the effect wears off.

One of the quieter tasks of recovery is therefore to build a wider repertoire of ways to change our state. Instead of having one powerful escape route, we gradually develop more options: movement, connection, breathing, boundaries, rest, expression, meaningful activity and support.

Recovery does not require us to stop wanting relief. It asks us to become more thoughtful about where we seek it and whether the relief we choose actually supports the life we are trying to build.

Not Every Nervous-System Practice Feels Calming

Body awareness is not automatically soothing for everyone. Someone with a history of trauma, panic or dissociation may find that closing their eyes, focusing intensely on internal sensations or trying to slow down too quickly actually increases discomfort.

If that happens, it does not necessarily mean you are doing regulation incorrectly. You may do better with external grounding, gentle movement, looking around the room, listening to music, talking to another person or keeping your eyes open while breathing.

The workbook’s use of resourcing and pendulation reflects an important principle here. We do not always need to plunge deeply into distress in order to work with it. Instead, we can move gently between discomfort and something more manageable, gradually building tolerance rather than overwhelming ourselves.

Regulation should increase your sense of choice. If an exercise consistently makes you significantly more distressed, dissociated or overwhelmed, stop and consider using another strategy or working with an appropriately trained mental-health professional.

Do Not Wait Until You Are Completely Overwhelmed

Perhaps one of the most helpful shifts we can make is to stop treating stress regulation as something we only do when we are falling apart. Small interventions throughout the day may prevent stress management from becoming emergency management.

You can move after a frustrating meeting, breathe after an uncomfortable conversation, step outside when you notice your shoulders tightening or call somebody before loneliness turns into isolation. You can rest before exhaustion becomes collapse.

I often think about recovery in the same way. We do not need to wait until something becomes a crisis before deciding that it deserves our attention.

What Are You Carrying Into Tomorrow?

At the end of the day, it can be useful to ask yourself a simple question: What am I still carrying?

Perhaps there is a practical problem that genuinely needs to be dealt with tomorrow. Perhaps there is an emotion you have not acknowledged, or your body needs movement after sitting under pressure all day. You may need another human being, some quiet, an early night or simply permission to stop solving things for a while.

You do not have to solve your whole life before going to bed. Sometimes the healthier task is simply helping today come to an end.

That is what I find so useful about the idea of completing the stress cycle. It reminds us that wellbeing is not only about removing stress from our lives, which is often impossible. It is also about becoming better at moving through stress without carrying every piece of it indefinitely.

Recovery is not a life without difficult emotions, activation, conflict, uncertainty or hard days. It is gradually developing more ways to recognise what is happening, respond earlier and help ourselves return towards steadiness.

Not perfectly or instantly, but often enough that yesterday does not have to keep living inside tomorrow.