Being an adult involves dealing with stress. Regardless of whether you are working a career job, or are a stay at home parent - there are cycles to adult life, and part of that cycle includes times of stress.
For years I've seen articles that discuss tactics of dealing with stressful situations - tactics such as sticking to a routine, setting limits and boundaries, taking breaks, and getting adequate sleep. Those suggestions are great for dealing with stress in the moment, but they don't always translate to completing the stress cycle. Recently, though, I've started to see information about completing the stress cycle in an appropriate way - meaning, in a way that helps avoid the physiological and mental effects of chronic stress.
Here's an example. Let's say you have a few major projects at work that require a large amount of your attention. Anything that requires a large amount of attention is going to have a draining effect, and therefore contribute to stress. This is not a bad thing - stress is, and always has been, a part of life - but it does have to be managed. So in our example, you do all the things to manage the day to day stress. You get outside, you have an exercise routine, you eat well, etc. Throughout the execution of your projects, you feel pretty good, you are rolling with the punches, and things are progressing. Then, one of the projects completes successfully. What do you do?
Too many times, people jump right back into the fray and continue working on the other projects - they are on a roll, and they don't want to lose momentum. While there is logic to this approach, there is also a hidden downside - by not completing the stress cycle, we carry stress from the previous incident over to the next one. In the short term, this is potentially manageable, but if this happens too often, it is very easy to end up in a scenario of chronic stress. Chances are, new projects are going to be added to your plate as the current batch winds down, and it is tempting to simply keep rolling from one project to the next.
Finishing a big project feels good - there is a sense of overcoming obstacles, and there is a sense of building camaraderie with your teammates. It is critical to allow time to celebrate and decompress after a major stressful event.
Here's a simple analogy to illustrate that point. An ancient hunter gather gets chased by a lion, and runs back to the village. This person obviously has the fight or flight response going on, their system is flooded with adrenaline, cortisol and other stress hormones. The village muscle comes out and kills the lion, and that evening the village holds a great feast and celebration for overcoming the threat. The moment the lion was killed, the person who was chased is relieved, but their body still has to process the hormones created during the chase. They may go into a state of shock, where their body shivers uncontrollably for a while, as their body processes what has happened. But it's the celebration with the rest of the village where that person fully completes the stress cycle - it now becomes a shared experience, and the celebration is a release of built up tension.
It's the same with modern stressors. Uncontrollable shivering is a common occurrence when coming out of general anesthesia. People celebrate after a political victory not because they want to stick it to the other side, but because they are going through the process of completing a cycle of stress. Soldiers form incredibly tight bonds with their brothers in arms because it provides an outlet for dealing with the stresses of war. Big projects at work demand a lot of cognitive cycles, where we are under stress to make a good impression and not fumble. Subsequent celebrations where the team goes out to dinner, or goes to the bar for a few drinks, are not just good for morale, but are also necessary to complete the stress cycle and avoid long term burnout for the team members.
We are humans, not machines. We can handle stress, but it is just as important to know how to complete the stress cycle as it is knowing how to handle stress in the moment.
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