The Let Down Effect: Anxiety After Stressful Event
We’ve all experienced stressful events.
Maybe you’ve had an important deadline at work or for a school project?
Or maybe you planned a wedding or graduated from college?
These are all stressful events in some way, some good stress, some bad stress, and some maybe a mix of both.
You might not have even felt stressed while you were going through the situations but realized afterwards how stressful they actually were.
And when you were done, you probably expected to feel relief, right?
Because that makes sense. The stress is done, so now you’ll feel better.
Well, that’s not always the case, and that’s where the Let Down Effect comes in.
What is the Let Down Effect?
The Let Down Effect is your body’s response post-stressful event. During the let down from a stressful event, you might be more susceptible to physical illness, headaches, GI issues, and mental health symptoms, like depression, anxiety, panic attacks, and difficulty sleeping.
This happens because, during the stressful event, your body amps up its protection of you. Your body boosts your immune response to protect you from illness.
When the stressful event is done, you likely want to relax. Or rather, you actually can relax.
You have the time to sleep more, watch more TV, or do whatever activities help you relax.
The problem with this is that it’s a shock to your mind and body when it goes from stress to relaxation too quickly.
I’ve heard it described as going from 100 mph to slamming on your brakes - that’s not good for your car and it’s not good for your body either.
In the next two sections, I’m going to share why I wanted to write about this topic now and ways to cope with the Let Down Effect.
Real Life Examples of the Let Down Effect
Client Experiences
So, why did I want to write about this topic now?
It’s getting close to the end of the school year, and in my clinical work, I’ve seen the Let Down Effect impact both students and teachers. One of my clients felt depressed after finishing graduate school last year. Another client is a teacher who has experienced nightmares for a few weeks after the last day of school.
Both clients, and others, expressed looking forward to the end of the school year to have more time for relaxation and fun. Both were surprised by the experiences they had afterwards but it was helpful for them to understand that their experience was normal.
The Let Down Effect is a very real experience that I don’t believe is talked about enough. Because it’s not talked about, people aren’t prepared for it and they feel like they’ve done something wrong. They feel like there must be something wrong with them because they are not happy, excited, relieved after a stressful event ends. When, in reality, they are experiencing a very normal phenomenon of the human body.
I hope more people learn about this and understand it to help themselves through it more smoothly.
Personal Experience
I experienced it most significantly for the first time over the past week.
As I shared in my last blog post, I wrote a book recently, and last week was the first week that I didn’t have any deadlines to meet.
While I was writing the book, I didn’t feel too stressed. I had a few moments here and there of increased stress, but it was very manageable, so it didn’t feel like I was experiencing much stress with it.
For the weeks leading up to last week, I was excited to be nearing the end. Although writing this book was a great experience and I’m glad that I did it, it was intense.
Looking back on it now, that was good stress that was propelling me forward to complete this project that I was really interested in and wanted to do.
However, over the past week, I have experienced anxiety in a way that I haven’t experienced in my life.
Anytime I slowed down and relaxed in ways that I normally would, my heart would race. When I would lay down to sleep at night, again, I was met with a racing heart.
At first I didn’t realize that I was experiencing the Let Down Effect.
But when I started to think about it and about those clients who have experienced something similar, it clicked that this is what I was experiencing, too.
I had no more deadlines to meet, and my mind and body were sending out warning signals.
They weren’t ready to relax so suddenly and were saying “This can’t be right! What do you think you’re doing, we can’t relax! There must be things to do. We have to keep moving, thinking, and writing!”
I’m not back to my normal 100% but I feel much better since realizing this is what I was experiencing and trying different ways of coping with it.
Coping with the Let Down Effect
Sometimes the human body sucks. It’s amazing in many ways, but a fussy mess in other ways. In my opinion, this is one of those ways.
It can be frustrating to experience anxiety, depression, or physical illness after completing a stressful event. But that’s the reality of how our bodies might respond to it, and it’s helpful and important to know this and ways of coping with it.
Don’t relax too quickly
This seems counterintuitive, but it’s the most helpful tip for coping with this effect. When you’re done with a stressful event, all you want to do is sleep and relax, and I’m not saying you can’t do that, but you do need to be mindful of how much you do it at first. Instead of going from 100 mph to 0 mph, try easing off of the pedal slowly and gradually incorporating more relaxation back into your life.
Keep your mind and body working.
Not on the same level as they were during the stressful event, but your mind and body need to stay engaged throughout the day to help prevent or lessen the impact of the Let Down Effect. Try to make sure that you include activities for both mind and body. This might look like:
20-30 minutes of moderate physical movement 2-3 times throughout the day
If you can’t fit in that amount of time, do what you can. The idea is to keep your mind and body under a low level of stress throughout the day to dampen the shock of going from a state of stress to relaxation.
Mental “exercises” like crossword puzzles or math problems (I found that other puzzle phone games helped, too)
Plan ahead.
Knowing what you know now, it might be helpful to plan ahead by scheduling tasks on your calendar after your stressful event ends.
Even if you haven’t experienced the Let Down Effect after stressful events in the past, it might be helpful to plan ahead with future events because, like me, this effect might present itself unexpectedly.
After future stressful events, you might want to plan times in your schedule for physical activity, mental exercises, and other ways to remain “busy” while allowing yourself to gradually increase how much you relax.
Sleep
This one may be challenging. If you’re like me, your sleep may be impacted by the Let Down Effect; while at the same time, sleep is what you really need to recover from a stressful event. Because the anxiety only showed up when I slowed down, it didn’t impact work. However, if I didn’t try to manage it and it continued long-term, the lack of sleep would have eventually impacted my life in other ways.
Try to get at least 8 hours of sleep each night, preferably more, and if your sleep is negatively affected by the Let Down Effect, you might want to try different sleep aid methods. Although the main suggestion here is to not relax too quickly, when it comes to sleep, relaxation techniques might be what you need, especially if anxiety symptoms like racing thoughts or increased heart rate are keeping you awake.
Personally, I listened to sleep stories on the Calm app to help me fall asleep at night. Some other ideas:
Meditation
Deep breathing
Calming music
Before you go to sleep:
Reading or writing
Warm bath or shower
It might sound discouraging to know that after a stressful event, even a positive one like graduating from school or writing a book, you might experience feelings of depression, anxiety, and physical illness.
In the height of it last week, I had thoughts about not wanting to write another book if this is what I would experience afterwards, but it has been one week since the Let Down Effect started and I’m already feeling better. So, there’s hope! Whether physical or emotional effects, they’re not permanent, and it was helpful to remember that, as well.
Being informed about this effect and ways to cope with it will absolutely help me prepare and manage it better next time, and I hope it will help you, too.