Why You Crash After Big Events (And How to Recover Well)

Why You Crash After Big Events (And How to Recover Well)

Graced Health Podcast

Amy Connell, Host

Hey everyone. So glad to be with you today. I have an episode for you inspired by actual events. As this is dropping, I am coming off having two speaking events where I am giving a total of six talks, and there are four unique talks. So I went to a Christian high school in Tulsa, Oklahoma on November 6th. I gave two of the same talk to chapel, to middle school and high school chapel. I did a different one to girls breakout. I did another one to parents and then drove back home. The next Friday I drove back up to Dallas and I was honored to speak at the In His Image conference and did the same talk two times there.

So six talks, four unique talks. So this episode is dropping on November 18th. Now admittedly, I am recording this on November 10th, kind of right in the middle between these two events. And as I was looking at my calendar and I will try to loosely get some good plans out, get some good goals. What are my projects like? The project that I have had since the beginning of October is really get prepped for these presentations. The next project I have is totally revamping and redoing my website because I'm like embarrassed. Don't go. You now you're gonna wanna go. Please don't. I'm super embarrassed of my website. It just needs some help. So like that's the next project. That's gonna be something. But as I was looking at my calendar, I looked at this November 6th date, the November 15th date, and I thought, oh, you've learned some things, Amy. You've learned that after some big events, you crash and you have some dips, and that's what I want to talk to you today about is this concept of having a stressful season and coming down off of it with some sort of post-stress crash.

So today what we're gonna talk about is like what qualifies as a stressful season—season being the key word. What different crashes can look like, the science of why we get sick after we have these seasons, the neuroscience of that post-adrenaline drop. I wanna talk some about chronic versus acute stress because it is very different. And then we wanna talk about the spiritual angle because as you know, if you've been with me for a while, everything I do is through a lens of faith.

So let me just kind of jump in here and talk to those of you who have gone through something big. Now that can be a bajillion different things. That can be some sort of a work-related project. Maybe it's a deadline. You know, in my world it has been book launches. I mean that's been one of 'em, you know, product releases, presentations. You know, sometimes we have these life transitions. I mean, I think—I didn't do my research on this part, but I believe that moving is one of the top 10 most stressful things that we can do. If you have changed your job, maybe your kids have gone off to school. It's funny, I was just listening to an episode of The Wilderness Family and Kim Wilderness was talking about, I think it's called Laugh Lines. But Kim Wilderness was talking about how getting her daughter ready to go off to college was a whole thing. Like she was exhausted and really took a hit with all of that kind of stuff. So that can be a stressful season.

Are you caregiving? Caring for aging parents, especially if you are also caring for your children, is incredibly stressful and not one that we have talked about very much. But hang on, we've got someone coming for you in December. If you are in that caregiving season or maybe just you have a really sick person in your world dealing with that. Maybe you've got some fun, exciting things like you're planning a wedding for either yourself or for a loved one, but there's a lot that goes on with that.

I remember, and this is before the days that like you could get anything on demand anywhere. Like I don't even think Etsy was around at this point. I got married in 1997, if that puts anything on you. But I remember finding a place where I could custom order a mug and it said "I survived the Patterson-Connell wedding." Patterson's my maiden name. Like it was, I mean, it was, it was stressful, y'all. It was so stressful, and I know that I am not the only one. Maybe you've had surgery or maybe a loved one has had surgery.

And even maybe like you're one of these people who plans these big, huge vacations for everyone and you're coordinating a lot of like people coming in and where you're going, and you know, maybe you're doing like a European vacation where you're hitting five or six different cities. I wouldn't know anything about that, but you know, like that. Even positive stress like that, all of these qualify as a stressful season. And these stressful seasons can lead to, we'll just call 'em unwelcome crashes. Like nobody really wants this, but these do happen, and I think it's worth planning into your calendar. Oh, I need to take it down a little bit.

These crashes can look different for everyone. So it might be more like kind of emotional feeling. Maybe you're grouchy or irritable, maybe you're like me and you kind of cry over small things. I remember right after my husband and I got married and I was going through all of the thank you notes, because I was a good girl raised to do things right and handwriting all of those thank you notes. Why I didn't get my husband in then on doing that, I don't know, but I remember, I remember crying like over these stupid thank you notes. I shouldn't say stupid because I was grateful for it, but I just was crying over the act of doing that. And I think, honestly, like I was—I have reflected on this a lot lately. I'm not really sure why I was crying. Clearly, I was happy to be married. My poor husband was going to his parents, like she's crying all the time. I don't know what the deal was. And I'm like, no, I'm happy to be married. But I think in hindsight, it was my body's way of recalibrating from surviving the wedding and just adjusting to so much, and I think it was as simple as that, but also as complicated as that, you know?

Maybe also with those emotions we feel real flat, we can feel very depressed. Or maybe like your anxiety starts to go through the roof because we've been controlling these things in this stressful season as much as we can, and then that's gone. And so there's, you know, this anxiety will peak up. Maybe you feel it in your body, maybe you feel just physically exhausted. And maybe compounding on that you're feeling exhausted, but you can't sleep well because your body's still kind of churning out with—and we'll talk about the cortisol and we'll talk about kind of those stress hormones here in a second. But your body hasn't recalibrated. Dr. Stacy Sims calls it "tired but wired." And so maybe that's something that you're feeling is just really, really tired. And then possibly on top of that, you're not sleeping well.

Another thing is getting sick, and this is actually a real thing. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna come back to this. I'm gonna put a pin in this and tell you actually why we get sick after a really stressful season. You might have headaches, you might have body aches. You might start to feel like inflammation in your body. I mean, your body is going to respond in its own unique way, but it can respond from that post-stress crash.

We can also turn into things like maybe a little more behavioral—emotional eating, a hard time making decisions. Maybe we just say, I can't deal with the people right now. I'm just, I'm just no to everything. No to everything. I can't be around any more people, and this is completely understandable, especially if you're an introvert or especially if you are someone kinda like me who needs to recharge in solitude, then that might be a very common response. And there's nothing wrong with that unless it continues, and we'll talk about that in a second.

The other place it can hit us is our brain. So what's happening cognitively? Do we have periods where we can't focus? Are we getting brain fog? Are we forgetting things? Are we feeling a lack of motivation? I have definitely gone through seasons with that. So all of these things are examples of what your crash can look like.

One of my kids is an entrepreneur at heart, and he has been working on developing a company and all of the things that go into that. And what I see in him is he will have just grinded days and he was—I mean like he, this was over the summer, he was living at home and he would go, I don't even know where he'd go, the coffee shop or something like that and just bang stuff out and come home all high on what he did. And the next day he would say, I'm just rotting today. I can't do anything. And he would feel badly because he had had so much productivity the day before and couldn't muster it up to have that. Now obviously that's a very, very small sliver of time, but his body was recalibrating and I was able to share with him, you know, you're not the only one that this happens to.

I remember when I launched my second book, Your CORE Strength. And this is, I don't know why I remember this, but the book was released in late April of 2024. In February, we were finishing up all of the edits. I was, we were getting everything done and I am humming along and getting, and all of the things that go into book launch and just, there's a lot of behind the scenes stuff and just going and humming and buzzing. Yeah. And I remember thinking at one point, there's just like this little thought flew through me and it went, this is not sustainable. And it wasn't. And right after that, I had preemptively made an appointment with my therapist. Thank God for just the Holy Spirit working in me to say, you're gonna need some help. You're gonna need some support. And when I was there working through some stuff with her, she said, of course you're feeling this way. You have been in a high-amp zone for months, your body is going to recalibrate and there is neuroscience with that.

So before I get into that neuroscience, I want to circle back to what I said I was gonna talk about, which is why we get sick after stressful seasons. You hear about this all the time. This is when our kids go to college and they come home after final exams. They're sick, they're not feeling well because when we are stressed for a long amount of time, we've got that cortisol, that stress running through our system. Well, cortisol suppresses your immune function during acute stress because your body is trying to prioritize like survival, like go survive, get this done. You know? I mean, everybody knows your body doesn't know the difference between traffic and a bear chasing you or whatever the animal of choice is on that, but your cortisol is like, yeah, we're not gonna worry about immunity, we're worrying about surviving. And then when the stress ends, your immune system will come back. However, you're totally depleted. In fact, studies show an increased susceptibility to upper respiratory infections, cold sores, just other infections in the days and weeks following high stress periods. Again, finals are over, Christmas break, you come home, your kid gets sick. It's like, why can't you take better care of yourself? Well, it's because they're really stressed out.

And this is called the Let-Down Effect. Apparently there is a name for it. It's just a documented phenomenon where people get sick after these exams, after big projects. So this is not new, and there is research to back up that yes, we get sick after we have stressful seasons.

Now let's talk about the neuroscience and I, I'm sorry, I'm kind of jumping around here a little bit, but I wasn't sure how to categorize all of this. This whole post-adrenaline drop. So in that high stress season, we've got elevated cortisol, we've got more adrenaline, we've got more dopamine, right? Like in my book launch season. Okay, I gotta get this done. April. Yes, I'm here. You know, I'm socials done, images done, editing done. And then for me with the checkbox, like, Ooh, I love a checkbox. You know, done—just dopamine, done—dopamine. So all of that from all of the deadlines and all of the things that you have to do, then your brain starts to adapt to this and it's like, oh, this is our, this is our state. This is where we are. Okay. And it kind of becomes our new normal. Then when that stress ends and we have the neurochemical drop off, the adrenaline is going down, the dopamine is going down. Then our brain is taking it back down to more of a normal state, but normal—and this is what my therapist described to me—normal feels like depression from that elevated state. So sometimes if we get into that kind of depressive mode in particular, it's not that anything is wrong, it's just that our nervous system is downshifting from overdrive, because overdrive can be in a lot of different seasons like we talked about. You know, it can be the caretaking, it can be the work projects. It can be health challenges of you or a loved one, and then getting back down and downshifting your nervous system. It just takes a minute to do that.

I do think it's important to delineate between chronic and acute stress. So acute stress is more of what we've been talking about, those examples that I gave earlier. It's normally like a period of intensity with an end point. Your body is designed for this, it can handle it. Now, the chronic stress has more no clear end. It has just ongoing elevated cortisol. Your nervous system never gets to reset. And I will say particularly in caretaking situations, it's very conceivable for caregiving to bump into that chronic stress. Caregiving can last a week, it can last 10 years and any or longer, I mean, anywhere in between. So you know your body, you know if it's acute or chronic. So I don't wanna say, I don't wanna put things in too many buckets. Let's just hold, kind of hold all of this loosely of where we are and how things are affecting our unique bodies.

I think one thing to keep in mind is if you get these crashes, perhaps that's part of the recovery with acute stress, because if you're in chronic stress, then you're just stuck in this dysregulated state of constantly being stressed and the crash that you might have isn't necessarily recovery, it's just your body breaking down. So if you're in chronic stress, what I'm gonna talk about today, you know, these little tips and tricks may not be enough. And you may need more systemic change. And that might look like getting professional help, changing jobs, setting boundaries, just building in regular Sabbath rhythms. We'll talk about that here in a little bit, addressing the root issue, if that is controllable. So I don't mean to minimize any of that, but I want to talk more specifically today about those seasons of really high stress. Your body wasn't meant to sustain that high alert, high alert, high alert indefinitely. And so if that is you, then first I just wanna say I'm really sorry because I know that is a lot of people's story. And secondly, I don't want to minimize it with the things that I'm going to offer today because what you're dealing with is heavy and hard. And it deserves more care than something in a podcast episode. And that oftentimes looks like getting some sort of help or support beyond what maybe you're already having right now.

If you've been with me a while, you have probably heard me kind of be all over the place in terms of productivity and rest. There is a line in there, and I am not great quite honestly at either. I am definitely not great at giving myself rest. I am trying to be better at it. I'm trying. And then productivity too. Sometimes I will not be productive because I'm trying to rest and then I'm not getting things done and then I'm stressed out and I mean, it's just, you just kind of can't win sometimes. I'll just say that, but as a Christ follower. And I'm just gonna speak about me here in a second. It is critical to remember that God built rest into creation. It is not a design flaw that we need recovery. Day seven didn't happen because God was tired. All right? He was just modeling the rhythm that we need. God showed us how to rest. Jesus Christ showed us how to rest.

We see Jesus modeling this in Matthew 14:22 and 23. After he fed the 5,000, it says, "Immediately, Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to the other side while he dismissed the crowd. And he had dismissed them, he went up to the mountainside by himself to pray."

After Jesus heard about John the Baptist's death, he withdrew by boat privately to a solitary place. In Luke 5:15 through 16, it says, "Yet the news about him spread all the more so that crowds of people came to hear him and to be healed of their sicknesses. But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed."

This was not a one-off situation. Jesus constantly showed us that when big things happened, we need to carve in the time to rest, to withdraw, however that means. And maybe following and obeying that modeling of rest is a matter of trust in God that he'll still take care of the things even though we still have a laundry list of things to do. And I think it's also worth reminding ourselves, again, talking to me, that my worth does not come from productivity and yours doesn't either. Our worth does not come from finishing the big project, making the good grade, just totally nailing it on caregiving. I mean, you know, we get tired. We get tired. And that we are so loved and valued by God no matter what. When we take the time to be still with him, then we are allowing ourselves to connect with him in a way that he desperately wants, and that increases our trust in him even when we aren't doing anything, even in the stillness.

Unfortunately we often get this counter-cultural message. You know, it's like, no push through. Go do it. Go see, do more. I mean, this is super common. I have to fight against this all the time. I hear this less now, but I mean, for so long you would hear, oh, I'll sleep when I'm dead. Yeah, well, you're gonna die faster if you're not sleeping. I mean, thankfully we have started to reframe either that or we're just getting wiser with our age, but you know, like this, this whole concept of like, no, I'm just going to, I'm just gonna go and being busy is being important. I, okay, he doesn't listen to this podcast so I can say this, but I fight the urge that when my husband is coming home, if I'm not doing something, like I feel like I need to get up and do something, like, I feel like I need to be getting up and like wiping the tables or something. Why? He doesn't care. He loves me no matter what, but there's this, this thought of like, oh, I gotta be, I gotta be busy, because that's gonna show, that's gonna show that I'm productive and that I'm doing important things.

And the other thing that I think it's really important for us to remember is this post-stress crash does not mean you're weak. It's your body's way of recalibrating and resetting so that you can continue on at a more moderate pace with success.

So how do we do that? Well, first of all, I think we need to acknowledge that it's coming when possible. Sometimes we know when stressful seasons are going to end, and sometimes we don't really know. In my case for this week that this episode was dropping, I knew, so I am pulling things back and yes, I'm recording a week ahead of time because I wanna get some things done so I can take it easy this next week and just the way that things are lining up in November and with the US Thanksgiving, I'm gonna have a couple weeks of downtime now. Yes, my family's coming in, but we're pretty low key when it comes to Thanksgiving. But I'm gonna take advantage of these next few weeks. So that's the first thing. Acknowledge that it's coming.

Secondly, kind of in tandem with that, if you have control over your schedule and you have something else that is demanding on the tail of whatever it is that you're working on, can you add in a gap? Can you add in some extra time so that you're not scheduling the next demanding thing right after that?

Practically speaking, can you stock your home with some really easy nourishing foods? I know that seems simple, but when we're just kind of going and then we don't feel like doing anything because we're exhausted. Well, what's the easiest thing to do? Go through the drive-through window, which yes, is food, but is that going to be providing our body and our brain the nutrients that we need to facilitate the recovery? Probably not. And by the way, if you don't already have it, I do have a Protein Prep Playbook that I put together that will help you get high protein like entrees, just like getting the protein. These are not meals. This isn't a meal plan, but it's what can you do ahead of time so that you can freeze? Because that is the only way that I get enough protein on the days that I do, is because I have frozen various things and they're either cooked or they're prepped and they're ready to, they're ready to go. But you can get that at gracedhealth.com/protein-playbook. I will put that in the show notes, but that is a resource that you can grab, you can do ahead of time, so that way when you're tired and you still wanna have those nourishing foods, you can pull something out of the freezer and either reheat it or let it thaw, or whatever you need to do for that particular thing.

And then finally, let's make sure that our mind and our expectations are ready. So whatever you think that you're normally gonna be able to do, can you lower them? Tell yourself it's okay if I don't get all of the things done because I am letting my body recalibrate. I am letting my mind recalibrate. Or probably both of them.

During this transition, I do think it is really helpful if you can get some gentle movement in, so that is walks, that is stretching. If you have my Be Complete program, you can do that. If you have Strong and Vibrant at Home, that online course, pull up some of the Be Completes, pull up some of the Core Balance Stretch, pull up the stretch. I mean, depends on what you are needing. Any of the InstaCare videos that I have on there, but any of those things are a great way to keep your body moving because our body is meant to move, but not so much that it's not what we need for that time.

Obviously, prioritize your sleep if you can. With your meals, try to get your protein, your carbs, and your healthy fats in every meal so you're having a lot of balance. Try and eat a lot of different plants, not just vegetables, you know, but the plants. So yes, vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, legumes, beans, grains, all of that kind of stuff. That's just gonna be helpful in so many different areas of your body.

If you're having a deep pullback, then can you maybe limit your decision making? Can you push some things off? If you're not in the right state of mind, then you're probably not going to make the best decision for you.

I was just walking with a girlfriend this morning and I told her I'm trying to say yes to more things. I recognize how important connection is. This, this friend group is so smart and I love them so much and I just don't see them very often. If we were talking about the same conversation that we were having, and I was in a post-season crash. See, remember, I'm still, I'm still bridging. I'm still in between the two as I'm recording because I'm recording before, but if we're talking about an event and I am tired, what am I gonna do? I'm gonna say no because I don't wanna do that. When the reality is by the time that event came, I'd probably be ready to do that. So decisions, you know, think about the decisions that you're making and see if you can wait until you're more neutralized to make those decisions.

And finally, I feel like I can't not mention gratitude and praise and worship as it feels authentic to you. You know, it is really hard to have that state of anxiety when we are being intentional about being grateful. When we are intentional about offering praise and worshiping the God that we have. Does that mean that's gonna prevent us from having that dip, from having a little dip of depression or anxiety or something like that? No, not necessarily. However, it sure is a wonderful approach and will help us continue to renew our mind on the things that are of God and not maybe what our brain is wanting to say, because sometimes our brain takes over and it's not right and I hate saying that, but you know, sometimes we can't listen to our brain. We can't listen to what we think. We need to think about what God says about us and what God asks us to do, including rest and be still.

I know I'm using this term "be still" a lot. And if you wanna hear more about that, you can go back to one of my way, way early episodes. It was back in season three, episode seven called "How I Heard From God Without Spending Time in Prayer or Worship." If you're watching on YouTube, unfortunately I don't have that on YouTube, but you can go listen on any of your favorite podcast players.

And I can't leave you without saying there are times that things like this will work. There are times that you need more help and there is nothing wrong with getting more help. So everything I'm sharing today is about normal nervous system recovery. But if you are having a situation where that crash doesn't lift after two or three weeks, if you are having thoughts of self-harm, that your life isn't worth living—yes, it is. It absolutely is. If you can't function, if you're having really bad physical symptoms that are concerning, or if you're using food or alcohol or shopping or in ways that, you know, maybe are scaring you. Or you think, Ooh, this is not a good relationship. I really encourage you to seek professional help because there are people who are way more qualified than I am to help walk you through and to help you get that system recalibrated.

Remember, these crashes are not failure. It is evidence that you pushed hard and that your body is wise enough to force recovery. If you fight it, it's probably gonna make it worse. This is part of being human with a nervous system. God gave us all of these things to work together so that we can try and achieve a system that has resilience and longevity. And part of stewarding our body is giving it rest, especially after seasons of high stress.

If you're watching on YouTube, I would love to hear any stories you have of when you had super high season and then you crashed. Mostly because I think it's helpful for us to identify those, not because I'm asking you to like focus on the negative, but sometimes it's helpful to look at our past and recognize what was happening so that when it happens again in the future, we can identify it and we can normalize it and have the words for it. And if you are on my email list, then in today's email that tells you exactly what is coming, then just hit reply and tell me. And by the way, if you are not on my email list, I would love for you to join. Go over to gracedhealth.com/podcast and put in your first name and your email address, and you will get the sneak peek every Tuesday morning when I release an episode. Okay, That is all for today. Go out there and have a graced day.