The Stress Cycle: What It Is and Why It Matters for ADHD
- Mary Rawson Foreman, PhD
- 4 days ago
- 3 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
Mary Rawson Foreman, PhD · Psychologist in Kirkland · 3 min read
If you have ever gotten through something stressful, a hard conversation, a long commute, a tense meeting, and still felt wound up hours later, there is a reason for that. Your body did not get the memo that the threat was over.
Emily and Amelia Nagoski write about this in their book Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle, and it is one of those concepts that once you understand it, you cannot unsee it. I have been thinking about it in the context of my work with adults with ADHD ever since, and I want to spend a few posts breaking it down.
What the Stress Cycle Actually Is
The Nagoskis make a distinction that most of us were never taught: the stressor and the stress are not the same thing.
The stressor is whatever triggered the response, the email, the deadline, the conflict, the overwhelm. The stress is a physiological process that starts in your body the moment your brain registers a threat. It is a cycle with a beginning, a middle, and an end. The problem is that most of us deal with the stressor but we never actually complete the cycle. We resolve the situation but our nervous system is still running the program.
Think of it this way. Your body does not speak in emails or calendar conflicts. It speaks in lions. When a threat appears, your system mobilizes: heart rate up, muscles ready, attention narrowed. That is the beginning of the cycle. The middle is the experience of moving through the threat. The end is what the Nagoskis call completing the cycle, the physiological signal to your body that you made it, that you are safe, that it can stand down.
When that ending never comes, the stress stays in the body. Not as a memory or a worry, but as a physical state of unfinished business.
Why Most of Us Never Finish What We Started
Modern stressors are not lions. They do not end cleanly. The email chain continues. The relationship tension does not resolve in one conversation. The financial worry does not disappear after one good month. We move from one stressor to the next without our bodies ever getting a clear signal that the coast is clear.
And here is what I see in my practice, particularly in ADHD therapy and ADHD treatment work: adults with ADHD are often cycling through stressors at a faster rate than neurotypical adults. Rejection sensitivity, emotional dysregulation, time pressure, and the accumulated weight of years of feeling behind all of it keeps the stress response activated. The cycle does not complete because the nervous system never gets a long enough break to register safety.
What this looks like in real life: you finally sit down to relax and you cannot. You feel irritable even when nothing is technically wrong. You are exhausted but wired. You snap at someone you love over something small. That is not a character flaw. That is an incomplete stress cycle.
What Completing the Cycle Actually Looks Like
This is where the Nagoskis' work becomes genuinely useful. Completing the cycle does not require resolving the stressor. It requires giving your body the signal it is waiting for, the one that says the threat has passed.
That signal can come through movement, breath, physical affection, crying, creative expression, or laughter. Not as metaphors for self-care, but as literal physiological inputs that tell your nervous system you can stop running now.
Next time, I will go deeper into why ADHD specifically makes it harder to complete the cycle, and what that means for treatment. But for now, I want you to sit with one question: when did your body last get a clear signal that you were safe?
Want to hear it directly from the authors? Emily and Amelia Nagoski have a podcast where they go even deeper on these ideas. These two episodes are a great place to start.
If this resonates and you are curious about ADHD therapy, ADHD treatment, or evaluation with a psychologist in Kirkland, I would love to connect. Free 20-minute consultation, no pressure.
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