Emotional Burnout and Completing the Stress Cycle

Author: Millie Galvin, LPC-Associate

You may have noticed that even after a stressful moment passes, your body doesn’t always settle. We live in a culture that talks constantly about “stress management”. We talk far less about completing the stress cycle.

In a podcast conversation, Brené Brown sat down with Drs. Emily and Amelia Nagoski to discuss emotional burnout and how we can move through the emotional exhaustion. Their work offers an important reframe: burnout is not simply about “having too much to do.” It is often about having too many incomplete stress responses stored in the body. 

~ Let’s slow that down ~ 

Emotions = Automatic and Instantaneous 

Emotions are not logical, nor are they something we choose. 

They are automatic physiological responses designed to help us survive. 

When something stressful happens, your nervous system reacts instantly. Heart rate shifts. Hormones release. Muscles prepare. This activation happens before logic has a chance to weigh in. 

You cannot stop the initial wave of an emotion any more than you can stop your pupils from adjusting to light. 

What you can influence is what happens next: whether the surge of emotion gets processed or suppressed. 

Emotions Are Like Tunnels 

A helpful metaphor from the Nagoski sisters: emotions are like tunnels. 

1. You enter. 

2. You move through. 

3. You exit. 

When allowed to run their course, emotions are self-limiting. The nervous system activates and then settles. But many of us interrupt this process. We distract, minimize, intellectualize, or push through. We tell ourselves to “calm down” or “be grateful” or “get over it.” 

The problem isn’t feeling emotions. The problem comes from getting stuck inside them. Instead of moving through the tunnel, we pitch a tent inside it.

What Is the Stress Cycle? 

The stress cycle is the biological process of activating in response to threat and deactivating once safety is restored. In earlier stages of human evolution, stress often ended physically. You ran. You fought. You escaped. Today, many stressors are ongoing and relational: emails, deadlines, parenting demands, financial pressure. 

Even when a stressor ends, the body may continue to hold it. 

When we don’t complete the stress response physiologically, our nervous system remains in a subtle state of activation. Over time, this builds into emotional exhaustion. 

Emotional Burnout: When We Stay in the Tunnel 

Burnout is often described as feeling drained, detached, or chronically overwhelmed. 

But beneath that experience is a nervous system that has not been given the opportunity to complete what it started. Burnout accumulates from unprocessed emotional activation. 

If anger never gets expressed safely, it lingers. 

If grief never gets felt fully, it hardens. 

If anxiety never gets metabolized, it hums in the background. 

We become stuck in the tunnel. 

How Do We Complete the Stress Cycle? 

Completing the stress cycle does not require solving the problem. It requires signaling to the body that it is safe enough to stand down. 

This often happens physiologically: 

● Physical movement 

● Deep, slow breathing 

● Crying 

● Laughter 

● Genuine connection 

● Creative expression 

● Intentional rest 

**Notice that none of these are cognitive strategies. They are physiological. You can think about stress all day. But the body needs an experience of resolution. 

Allowing Emotion Instead of Avoiding It

Emotional permission can be super powerful. 

When we allow ourselves to feel sadness without rushing to fix it… 

When we sit with anger without shaming it… 

When we acknowledge fear without dismissing it… 

We begin walking through the tunnel rather than avoiding it. 

Emotions that are permitted tend to shift. 

Emotions that are avoided tend to linger. 

If you are feeling burned out, consider this possibility: it may mean your nervous system has been carrying unfinished cycles. 

Emotions are not meant to be permanent residences. They are tunnels we move through. 

If you’re realizing you might be carrying a few unfinished emotional cycles of your own, therapy could be a really meaningful place to explore that. 

I’m currently accepting new clients, and this is the kind of work I love doing!... slowing down, getting curious about what your nervous system has been holding, and helping you move through it with clarity. 

(ALSO give a listen to the podcast that this blog post was inspired by: Brene Brown,08/12/2020) 

<3 Millie

Click HERE to learn more about working with Millie!