The Let-down Effect

by Sonya Spillmann | March 2022

Friend, via text: Hey, how was your week?

Me:

Friend:

Me:

I’m not sure how to respond, so I sit with my phone in my hand until my eyes drift to the trees in my backyard. The robins are back. So are the bluejays. This is a good friend, so I know I can trust her, I can be honest. But as this text references, it’s been at least a week since we talked. And in this moment I’m wondering: how honest should I be?  

Should I tell her I cried in the cereal aisle at Costco? And later in my kitchen while shredding cheese? Should I mention I’ve been listening to rap music at decibel levels sure to damage my hearing while vacuuming—frustrated and angry and sad over too much I don’t even know how to name? Would she understand what I meant if I said I’m forgetting appointments again? 

I’m afraid to admit any of this, though, for how it will make me look. Because on the surface, my life seems fine. Healthy kids. Roof over our heads. Bills paid. Food in the fridge. But I can feel it in my bones—something isn’t right.    

Me: I’m overwhelmed. 

This seems to me the most true response, the most concise. I put the phone down and move towards my next obligation, all the while asking myself: what, exactly, is causing the overwhelm? Why, exactly, do I feel like this? 

Why am I not jumping for joy that my kids are in school again and I have a minute to breathe and I am no longer tracking covid numbers like a maniac or counting down days until my next surgery or gluing myself to the interminable news cycle? 

I used to be a trauma nurse. I worked in an adult ICU and did shift rotations of 12 hour days and 12 hour nights. I’d try my best to schedule three weeks of nights, three weeks of days, but it rarely worked out that way. I’d often work three twelve-hour days, have a few days off, then come back to work on nights, then double back to day-shift just 36 hours later. I was young, and it was rough, but I was fine. Overall. 

I could work for six, seven months like this. Back and forth, back and forth. Days to nights, nights to days—dealing with high acuity patients, “the sickest of the sick” we’d like to say. Everyone on a ventilator with IV medications needing close titration hour to hour, sometimes minute to minute. Some shifts, I didn’t get a chance to use the bathroom. I had no choice but to bring my A game to work. And it was fine. I was fine. Overall. I compartmentalized like a boss and always went home to eat and sleep as if nothing could bother me. 

But then a pattern began: every time I took scheduled time off, which meant I wouldn’t have to be back to work for at least ten or twelve days—without fail—I’d get sick. Head colds. Respiratory infections. The flu. It was as if my body knew I could finally unwind, and with the stress gone, with the need to be “on” removed, I’d fall apart. 

Apparently, this is a real phenomenon called the Let-Down Effect. It’s pretty common, and seen in people after a stressful event subsides. Basically, we hold it together until life slows down, until our bodies start to relax. And then in that calm, we’re nailed with all that the stress has kept at bay. 

Does this sound familiar? 

For the last two years, we have pivoted and managed, white knuckled and shoved down, cried in the shower and taken alllllll the deep breaths. But we’re not doing much of any of those things anymore. At least for the time being. Instead, many of us are looking back and blinking hard and thinking, Wow, what was that? 

Whatever it was, it was rough for most of us. Our bodies feel it. And so do our minds. 

Right now, I’m pretty sure I’m in a mental and emotional Let-Down Effect. I feel like I’m falling apart a little. And maybe you are too? 

Same friend, via text: I’m here for you.

I don’t know if research backs this up, but at least for a moment, that one little phrase helped. Feeling connected helped. Admitting what I’m feeling and having someone hear me helped. In time, I know we’ll be okay. 

But until then, we still need each other. Maybe now more than ever. 

Here for you, 

Sonya

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