Life Happening All at Once? A Neurodivergent Guide to Understanding High Stress Times
There is a specific kind of internal weather that arrives when major life transitions converge at once. Usually, we are told that things like moving to a new home, getting married, or starting a fresh career path are good stressors. They are the milestones we celebrate with champagne and greeting cards. But for those of us with neurodivergent brains, the nervous system doesn't always distinguish between a happy threat to our routine and a bad one. It just sees a massive, looming disruption to the predictable patterns that keep us regulated.
Lately, I have been living in the center of this particular storm. Between the logistics of a move and the shifting professional landscape, I have found myself doing a very ungraceful dance through every emotional and behavioral challenge I usually spend my time helping others navigate. It is one thing to write about these concepts professionally and have absolute clarity about what is going on and how to manage it. It is quite another to realize you have been staring at a box of kitchen utensils for twenty minutes because your brain has lost the ability to categorize spoons.
The Shrunken Window Effect
When stress levels rise, our window of tolerance often shrinks. Things that were manageable last month suddenly feel like climbing Everest. For me, this has looked like a total collapse of executive functioning skills. I am currently the person who walks into a room with a very specific mission, only to stand in the center of the floor wondering if I lived there or was just visiting. My working memory has essentially decided to call it quits, leaving me with a trail of half-finished tasks and forgotten passwords.
When executive functioning fails, it isn't just about being disorganized. It’s the physiological inability to sequence tasks. You know you need to pack the bathroom, but the sheer number of steps involved i.e., finding boxes, tape, sorting liquids from solids, creates a mental bottleneck. You end up sitting on the floor scrolling through your phone, not because you’re lazy, but because your internal processor is overheating.
Effects of Stress on Our System
High-level stress tends to amplify the traits we usually work so hard to manage. In the middle of these transitions, my internal world has become a bit of a hall of mirrors:
Executive Functioning and Emotional Dysregulation: When the prefrontal cortex is busy trying to manage a move and career goals, it has very little bandwidth left for top-down emotional regulation. Small setbacks, like a lost roll of packing tape, can trigger a level of frustration or despair that feels entirely disproportionate. It’s like the volume knob on every feeling has been ripped off at the highest setting.
Rejection Sensitivity: When regulated, I can handle a delayed email or a vague text. When dysregulated, that same delayed response feels like a definitive tally of my failures. The brain begins to anticipate social rejection in every interaction, turning a simple logistical question from a partner or colleague into a perceived critique of my character.
The Cost of Masking: In the midst of big life events like weddings or new jobs, the pressure to appear normal is immense. We mask our struggle to fit the celebratory or professional expectations of others. But masking is an expensive energy drain. By the time I’m done pretending I’m not overwhelmed in a social setting, my battery isn't just low, it’s damaged.
Sensory Overload: When the brain is already burdened from big decisions, it loses the ability to filter out the small inputs. The sound of the refrigerator humming or the texture of a specific pair of socks becomes intolerable. In this state, the world feels too loud, too bright, and generally too much. The visual clutter of moving boxes alone is enough to trigger a sensory shutdown.
Dissociation: When the fight or flight response stays active for too long, the body eventually hits the emergency shutoff switch. This leads to feeling foggy, numb, or strangely detached from the very events I’m supposed to be celebrating. I find myself watching myself pack a box as if I’m a character in a movie, disconnected from my own hands.
Gentle Ways to Come Back
If you are currently in the middle of a major life transition and feel like you are failing at adulting, please know that your nervous system is simply doing its job. It is trying to protect you from perceived instability.
Restoration isn't about pushing harder; it’s about narrowing your focus to the smallest possible unit of safety. Sometimes that means:
Lengthening the exhale: Not a complex meditation, just making the breath out longer than the breath in to signal safety to the vagus nerve.
Tactile grounding: Using deep pressure or even a heavy blanket to remind your body where it ends and the world begins.
Radical permission: Giving yourself permission to have a low executive function day. If all you did was exist while your brain tried to process a thousand changes, that is enough.
We can be both excited for the new chapter and completely overwhelmed by it. Both things can be true at the same time. The goal isn't to move through these transitions perfectly, it's just to move through them with as much self-compassion as we can muster.