Explore the phenomenon known as stress spiral, which can lead to numerous negative events occurring simultaneously. Uncover why it’s happening and understand your preventative tools for regaining peace. 

When I look back at the worst times in my life, one thing stands out: why did so many disasters always occur at once? Though I tell myself with wry affection that lightning loves to strike the same damaged tree twice, I recognize my agency when I examine the role I’ve unwittingly played in times of duress. So today I will explore this — how did I contribute to the snowball effect of disasters in my life? (I know, a typical Monday morning question.)

If you don’t understand what I’m saying, let’s try a platitude: when it rains, it pours. In other words, one bad thing doesn’t occur in isolation, it’s accompanied by an avalanche of affliction. There are a number of names that this phenomena can be dubbed, anything from stress spiral to cognitive overload to the rather catchy crisis cascade. But the outcome is the same. People (and I admit, I have been one of them) find themselves ensnared in a torpedo of stress in which they find themselves clutching for solid ground among a dozen little fires that they can’t seem to put out fast enough before the next one springs up. 

Unfortunately (and I promise this is my last platitude today), life is going to keep dropping shoes. But many potential elements contribute to these doomsday vortexes. And though we are certainly not to blame in many cases for the crises we experience, there are influential factors many of us can be aware of that can mitigate the stress spiral before it reaches catastrophic levels. 

What is Cognitive Overload? Stress Spiral 101 

Cognitive overload occurs when the amount of information or tasks that a person is trying to process exceeds their brain’s capacity to handle it effectively. This overload overwhelms working memory, leading to decreased performance, mental fatigue, and increased stress. It is rooted in cognitive load theory, developed by John Sweller in 1988. Initially applied to instructional design, the theory explains how learning or performance deteriorates when cognitive demands exceed an individual’s working memory capacity. This concept is not limited to learning environments but applies to any situation where excessive mental effort is required.

Our brains, consisting of around 86 billion neurons, process an immense amount of information and control bodily functions. However, when the brain is bombarded with too much data, it can reach a point of information paralysis. According to the Mayo Clinic, responses to cognitive overload can vary, ranging from complete mental paralysis to frustration, anger, passivity, or even occasional understanding. For some, these responses can spiral into panic, creating a stress cycle that leads to further negative effects on their lives.

When cognitive overload occurs, the brain becomes unable to prioritize or effectively process information, leading to a cascade of adverse outcomes, such as emotional dysregulation, decreased productivity, and mental exhaustion. It’s important to recognize these signs and take proactive steps to manage your cognitive load before it spirals out of control.

Cognitive Overload in Action

What does it look like to stress spiral? Picture this: Sarah was juggling a challenging work project, a broken-down car, and a mounting to-do list at home. Overwhelmed by trying to manage everything, her mind started spiraling. Instead of tackling one issue at a time, she felt frustrated and paralyzed by the sheer volume of problems. The car breakdown felt like the final straw, and she began to panic, imagining worst-case scenarios like being late to a family event or being fired.

As her stress levels grew, she became irritable at work and divided her attention between projects. This resulted in improperly attending to tasks and snapping at her family. Rather than handle one thing at a time, Sarah ended up with numerous incomplete or poorly executed assignments, as she was unable to think clearly or prioritize. The mental overload left her emotionally drained, and her inability to manage one issue led to more frustration and a deeper stress spiral that impacted multiple areas of her life.

Does this situation feel familiar? Read on to learn not just how to avoid it, but why such overload occurs in the first place.

10 Potential Explanations for Cognitive Overload

Now that we’ve defined cognitive overload, let’s examine the origins of this phenomenon. If you’re familiar with any of my writing, it will come as no surprise that I am a firm believer that in order to get over major issues, you must face and understand it. So I believe in order to break the pattern of stress spiraling, you need to uncover why you resort to it in the first place. 

1. Stress Weakens Cognitive & Emotional Resilience

Are there neurological explanations for your cognitive overload? Well, when you’re under high stress, your ability to cope with additional challenges diminishes. As Amy F.T. Arnsten explored in a 2009 piece for Nature Reviews Neuroscience, chronic stress impairs the prefrontal cortex function. (Which is responsible for rational decision-making.) Meanwhile, increasing activity in the amygdala heightens emotional reactivity. 

Overall, stress reduces cognitive flexibility, emotional regulation, and problem-solving skills, which can make it feel like things are spiraling out of control. So, if you’re experiencing cognitive overload, it might be the way your brain is reacting. (Fortunately, brains can be rewired.)

2. Negativity Bias Makes Problems Feel Amplified

Ever heard of the term negativity bias? Unfortunately, psychologists have found that humans are hardwired to focus more on negative experiences than positive ones. This bias makes bad events seem more prominent and overwhelming, especially when several occur close together. (Have you ever given someone 12 compliments and one piece of constructive criticism? Which comment did they focus on the most?) 

We don’t see the world as it is, we see it as we are
– Anaïs Nin

3. Cognitive Distortions Under Stress

At this point, it probably won’t come as a surprise that stress distorts reality. During difficult times, cognitive distortions like catastrophizing or black-and-white thinking become more common. These distortions lead people to believe that things are worse than they are, or that bad events are part of a larger pattern rather than isolated incidents. Cognitive overload can easily breed when this trail of thought is given power. 

4. Emotional Repression Increases the Likelihood of Breakdown

For some, especially trauma survivors, dissociation becomes a defense mechanism for shielding oneself in life. Unfortunately, repressing emotions often leads to emotional buildup and eventual breakdowns. Research shows that bottling up emotions over time weakens mental health, leading to outbursts or emotional collapse when faced with external stressors. Furthermore, emotional suppression is associated with higher levels of anxiety and depression, as well as poor coping mechanisms.

5. The “Broken Windows” Theory of Life

Studies in organizational behavior and psychology indicate that unresolved minor stresses can compound, resulting in larger-scale breakdowns. This dates back to endocrinologist pioneer Hans Selye’s work on stress in the 70s, particularly his General Adaptation Syndrome, which outlines how ongoing stress can accumulate and result in eventual breakdowns.

Small, unresolved problems compound over time, leading to more significant breakdowns. This concept mirrors the broken windows theory in criminology, where small signs of disorder lead to larger issues. What’s the takeaway? If little problems in life aren’t addressed, they may snowball into larger crises.

6. Learned Helplessness in Crisis Situations

Furthermore, Martin Seligman’s research on learned helplessness demonstrates how prolonged exposure to uncontrolled stress can lead to feelings of powerlessness that compact cognitive overload. When many things go wrong at once, people sometimes develop a sense of helplessness, feeling they have no control over the situation. This concept, termed learned helplessness, can make it feel like bad things keep happening even when some aspects are within our control.

7. Confirmation Bias — Seeing Patterns Where None Exist

Studies show that humans have a strong tendency to search for patterns in random data, leading to mistaken conclusions about the nature of events. For example, sports fans might associate a token such as a lucky jersey or a game day ritual with influencing the winning chances of their favorite team. (Or for some misogyny, they might blame the appearance of a player’s wife or girlfriend for the team losing.)

When life feels chaotic, people tend to seek patterns or reasons, even where randomness is at play. Confirmation bias therefore can lead to people believing that multiple negative events are connected or that “things always go wrong” during bad times. Therefore, this view of disaster might simply be created.

8. Emotional Contagion During Difficult Times

Ever heard of the emotional contagion theory? Negative emotions, especially in shared environments like workplaces or families, can spread like a contagion. During times of crisis, the negative mood of others can intensify your own stress and make the situation feel worse. Therefore the emotions of others can literally be “caught” like a nasty virus, impacting both individual and group dynamics and accounting for the creation of cognitive overload. 

9. Survivorship Bias — Focusing Only on Failure

Additionally, there is the well-studied cognitive bias known as survivorship bias. This accounts for when people focus solely on the visible negative outcomes and overlook any successes or neutral events that don’t stand out as much. 

Why does this occur? During hard times, people tend to focus solely on what went wrong, often ignoring the positive moments taking place in the background. This creates a skewed perception that amplifies feelings of failure and chaos. It’s important to remember that when you recall an event, you’re not actually remembering the event itself, but rather the last time you thought about it. So, if you continue thinking negatively, the bias strengthens over time.

10. The “Spotlight Effect” of Stress

Lastly, the “spotlight effect” is another potential explanation for cognitive overload. Stress can cause people to overestimate how bad things are or how much others are noticing one’s struggles. This cognitive bias makes challenges feel more significant than they really are, while people feel as though they are being noticed and judged more than they actually are, contributing to cognitive overload. 

Solutions for Mitigating Cognitive Overload

Before we conclude, I’d like to briefly explore the solutions for combatting cognitive overload. For me, understanding how my brain functions allows me to better identify and untangle unhelpful patterns. But if you’re feeling discouraged from the above research, please know that there are steps and solutions for making cognitive overload manageable. 

1. Break Tasks Into Smaller, Manageable Steps: Simplifying complex tasks by breaking them into smaller, sequential steps helps reduce cognitive demands on working memory, making tasks feel less overwhelming.

2. Reduce Multitasking: Attempting to juggle several tasks at once increases cognitive load and reduces efficiency. Focusing on one task at a time minimizes mental strain and avoids the risk of cognitive overload.

3. Practice Mindfulness & Stress Reduction Techniques: Mindfulness, meditation, and breathing exercises help clear mental clutter and reduce the perceived load on working memory, which can enhance cognitive flexibility and emotional regulation.

4. Use External Memory Aids: Offloading cognitive demands onto external tools — such as checklists, notes, or apps — frees up working memory and helps avoid overload.

5. Prioritize What’s Most Important: Prioritizing tasks based on importance and urgency helps avoid overwhelming yourself with too many tasks at once. Completing the most critical tasks reduces mental clutter.

By applying these strategies to both your personal and professional personas, you can reduce the mental burden and better manage situations that might otherwise lead to cognitive overload.

Closing Words on Cognitive Overload

As I wrap up, I want to stress that I am not blaming people for the positions they are in. I know very well how difficult it is to ask for help in times of duress, which is why I believe one of the answers to avoiding cognitive overload is embracing vulnerability. When we force ourselves to face our uncomfortable emotions rather than hide from them, we can restore, resolve, or make peace with them — as opposed to waiting for a future avalanche.

Therefore, my advice to avoid cognitive overload is to cultivate emotional regulation and routinely embrace vulnerability through building healthy support systems. Finding our way out of stress spirals can feel daunting, but support systems make a tremendous difference — as long as we don’t rely on other people to pull us out of holes we’ve dug.

When we allow ourselves to be brave, autonomous beings who are capable of asking for help, cognitive overload can significantly diminish.

Continued Reading: Why Can’t I Just Say No? Understand the Reasons