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For many people, hair loss doesn’t happen during a stressful period — it happens months later, often when life has finally slowed down and you’re expecting to feel better again.
If you’ve noticed increased shedding recently, you’re not alone.
Stress-related hair loss commonly appears around three months after a highly stressful event or period, which makes February a particularly common time for people to start noticing changes - especially after the intensity of the end-of-year rush.
The reassuring news?
This type of hair loss is usually temporary, and with the right support, your hair can recover.
What Is Stress-Related Hair Loss?
Stress-related hair loss is most commonly a condition called Telogen effluvium.
In simple terms, it occurs when a significant stressor causes a larger-than-normal number of hairs to prematurely shift into the shedding phase of the hair growth cycle, in order to conserve energy that your body needs to cope with stress.
Because hair growth works through a cycle, the shedding typically begins 8–12 weeks after the triggering event which is why it can feel sudden, confusing, and quite emotionally confronting.
My Personal Experience With Stress-Related Hair Loss
I first experienced stress-related hair loss in my early twenties. When I was 20 years old, I went through an extremely demanding and stressful period — and every few months for the next 5 years, I noticed I was losing huge amounts of hair.
At the time, I was an apprentice hairdresser and didn’t yet have the knowledge or experience to understand how stress affects hair and the growth cycle - and I went through years of worrying and waiting for the shedding to start and finish. Looking back, the experience played a major part in the development of the ROBE range - but the time, it felt frightening and out of my control.
What ultimately helped me was understanding how the hair growth cycle actually works, and what the body needs in order to:
• break the excessive shedding cycle
• rebuild resilience in the follicles
• and support healthy regrowth over time
That knowledge changed the way I approached hair care forever — not just as a stylist, but as someone who deeply understands the emotional impact hair loss can have.
How Much Hair Loss Is Normal — and When Is It Excessive?
It’s completely normal to shed 50–100 hairs per day.
You might notice this more:
• on wash days (especially if you’re wearing your hair up in-between washes, when the 50-100 hairs aren’t able to shed freely each day)
• when brushing or styling
• during seasonal changes
Stress-related hair loss tends to feel different.
Common signs include:
• noticeably more hair coming out in the shower or brush
• thinning through the part or around the hairline
• a ponytail that feels smaller than usual
• shedding that continues consistently for weeks
If you’re unsure, or if shedding feels extreme or prolonged, it’s always worth seeking medical guidance.
What Can Trigger Stress-Related Hair Loss?
Stress on the body isn’t only emotional — it can also be physical.
Common triggers include:
• illness or infection (even a severe bout of the flu)
• surgery or hospitalisation
• major life changes
• burnout or chronic fatigue
• nutritional depletion
*If in doubt, I always recommend seeing your GP for a blood test to check iron, vitamin and mineral levels, thyroid function, and overall health markers.
Reframing Hair Loss (and Reducing the Distress Around It)
One of the hardest parts of stress-related hair loss is the anxiety it creates — which can unfortunately fuel the cycle further.
A gentle, but powerful reframe is this:
Shedding hair means the cycle is completing - and making space for new growth.
The goal isn’t just to try to stop shedding as quickly as possible, but to support the scalp and follicles so new hair can grow back stronger, and be more resilient to any stressful periods you encounter in the future.
Taking small, consistent actions also helps to restore a sense of control over the situation - and that matters more than most people realise.
How to Support Your Hair Through Stress-Related Shedding
1. Focus on Scalp Health First
Healthy hair growth starts at the scalp.
Using targeted scalp treatments like The Tonic - which I created specifically to help support and strengthen follicles during periods of increased shedding.
The Tonic is formulated with gentle, stimulating and antioxidant-rich ingredients to:
• boost scalp circulation
• nourish and strengthen follicles
• help anchor hair more securely
• support the new growth phase
Consistency is key here - daily use supports long-term results.
Once you feel that you've stabilised your hair loss, you can reduce your application to 2-3 times per week for maintenance.
2. Introduce Gentle Scalp Massage
You can use your hands for this, or the Scalp Brush - which I purposefully made to be soft and flexible, making it gentle on sensitive scalps.
Scalp massage can:
• relieve physical tension
• improve blood flow
• support nutrient delivery to follicles
You may notice a few hairs shed during massage — this is completely normal.
Those hairs were already in the shedding phase and releasing them allows the next growth cycle to begin.
3. Choose Growth-Supportive Haircare
Using the Lengthening or Thickening ranges - or a combination of both - can help:
• strengthen fragile strands
• support your hair density
• improve the appearance of fullness while regrowth occurs
The Thickening range is extremely gentle and also helps the hair to look and feel fuller in the short term - while it encourages thicker hair over the long-term too.
The Thickening and Lengthening ranges both also help to reduce breakage and keep hair feeling healthier as new growth comes through.
4. Support Your Body From the Inside
Hair is often the first place the body shows signs of stress or depletion - because stress can deplete many of the nutrients that our body needs to keep our hair healthy.
Key foundations:
• adequate protein, healthy fats, and nutrient intake
One of the things that helped me during my stress-related hair loss was going for a session with a nutritionist.
She helped me a by looking over my eating habits, and guided me towards simple ways to include foods into my diet that help to nourish my hair (interestingly, they all help your body to manage depletion from stress, too - eggs, greens, and nuts, for example.)
Since I've now realised I'm probably someone who is quite sensitive to stress, I try to make sure I regularly take a greens powder supplement, a good quality multivitamin, and eat enough protein each day in order to make sure that my body has all of the nutrients it needs to support healthy hair growth each day.
• gentle stress-management tools ( like breathwork, meditation and mindfulness practices) are all things that have greatly helped me manage my stress, and are now also part of my daily routine.
• prioritising adequate sleep and rest
Before any of my experiences with hairloss, I viewed these things as luxuries - but now I know that they’re all playing a major part of the hair-growth equation, and I work them into my life as often as possible.
The Most Important Thing to Remember
One thing that I’ve learnt throughout my own personal health and hair-loss experiences is to listen to my body when it’s trying to tell me something.
Stress-related hair loss could be your body’s way of asking you to look for ways to slow down a little bit and pour back into your own cup.
With patience, consistency, and the right support, your hair will recover - and in my experience: often healthier and stronger than before.
If you’re navigating this right now, know that you’re not alone - and that these small, supportive steps really do add up.
You’ve got this!
Lx
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