Shingles is very strongly linked to stress / it's super common for outbreaks to occur in response to stress (opportunistic buggers, most viruses).
The physiological reason for this is 2fold; first off/most basically; the body shuts off the immune response in response to stress (does no good to survive pneumonia if you've been eaten by the bear), as well as several other systems when it's converting from the parasympathetic (rest/digest) to the sympathetic nervous system (fight/flight). Secondly, the body has a natural order of stress response that varies from person to person (hives, high blood pressure, nausea, etc.), that are all part of that first bit: the systems that the body shuts off in order to free up energy for use in an emergency. Under extreme stress it shuts them all off, hard and fast (you'll void your digestive system, heart rate will skyrocket, breath rate ditto, immune shuts off, etc.), under lower stress it tends to shut them down in a certain order. (But that order changes for everyone. Which is why some people get ulcers while other people have high blood pressure).
Since you get shingles outbreaks during short extremely high bouts of stress? I can almost guarantee you either get sick, or struggle with allergies, on a fairly regular basis during periods of lower stress. Meaning that the system your body throws offline first is your immune system. If not? If, instead you get GI tract issues (loss of appetitie, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea), or insomnia, or muscle fatigue, or, or, or? Then that tells you your body saves shutting your immune system down for fireworks, and instead steals energy from one or more of these other systems.
It's really common for people who suffer from regular shingles outbreaks to A) be given an Rx of 5-15 pills anti-anxiety meds to keep on hand, or B) to pick up a short script for things like weddings to be used in conjunction with a prophylactic dose of antivirals, or C) just to do the prophylactic dose alone.
