Do you feel tense, anxious, and/or overwhelmed more often than not? Are there ongoing challenges or circumstances that make your life more difficult than you would like it to be? Is coping with stress a problem for you?

Everyone will experience at least some stress, and stress isn’t inherently unhealthy or problematic. But if stress is a near constant in your life, especially when it isn’t being effectively managed, you can experience a variety of harmful effects. These can impact every area of your life from your physical and mental health, to your relationships, to how you think about yourself and your abilities.

Stress almost always sends you the message that you’re incapable of handling the challenges you’re facing. Because stress makes it more difficult to respond to challenges and changes, this can act as a self-fulfilling prophecy that increases your stress, both in the moment and in anticipation of the next time you’ll be in a similar situation. Stress can also cause you to have exaggerated beliefs about what you can expect to happen if you fail while making the chances of failure seem more likely than they actually are.

But if you can recognise the signs that you’re experiencing an unhealthy amount of stress and have techniques to challenge the painful and unhelpful message stress sends, then it doesn’t have to be as harmful.

What is stress?

How much do you understand about the function of stress? Do you know what it is and what it does to you? Can you recognise when you’re feeling stressed?

Not everyone experiences stress or reacts to it in the same ways. There are many different sources of stress as well as different ways of responding.

Stress is a natural instinctive response to situations you perceive as threatening to yourself and/or the people you care about, either consciously or subconsciously, that is designed to help you do what is necessary to survive the threat.

When a threat is detected, the brain releases chemicals that prepares your body for action. These include adrenaline and cortisol. Adrenaline activates the muscles and suppresses pain while cortisol facilitates physiological changes. Biological functions the body considers optional, including digestion and immunity, are reduced, your heartrate accelerates, and your neo-cortex – the part of your brain that is responsible for logic, reasoning and self-control – is suppressed.

The purpose of this process is to prepare your body for one of the three stress responses: fight, flight, or freeze. Which you choose depends on what you think will give you the best chance of surviving, whether that’s attacking the threat, getting away from it as quickly as possible, or doing nothing in the hope it will leave you alone.

While these responses make sense in some situations, especially for the types of threats humans used to experience on a regular basis – getting attacked for example – they’re not always suitable for modern ‘threats’. Getting ready to fight a lion, run away from it, or play dead can be an effective response. But if you adopt fight, flight or freeze ahead of an important deadline by becoming aggressive, fantasising about escaping, or not working work on the project, your response is unlikely to benefit you, and will probably make the situation worse.

The stress response is designed for threats that can be quickly dealt with and it’s clear once they’ve passed so your body can signal that the danger is over and return to normal. But when you experience multiple, ongoing ‘threats’ that could potentially be characteristics of your life, resulting in a sustained stress response, there can be unhealthy consequences.

Unlike the threats humans used to face – being attacked, caught in a storm, or experiencing famine – modern threats are often vague and it’s not always obvious when they’ve passed. This could be feeling stressed about adjusting to a new job, the pressures of trying to preserve a complicated but important relationship, working under a toxic boss, the challenges of parenting, and much more. There is always the potential for you to feel worried about something in your life so your mind can be constantly telling you that you’re in danger, resulting in a sustained stress response that does more harm than good.

When you’re in a state of near-constant stress, this is known as having a chronic stress condition. The most common symptoms include:

• Headaches
• Aches and pains
• Stomach aches
• Gastrointestinal issues
• Eating too much or too little
• Difficulty sleeping
• Getting sick often
• Anxiety
• Irritability
• A lack of focus or difficulty concentrating
• Feeling helpless
• Feeling that you don’t have enough time for yourself
• Easily becoming overwhelmed
• Getting annoyed easily
• Excessive worrying

This is by no means an exhaustive list as there are many different and unique ways that individuals can be affected.

Although a single traumatic event or major change can be the primary cause of chronic stress, it’s far more common for a variety of small stressors to accumulate over time. Therefore, the reasons for your stress can seem insignificant and you can even be embarrassed by what is upsetting you, but their quantity and persistent presence is what makes them so challenging.

The sources of stress are often caused by your responsibilities and can be intensified by your environment and what you believe about yourself. Someone who has many responsibilities but their environment is calm and supportive so they’re confident they can accomplish most of what they need to get done the majority of the time likely won’t experience a great deal of stress. But someone with fewer responsibilities within the challenging environmental context of poverty, few social supports, and without the necessary life experiences to instil self-confidence can feel far higher levels of stress.

Because chronic stress can build up slowly, giving you time to adjust to the difficulties, it’s possible to have a chronic stress condition without even realising. But chronic stress conditions have consequences that are almost certainly going to negatively impact different areas of your life, including those that are unrelated to where the stress is coming from. This is because stress places great demands on your internal resources while making you believe you’re in danger and your decisions should therefore be based on survival. Since the logical part of your brain is suppressed, it’s difficult to respond in reasonable ways that take long-term consequences into consideration.

Stress can also harm relationships because you’re less capable of practicing empathy, finding a logical solution to inter-personal challenges, or responding calmly while also feeling burdened if anyone asks for anything because you already feel depleted.  

While it is possible for chronic stress conditions to go away on their own, there’s no way to know how long this would take or any guarantee that it would happen at all. Therefore, it’s almost always better to learn about stress, what is causing it, and how to manage it so you have the best chances of improving your situation more quickly.  

Managing stress

How many stressors do you have in your life? What thoughts and beliefs do you have on a regular basis that contribute to your stress? How do you respond when you feel overwhelmed or unable to meet your responsibilities? Do you feel capable of making positive changes that will reduce your stress?

Managing stress typically involves a combination of adopting a lifestyle that reduces stress while also paying attention to your thought patterns.

Managing stress is easier when you have the energy that comes with living a healthy lifestyle. Although the details vary from person to person, the vast majority of people feel healthier when they get at least seven hours of sleep, maintain a regular sleep schedule, eat nutritious meals, drink enough water, and exercise for at least two hours per week.

Living a lifestyle that helps you avoid stress also involves being mindful about how many stressors you’re regularly exposed to. Sources of stress are those you have the ability to prevent and those that have to be managed because you can’t avoid them. By eliminating stress wherever possible, you will have more energy and tolerance for the stress you can’t prevent. However, there are often ways you can make even unavoidable stressors less impactful.

For example, a common source of unavoidable stress is people’s jobs. If you’re stressed because of your work, you could ask yourself if there are ways you could reduce how stressful your role is. You may be able to delegate some of your non-essential tasks, change your hours or where you work from, or receive more training to improve your confidence. You can also take measures to reduce how much you’re affected by job-related stress by setting yourself rules like not checking for messages at home, not intentionally thinking about work off the clock, and setting boundaries with your employer if necessary.

If you have a demanding family life, you could choose what to prioritise and what is optional, such limiting how many afterschool activities your children join, having groceries delivered (even though there is an extra cost) or lowering some of your standards so you feel more capable of meeting those that are important to you, such as giving up maintaining a garden or saving elaborate meals for the weekends.

Knowing what sources of stress you choose can make them less impactful. Understanding that they’re optional means you’re probably keeping them in your life for a reason so they must have at least some benefits. And recognising what stressors are unavoidable can make them more tolerable because you understand that although you can try to make them as tranquil as possible, for the most part you have to accept them.

In addition to adopting a healthy lifestyle where you limit the sources of stress you’re exposed to, it’s important to manage your thoughts towards stress and yourself as well. Thought patterns, including your self-talk, play an important role in how damaging stress is.  

One of the more subtle yet harmful aspect of stress is what it makes you believe about your ability to improve your situation. People who are feeling stressed often tell themselves that they’re incapable of accomplishing what they need to get done and that they’re going to fail, sometimes without even being aware they’re doing this.

Things you tell yourself without realising can be even more powerful than direct messages because if you don’t realise what you subconsciously believe, you can accept these thoughts as facts without questioning how accurate they are. If you’re telling yourself you’re a hopeless loser who can’t meet a deadline, you can give yourself a pep-talk and remind yourself that you’re not so incompetent. But if you’re unaware that this is what you’re thinking, you can’t take the necessary steps to improve how you feel about yourself.

Because these beliefs aren’t always clear, they’re more likely to exist as anxiety, frustration, and disappointment, both with yourself and your situation. Therefore, managing stress requires being able to recognise when you’re feeling stressed and paying attention to your beliefs and thought patterns to make sure that you aren’t sending yourself any harmful, untrue or exaggerated messages.

Moving away from critical ways of speaking to yourself requires practicing self-compassion.

Adopting a harsh and critical tone in challenging situations comes automatically to many people – and they might not even realise they’re doing it – but it often makes it more challenging to be productive and effective. Self-compassion, however, can help you feel capable of accomplishing things even when you’re feeling challenged.

Self-compassion involves talking to yourself the same way you would speak to a friend. Most people wouldn’t tell someone they care about that they’re an idiot and a loser for missing a deadline, but they don’t hesitate to say the same and worse to themselves when they make mistakes. When you’re in a stressful situation, being hard on yourself or overly critical of what you’re doing can make you feel even more stressed and potentially afraid of acting because if anything goes wrong, you’ll feel even worse. But if you talk to yourself the same way you would talk to a friend or how you would like someone else to speak to you, you have a better chance of improving how you feel about the situation and making good decisions.

As you identify the situations that are likely to make you stressed and what you tell yourself in these scenarios, you can then start asking yourself how accurate your thoughts are. If they’re unrealistic and exaggerated, ask yourself what a more truthful interpretation might be.

You can build the habit of asking yourself questions such as:

• Is this true? If so, how likely is it that I’m completely right? Or is somewhere in the middle more accurate?
• What would I say to a friend if they told me this is what they were thinking? What would I like to hear a friend say to me?
• Is thinking like this making my situation better or am I making it more challenging for myself?
• What’s a healthy and realistic way to think about this?
• Do I feel capable of accomplishing what I need to? Why or why not?

Don’t underestimate the benefits of being able to recognise when you’re feeling stressed. if you’re stressed but don’t recognise the signs, you’re likely to react with one of the three stress responses – fight, flight or freeze – even though you can expect this will make your situation worse. But if you’re aware that you’re experiencing stress, and therefore your brain and body aren’t functioning like they normally are, you can slow down to be more mindful and less reactive to have the best chances of improving your situation and addressing the cause(s) of your stress.

As you identify some of the exaggerated beliefs and fears your stress causes, you can test how accurate they are. If you believe that you must leave at least half an hour earlier than necessary or else you’ll be late and others will be mad at you so you’re often anxious, try leaving on time and see what happens – do you get there in time? You can even show up a few minutes late to test your fears about the consequences – did you miss anything? Was anyone mad at you? If you get stressed before anyone visits your home because you think it has to be perfectly clean, intentionally leave messes when company is coming to gauge their responses. Did anyone say anything? Did it make the visit uncomfortable?

When you realise that you’re feeling stressed, whether it’s for something temporary or ongoing, you can ask yourself if feeling stressed is 1) necessary and 2) useful.

If it’s unnecessary, you can speak to yourself calmly and rationally to help yourself think of the situation as one that you don’t need to be stressed about.

If you are in a stressful situation, you can put extra effort into remaining calm, logical, and ensuring you don’t adopt needlessly critical self-talk while considering the best approach for what you need to accomplish.

You can then ask yourself if your reactions are helpful or not. If you’re using stress as motivation to accomplish something short-term, then it could be beneficial. But feeling stressed about something ongoing is rarely a useful approach. Stress is believing that you have to be hyper-vigilant to deal with the situation. This isn’t a fun or healthy way to feel about things in your life, especially something that’s meant to be positive, such as a relationship or parenting. So if you’re stressed about something ongoing you’ll almost certainly be better off if you find alternative ways of thinking about the situation and healthier approaches.

While each person’s causes of stress and the best ways for them to respond are unique, there are some approaches that can benefit the majority of people. Some of the more meaningful ways you can address your lifestyle and mentality to be less affected by stress include:

1) Avoid multitasking as much as possible

Some people try to do several things at once – some important and others distractions, like scrolling through social media while on a phone call or mentally drafting an email during a conversation. But whether you’re doing something important or something ‘fun’, trying to do too many things at the same time has consequences. You’ll likely take longer to finish what you’re working on because you’ve got other jobs and thoughts distracting you, and the finished product probably won’t be as good as it could have been if you’d given it your full attention.

But your work isn’t all that suffers when you multitask. Thinking about what’s left to finish often causes stress.  It can be difficult to stop being distracted by how much you still have to do while you’re working on something or telling yourself that you’re doing the wrong thing when you’re working on something non-urgent or trying to relax. This mental busyness is exhausting and can make what you have to get done seem more intimidating than it needs to be.

You’ll likely have things from your to-do list pop in to your head even when you’re working on something else – or don’t want to be working on anything at all. But instead of following these thoughts, you can remind yourself that you’re working on one job at a time and you’ll give your other responsibilities attention when you can.

Multitasking can feel more productive than giving one task your full attention, but choosing to work on just one thing at a time can help you reduce stress while likely producing better results.

2) Be realistic about how busy you are

If you think of yourself as someone who is almost always busy, you could be causing yourself unnecessary stress.

Many people feel very busy, or even overworked, the majority of the time. This is often thought of as a status symbol to be proud of because being busy means you’re important. But valuing busyness sets people up to believe they’re too busy, even when they’re not.

Believing that you’re overly-busy can act as a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you tell yourself that you have too much to do, you’ll find tasks to keep yourself occupied and/or allow what you have to work on to take up all of your time, while feeling at least some stress about completing everything. You can also turn what should be enjoyable ways of de-stressing into jobs on your to-do list. Telling yourself that you have to play with your children, cook your favourite meal on the weekend, or chat with a friend means that you have a busy schedule with lots to get done. When you’re always doing what you’ve told yourself you have to do, there is very little time for what you want to be doing, even if you’re already doing something enjoyable, which can make your life feel more stressful.  

3) Think carefully before taking on challenges

Challenging yourself is important, but it’s also important to be mindful of when you give yourself those challenges.

Every day you make decisions about what you’re going to do in the near and distant future – how much effort you’ll put in at work, what you’ll do during the weekend, if you’ll try a new hobby, etc. Even if you’re not a planner, you likely think about what you’re going to do with your time at least a little in advance. But when you’re feeling stressed, it’s important to be realistic with what you can accomplish with your time, energy and motivation. Stress is often caused by having too much to do, so taking on any more can add to your stress.

Feeling overwhelmed can also lead to tension and mental exhaustion. If you’re mentally exhausted, it’s important to be kind to yourself in what you decide to take on. Committing to getting up earlier to relax or exercise before going in to work could help some people feel less stressed by beginning their day doing something they’re proud of, but if you’re already feeling exhausted, then telling yourself you should be getting up even earlier to do more might not be what you need to manage the stress in your life.

4) Capitalise on your strengths

Do you know your greatest strengths? If you know what you’re good at, you can look for opportunities to utilise these skills.

Knowing your strengths isn’t the same as avoiding anything you’re not already good at – which is limiting and prevents growth. But recognising your strengths can help you approach new and familiar tasks more strategically because you know what comes naturally. You can also recognise when you’re leaving your comfort zone to challenge yourself so your self-talk and expectations can reflect the situation.

Some people can also apply their understanding of their strengths to their jobs. If you can choose to take on more responsibilities in areas that compliment your strengths, your work can be less stressful and more rewarding. You can also benefit from identifying which of your tasks are in areas that are weaknesses and be more compassionate to yourself when you’re struggling because you recognise that you’re doing something that doesn’t come naturally.

5) Find little ways to make life easier

Identifying the small annoyances you experience during the day and asking yourself if there is a simple solution that has the potential to save you mental or physical energy while reducing your stress.

There are likely plenty of ways you can make your life simpler – getting an extra pair of reading glasses so you don’t have to go as far when you need them, switching bill payments to become automatic instead of having to remember them every month, buying something that gives you extra comfort, and more. It may only take you a few moments to find your keys in the morning, but if you already struggle to leave on time, then making a dedicated place for them can remove this source of stress.

Small irritants and sources of stress can be like adding items to a box you’re carrying – the more that’s in there, no matter how small, the heavier it becomes. So getting rid of whatever stressors you can gives you more energy to cope with the stress that you can’t address so easily.

6) Be kind to others

Stress is almost always caused by things outside of your control – this lack of control is what makes them so stressful. And when someone feels stressed, they often ruminate on how much they have to worry about, the potential consequences they could face, chastising themselves for not doing more sooner, etc. These negative thoughts often make stress worse.

But doing something thoughtful for someone else – surprising your partner with a gift, asking a colleague if they would like a coffee, or helping out a friend – are positive ways of taking control of your mood by identifying something meaningful and enjoyable you can do and then acting. Doing something for yourself can also help reduce stress, but focusing on someone else is typically more rewarding.  

Stress can make you feel like you don’t have the time or energy to do anything other than what is strictly demanded of you, but choosing to give some of your time and energy to another person can make you feel more capable of managing your situation and less exhausted.

While you’re learning to manage stress, it’s important to be realistic with yourself about what you can expect. Your goal shouldn’t be to never feel stressed and to remove all sources of stress from your life because this is almost certainly impossible. There will always be reasons to feel stressed and expecting yourself to never be affected by them can be in itself a source of stress. A far more achievable goal is to improve your confidence in your ability to manage these stressors by reducing the amount of stress you have and practicing techniques for dealing with stress in healthy ways.

This is challenging, which is why some people choose to work with a mental health professional. They can help you adopt a different perspective of your situation, suggest techniques for reducing your stressors, provide guidance in identifying your harmful thoughts patterns and abusive ways of speaking to yourself, and act as an accountability partner so you can more easily stay committed to changing.

As you improve your confidence in your ability to manage stress, it can stop being a negative experience. Because stress exists to prime you to face danger, it will always come with at least some discomfort, but you can shift your beliefs about what this discomfort signals. Instead of thinking it’s a sign that you’re about to fail, you can think of stress as a sign that you’re facing a challenge that won’t easily be overcome and use this as motivation to put in the necessary effort to take on this challenge.

The more often you experience challenges and achieve an outcome you’re proud of – even if you don’t succeed – the less intimidating stressful challenges become. You can even learn to welcome the opportunity to take on a challenge because they’re such valuable opportunities to prove and test yourself, so stress becomes a sign that you’re improving yourself and is therefore much less negative.

Unmanaged stress can have a variety of painful and unhealthy consequences, especially if you don’t realise you’re experiencing stress and aren’t taking a healthy or sustainable approach to stress management.

It’s easy to believe that you know what stress is and whether you’re feeling it or not, but this isn’t always the case. Many people have stress responses without being aware that their bodies are functioning differently and making it more difficult to take a measured approach to the challenges they’re facing. They can also send themselves painful and unhelpful messages that cause them to doubt their ability to manage their situation without knowing.

But if you’re familiar with the signs that you’re experiencing stress, can identify your harmful thought patterns, and remind yourself that you’re more capable than your stress wants you to believe, then stress can be far less impactful. This is often most effective when paired with adopting a lifestyle that gives you the energy to manage stress and minimises the number of stressors you have to experience.

Making these changes is typically challenging and can take more time and effort than you would like. But it has the advantage of helping you spend less time in survival-mode and giving you more energy and optimism about yourself and what you’re capable of accomplishing.

Stress is an unavoidable aspect of life, but if you understand it and what it leads you to believe, it doesn’t have to be a negative experience.