Stress is one of those words we throw around all the time. “I’m stressed.” “That was stressful.” “Work is stressful.”
But how often do we stop and ask: what actually is stress? Why do some challenges leave us buzzing with energy, while others completely drain us? And why has stress become one of the biggest wellbeing challenges of modern life?
The truth is, most of us don’t fully understand stress. And that lack of understanding is exactly why it causes so many problems.
The Four Stress States
When most people think of stress, they think of the classic fight-or-flight response. And yes, those are the two most well-known. But there are actually four main stress states: fight, flight, freeze, and fawn.
These responses evolved to keep us safe in genuinely threatening situations. If a zebra is chased by a lion, it runs first (flight). If cornered, it fights. If captured, it might freeze or fawn.
Humans share these same responses. The challenge is that our nervous system doesn’t distinguish between a predator attack and, say, a nightmare work deadline – because our biology wasn’t designed for the majority of our modern stressors.
Today, these stress states often show up in more subtle ways:
- Fight – anger, irritability, snapping at others, feeling defensive.
- Flight – wanting to run away, avoid a situation, or escape responsibility.
- Freeze – brain fog, shutting down, zoning out, feeling paralysed.
- Fawn – people-pleasing, becoming overly submissive, ignoring your own needs.
All of these fall under what’s called the sympathetic nervous system state – the body’s “stress mode.” The opposite state is the parasympathetic nervous system, often nicknamed rest and digest. That’s the calm, non-stressed state where your body restores balance, repairs itself, and yes – even digests food properly. (I’ll definitely be talking more about this in upcoming episodes.)
Stress Was Designed for Another World
Our stress response was designed for a very different environment than the one we live in now.
For most of human history, stress meant rare, life-threatening events. You’d have a surge of stress hormones, deal with the threat, and then recover fully (hopefully!).
But in modern life, it’s not lions and rival tribes we’re facing. It’s the micro-stressors that drip into our system all day long, and yet our body still responds as though each one is a potential threat because that’s what it’s designed to do in response to stress hormone production.
As I shared in last week’s article and episode, these stressors come from many different angles in our modern, western world. For example:
- Mental stressors – constant decision-making, information overload, overthinking, perfectionism.
- Emotional stressors – worry, self-doubt, people-pleasing, unresolved conflict.
- Physical stressors – lack of sleep, poor nutrition, too much sitting, over-exercising.
- External stressors – deadlines, the ping of notifications, money pressures, traffic jams.
Individually, these don’t always seem or feel huge, although some do more than others. But together, they stack up and fill what’s often called our “stress bucket”. Without intentional ways to release that pressure and reduce the level of water (our stress), the bucket eventually overflows… leading to burnout, illness, or breaking points.
Acute Stress vs. Chronic Stress
This is the key distinction most people miss:
- Acute stress: short-lived, intense, followed by recovery.
- Chronic stress: ongoing, with little or no recovery.
Acute stress is what we’re built to handle. Chronic stress is what wears us down. It chips away at our mental, emotional, and physical health because we rarely give our nervous system the full reset it needs.
How Stress Shapes Our Thinking
Stress doesn’t just affect the body, it also changes how we see the world.
When you’re wired on stress hormones, your perspective narrows. You focus more on threats, potential problems, and worst-case scenarios. It’s harder to think creatively or rationally. You may become more irritable, less trusting, or more self-focused.
And here’s the crucial part: who you are under stress is not the real you. It’s your nervous system doing its job, preparing you for a threat. But if you never come out of that state, you lose touch with the calm, creative, open version of yourself.
Why This Matters
Stress itself isn’t the enemy. We’re perfectly designed to handle stress if we go into it and then come back out again.
Put simply, we’re meant to cycle between the two nervous system states (sympathetic and parasympathetic): into stress when we need to respond to a challenge, then back into rest and digest so the body can recover. That’s how we’re designed.
The problem is that modern life keeps us “stuck on” in sympathetic mode – never fully coming down and always wired. For many people, that means living in some degree of chronic stress almost all the time, and rarely make it back to the parasympathetic calm state.
And that’s why understanding stress really matters. Once you see it clearly, you can stop blaming yourself for “not coping” and instead start recognising the patterns for what they are: your biology doing exactly what it’s designed to do, just in a world it wasn’t designed for.
From there, you can begin learning simple ways to proactively lower your overall stress levels, and then, crucially, also learn how to bring yourself back down when life inevitably gets stressful. Because stress will happen, but it doesn’t have to keep you stuck.
Kate x
This article is based on Episode 2 of my podcast, Busy Doing Well. Listen here: Apple Podcasts link, Spotify link
