When Stress Becomes the Structure

When we think of our lives and what we hope for deep within us, we often imagine more joy, more passion, and more time for what helps us feel more alive in everyday life.

Yet for most of us, life is shaped not only by what we long for, but also by our responsibilities, our disappointments, and the demands of adult life. It is often here that trouble begins, when too much of our lives is spent trying to manage the pressures and frustrations of adult life. The things that help us feel more at ease within ourselves can begin to receive less and less of our time and attention. As they begin to fall away, life itself can begin to feel as though something essential is missing.

April is Stress Awareness Month, a time to look more closely at how stress affects both our mental and physical health. It is also worth paying attention to how stress can become part of ordinary life, not only in the stressful moments that overwhelm us, but in the daily pressures that can impact how we live our lives.

Part of what can make this harder to recognize is that much of the self-help genre points us toward our potential, our growth, and a more promising future, while giving far less attention to the more difficult emotions and harder conditions many of us are already living with. In doing so, it can reinforce the idea that these harder parts of life should have been gotten rid of by now, which can leave us feeling worse for still having them.

What this can keep us from seeing is that these pressures can begin spreading into other parts of our lives. For instance, we can begin eating too quickly, feel at the end of the day that we are not getting enough done, and have little or no time left for what brings us peace of mind or enjoyment within ourselves.

If life stays organized this way long enough, stress is no longer only something we feel in hard moments, but something that begins shaping daily life more broadly. We might even go so far as to stop saying we feel stressed and anxious and begin thinking of ourselves as stressed and anxious people living stressful lives, without fully understanding how life came to feel this way.

Perhaps a deeper problem begins when life becomes organized around too much stress, and we begin mistaking that way of living for what it means to be a responsible adult. Once too much stress starts passing for normal adult life, our wellbeing can begin to look like something reserved for people who are less troubled by anger, irritation, sadness, and inner conflict, rather than for those of us trying to face these parts of ourselves more directly.

We still want enough time and ability to enjoy ourselves. But once stress begins taking up too much of our lives, our wellbeing can begin to feel less like something we still have and more like something reserved for other people whose lives are easier than ours.

The point is not to become an adult who is free of difficult feelings. It is to be able to have them and work with them where we can, so that our lives are not dictated by stress and anxiety most of the time.

What can make this harder to recognize is that even when our lives are increasingly organized by stress, we can still look like competent adults. We may still be doing well enough on paper that we do not read the pressure we are under as a sign that life is asking too much of us. If anything, all of this can begin to look like proof that we are managing adulthood well.

What outward signs of functioning do not tell us is whether the life we are living still leaves room for us to enjoy our lives.

A related problem is that once stress becomes familiar, we can stop reading it as information about how we are living. What might otherwise alert us that life is asking too much can begin to seem like the ordinary cost of being a responsible adult. In this way, stress is no longer something we use to gauge how our lives are going, but more as something we absorb into the background of daily life.

Once higher levels of stress have become part of our everyday lives, we can keep telling ourselves that we are simply doing what adulthood requires. All the while, life can begin to feel more difficult and harder to enjoy without our fully understanding why.

By the time life begins to feel overwhelming, our days can already be crowded to the point where we have little time left to think about what we need in order to recover. We can move from one thing to another while putting little time and energy into what helps us feel calmer, more centered, and more alive. After a while, our lives can begin to feel like something we are merely getting through, without enjoying much of anything.

A woman in her early forties came to see me because of work stress and feeling overwhelmed by her life. She was not sure whether she was anxious and depressed or simply depressed by how her life had turned out. “I used to be so carefree in college,” she told me. “I loved the freedom to learn, and now I don’t want to learn anything new. Who has the time?”

She was raising a nine-year-old son largely on her own, trying to stay on top of her bills and the mortgage, and taking on side consulting work to help make ends meet. She said she gets her son to soccer practice, watches his games, keeps up with the housework, and that if someone looked at her life from the outside, it would probably seem as though she was doing pretty well. “But by the end of my day, I’m completely exhausted,” she said. “I pour myself a tall glass of wine, start the laundry, and stay up late watching a relationship drama I can’t seem to turn off.”

She told me that those few late-night hours were the only ones that felt like hers, because by then no one was asking anything more of her. The problem, however, was that the only way she could get time for herself was by taking it from the sleep she needed. At times, it got so bad that she felt resentful of her son for the free time he had after school. This, in turn, left her feeling guilty, because she knew she loved him and worked hard to give him a good life.

Even the little bit of time she called her own was not actually helping her feel better. What she was using to decompress after a stressful day was also feeding the very stress she needed relief from. In other words, the very thing she turned to in order to feel more like herself again was also bringing out a version of herself she did not like. It had become part of a difficult pattern she was having trouble breaking, in part because she did not yet see that staying up late and drinking were leaving her more stressed, not less.

What her situation makes clear, paradoxically, is that her stress did not stay confined to what had to get done. By the end of the day, what she was using to unwind was leaving her with more stress the following day. In this sense, what can feel like relief in the short run can end up adding to the very stress we are trying to escape.

One reason this can be hard to confront is that once our lives are already asking a great deal of us, questioning the way we are living can feel like one more demand. Ironically, this can make it seem easier to keep functioning inside a life that already feels too stressful than to ask ourselves what would need to change. And yet some version of this question has to be faced if life is to feel less stressful, and hopefully even enjoyable again.

To be clear, the issue is not stress altogether, but too much of it for too long. The deeper problem begins not when stress is part of our lives, but when so much of it begins to feel stressful that we mistake this way of living for normal adult life.

What this means, practically, is that stress relief is not always the same as recovery from stress itself. A night off with a glass of wine, an hour or three of scrolling, sleeping late on a Sunday, or even a short vacation can bring real relief without changing the conditions that keep producing stress.

If the life we return to is still asking too much of us, that relief may be real, but it is often short-lived. This is where recovery can deepen into healing. It asks us to look at what in our lives is repeatedly costing us peace of mind and begin changing some of how we are living where we can.

For others, it may mean finding healthier ways to recover from stress, or coming to see that the way we have structured our lives is no longer working for us. What supports our wellbeing is not one-size-fits-all. This is part of what I mean by our Wellbeing Equation. The point is not to build a life with no stress in it, but to find a way of living in which stress no longer sets the terms for everything else.

Our wider culture presses us in this direction as well. We are constantly surrounded by technologies and conveniences that promise instant access, while also being pushed to be more productive and get more done in less time. Food can be delivered in minutes, entertainment is always at our fingertips, and our devices are designed to keep drawing us back in. The more accustomed we become to quick and easy access, the easier it can be to neglect the slower forms of recovery that actually help us reduce our stress long term. Before long, what is easiest to turn to can begin taking the place of what actually helps us recover.

If you find yourself feeling overly stressed or anxious more regularly, it may be a good time to ask what in your life is asking too much of you and what would it look like to change some of how you are living in a way that reduces some of your stress, even if only partly?

For instance, I have noticed in my own life that I need to build stress reduction measures into each day of the week, because without them I can become overwhelmed more quickly and speak to my loved one more harshly than I intend. I am not proud of this, but it reminds me that I have to practice what I preach and put time and energy into the same things I help others work on in their own lives.

One of those measures has meant extending my lunch break Monday through Friday to go on a hike, which means working fewer paid hours each week and bringing home less money. I have had to decide that less stress during the week is worth that cost.

Research supports the value of changes like these as well. Healthier ways of responding to stress have been shown to reduce anxiety, improve daily functioning, and support both our mental and physical health. Because stress can become such an ordinary part of life that we stop fully seeing what it is doing to us, I wanted to leave you with a few reliable resources in case you would like to read further.

A Related Essay: If this piece resonated, my essay Our Wellbeing and the Sacred Space Within Us explores a related question: how busyness, shame, and the noise of modern life can pull us away from the deeper listening that healing often requires. You can read a free excerpt here, with the full essay available to paid subscribers.

Further Reading:
CDC — Managing Stress
NIMH — I’m So Stressed Out! Fact Sheet
NIMH — Caring for Your Mental Health

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In Closing,

Perhaps the difficulty is not simply that there is too much stress in our lives, but that it has had time to shape how we are living in ways that do not support our wellbeing. What begins as something we manage in difficult moments can, over time, become part of everyday life.

👇 Comment below:

Where in your life might stress be shaping your days more than you’ve fully noticed?

With care,

Bronce

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