🧠 Decode Your Stress: Learn to Listen, Not Just Cope

🎯 This Week’s Focus

We’ve all felt it: the tightness in your chest before a big deadline, the knots in your stomach after a tense conversation, the fog that settles in after weeks of grinding. Stress gets a bad reputation, but it’s not the enemy. It’s a messenger.

Stress is what happens when something important is at stake. Your body sounds the alarm to get your attention. The real problem? We’ve never been taught how to understand the alarm, much less turn it off.

This week, we explore stress intelligence: your ability to recognize what kind of stress you’re experiencing, understand what it’s doing to your body and mind, and turn that energy into meaningful, aligned action.

🤔 What Is Stress?

Stress is a biological and psychological response to anything your brain perceives as a threat, challenge, or change. Whether it’s a looming deadline, a health scare, or even an exciting life transition, stress is trying to determine if a situation demand adaptation or action.

Physiologically, the brain activates the HPA axis (hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal), releasing hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. These chemicals increase heart rate, elevate blood sugar, sharpen attention, and prepare you for movement or defense. This response has evolutionary roots in survival, but in modern life, it gets triggered by everything from emails to existential worry.

There are several recognized types of stress:

• Acute stress – Short-term, immediate stress (e.g., a job interview or tough conversation)

• Chronic stress – Ongoing, low-grade stress (e.g., financial insecurity, caregiving, toxic work culture)

• Traumatic stress – Severe, overwhelming experiences that leave lasting psychological and physiological imprints

We also distinguish between:

• Eustress – Positive, performance-enhancing stress that feels exciting and motivating (e.g., preparing for a presentation or running a race). It’s energizing and can increase focus, creativity, and confidence.

• Distress – Negative, overwhelming stress that impairs functioning and feels threatening or exhausting. It contributes to anxiety, burnout, and physical tension.

What differentiates eustress from distress is not just the stimulus but how it's perceived and processed. Eustress is seen as a challenge you feel capable of meeting, while distress is seen as a threat you don’t believe you can handle. Eustress is typically time-bound with a clear resolution; distress tends to linger and accumulate. This perception shapes both the psychological experience and physiological impact.

Understanding this distinction matters: if you reframe some types of stress as purposeful or meaningful, you may be able to shift the body’s response. The mindset you bring to stress directly affects how your system responds.

But when stress becomes chronic, unresolved, or rooted in trauma, the toll is serious. Unprocessed stress accumulates in the body and can contribute to long-term health issues and emotional exhaustion. That’s why decoding your stress is the first step to managing it so it works for you, not against you.

🧬 How Stress Shows Up in Your Body

Stress occurs in a cycle and by understanding your nervous system and Polyvagal Theory, it can give further insight to what happens when we experience stress.

Your autonomic nervous system (ANS) controls involuntary functions like breathing, digestion, and heart rate. It has two main branches:

• The sympathetic nervous system (SNS) (aka “fight or flight”)

• The parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) (aka “rest and digest”)

The stress cycle begins with activation in the sympathetic nervous system (your body's "gas pedal") and is meant to end with resolution through the parasympathetic system (your "brake"). When we experience a perceived threat, our body mobilizes: heart rate rises, breath quickens, muscles tense. That’s the sympathetic system kicking in. It’s useful in short bursts, but damaging if left on too long. The cycle should end when the body receives clear signals of safety, which shifts us into the parasympathetic state where we experience restoration, digestion, and connection.

Polyvagal Theory, developed by Dr. Stephen Porges, adds nuance by identifying three key states:

1. 🟢 Ventral Vagal (Safe/Engaged) – Calm, socially connected, emotionally regulated

2. 🟠 Sympathetic (Mobilized) – Activated, anxious, angry, or restless

3. 🔵 Dorsal Vagal (Collapsed) – Numb, shut down, disconnected

Typically, your body subconsciously scans your environment using neuroception interpreting facial expressions, tone of voice, and context to determine safety or threat to respond as necessary. However, when we remain in a prolonged state of unprocessed stress and trauma, it can be stored in the body, particularly in muscles, fascia, and the gut. Emotional pain that hasn’t been acknowledged often manifests as chronic tension, physical discomfort, or somatic symptoms. This is because the body remembers experiences even when the conscious mind has moved on. Practices like movement, breathwork, and somatic therapy can help release these stored stress patterns, allowing for integration and healing.

Understanding these states helps you decode your reactions and gives you tools to shift from anxious to grounded, from frozen to re-engaged.

⚠️ Hidden Signs of Stress

Many people miss the signs of stress because they don’t always look like panic. Instead, stress may appear as:

• Trouble sleeping or staying asleep 🛌

• Brain fog, indecision, or forgetfulness 🧠

• Physical symptoms like headaches, stomachaches, or tight shoulders 💢

• Social withdrawal, irritability, or reactivity 🙅‍♂️

• Changes in appetite or low energy ⚡

This accumulation of stress over time is known as allostatic load, which is a key predictor of long-term health risks like heart disease, inflammation, memory problems, and emotional burnout. Even positive events (marriage, promotions) can be stressful because they demand focus and adaptation.

Stress can also show up in how we relate to others. Stress spillover is when stress from one domain (work, family, finances) impacts other areas. Recognizing this dynamic helps you address the root not just the symptom.

🔄 Completing the Stress Cycle

One of the keys to managing stress is being able to engage the parasympathetic nervous system and complete the stress cycle so our bodies can return to a state of rest.

According to Dr. Andrew Huberman, techniques like slow nasal breathing, forward movement (like walking), and visual anchoring (looking at a fixed point) can help transition the body out of the stress response. Without this intentional downshift, the body stays in overdrive, even after the external stressor is gone. Completing the cycle allows your physiology to reset. Without it, unprocessed stress can continue accumulate like static electricity in your system.

Here’s some ways you can signal for your body to begin to relax:

• 🏃‍♀️ Movement – Any physical activity (walk, run, shake, stretch, dance)

• 🌬️ Breathwork – Try “physiological sighs” or 4-7-8 breathing

• 🎨 Creativity – Journal, draw, cry, sing

• 🤝 Connection – Hug someone for 60 seconds, call a friend, co-regulate

• 🧘‍♂️ Stillness & Sensory Regulation – Restorative yoga, body scans, rocking

As the Nagoski sisters write in Burnout, your body needs a signal to say: “It’s over. You’re safe now.” Without that, your system keeps revving even after the stressor has passed.

🎯 Transform Stress Into Meaningful Action

Stress sharpens your focus and prepares you for to take action on what matters to you. If you’re anxious about a project, it might mean you care deeply about your work. If you’re irritated with a friend, family member, or partner, perhaps you need to have a conversation or reinforce a boundary.

As you master being able to recognize stress and effectively disengage your stress response, the next step in building stress intelligence is shifting from viewing stress as enemy to harnassing stress as ally.

Try this approach:

• 🏷️ Label your state – Am I open (ventral), mobilized (sympathetic), or shut down (dorsal)?

• 🎯 Clarify the signal – What value, need, or fear is being triggered?

• ⚡ Channel the energy – How can I turn adrenaline into preparation, boundary-setting, or creative output? Note:: If you’re feeling very stressed or anxious, sometimes releasing some of the tension through movement can help you reduce the stress to a manageable, productive level. Our favorite is doing some air squats 🏋️

• 🌿 Recover – End with restoration to reset your baseline

This is how you start move from burnout to empowered alignment.

📝 This Week’s Challenge

Stress management isn’t one-size-fits-all. This week, build your personal stress intelligence toolkit by trying the following:

• 📓 Track your stress states: Write down moments you feel anxious, checked out, or on edge. What’s your body telling you?

• 💬 Practice compassionate self-talk: Try “I’m safe now” or “This is stress, not failure.”

• 🤗 Lean on connection: Don’t isolate. Call a friend or ask for support.

• 🎧 Try a new recovery practice: Nature walk, breathing app, creative play and see what resonates.

And for some quick wins you can try right now:

• 🧘‍♀️ Try a 2-minute breathing break: inhale 4 counts, exhale 6 counts.

• 💌 Send a voice note to someone you trust and share how you’re doing.

• 🤸‍♂️ Shake out tension physically. Try 10 seconds of silly dancing or jumping jacks.

• 🌳 Step outside and focus on one thing in nature for 60 seconds.

• 🛑 Create a 5-minute “off switch” ritual after work: stretch, tea, music.

📅 Next Week’s Preview

Next week, we’ll explore how your brain builds mental models: automatic patterns that influence how you interpret the world and respond to it. We’ll dive into:

• How schemas form and shape your behavior

• How to recognize outdated mental models

• How to reframe, rewire, and act in ways aligned with your future self

It’s about training your mind to support instead of sabotaging your goals.

📚 Essential Reading

1. The Upside of Stress by Kelly McGonigal – Learn how reframing your mindset about stress can boost performance and well-being.

2. Burnout by Emily & Amelia Nagoski – A guide to understanding emotional exhaustion and completing the stress cycle.

3. Polyvagal Theory: A Science of Safety by Stephen Porges – Discover how your nervous system shapes your reactions to safety and danger.

4. When the Body Says No by Gabor Maté – Explore how chronic stress manifests in physical illness and how to reconnect with your needs.

5. The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk – Understand how trauma and stress are stored in the body and how to release them through somatic practices.

6. Stanford Report Interview with Kelly McGonigal – A quick, research-backed introduction to how stress mindset shifts physiology.

Like what you’re reading?

💬 In the spirit of continuous improvement, we’re also going to look for opportunities to refine our content so that it’s delivering the most value for you! If there’s anything you’d like to see, drop a comment and share your thoughts!

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About Kevin

Kevin Earl Tan helps people to design their lives through evidence-based coaching and systems thinking. He is pursuing his International Coaching Federation (ICF) Associate Certified Coach (ACC) certification. Kevin combines academic insights from his Masters in Human Resources from the University of Southern California along with practical application from 10+ years in change management and leadership to make behavior change simple and approachable.