This essay is part of a long-form series created from earlier, unedited conversations recorded under the theme Bridging Psychology and Spirituality Podcast . These conversations took place over a sustained period of time, emerging from shared inquiry, professional practice, and lived experience. What follows is not a transcript, but a reflective essay shaped by those dialogues — and by what has unfolded since.
When Danielle and I recorded our conversations on spirituality, psychology, the Tarot, Mental health , this also has to include the basics for our wellbeing and good mental health is stress, we were already speaking into a world that was overstimulated, overworked, and quietly exhausted. Stress had become so familiar that many people no longer recognised it as a state — only as life.
What we were trying to do then, and what I am still trying to do now, is to slow the conversation down enough to understand what stress actually is — and what it costs when we live inside it for too long.
Stress Is a Process, Not a Personal Failure
One of the first things we clarified in that conversation was simple, but essential:
Stress is not a disorder.
It is a biological and psychological adaptive process.
As I said at the time, mental health actually exists on a continuum. We either , to simplify yes, sit at the end of the spectrum and feel good, ok, or have a general sense of wellbeing and at the other end we can experience serious mental health issues. Most of us oscillate in-between -going up and down the continuum, especially during times of upheaval and transition.
People experience stress, anxiety, panic, low mood — often without needing diagnosis or treatment. These states, in themselves, are not evidence that something is “wrong”.
Stress becomes problematic when the demands placed on a person exceed their perceived capacity to cope — and when that state persists without adequate recovery.
Danielle captured this clearly when she spoke about stress as an adaptive response that becomes damaging only when it turns chronic. In the short term, stress mobilises energy. It sharpens focus. It allows us to respond to emergencies, transitions, and challenge.
The difficulty arises when the body never gets the signal that it is safe to stand down.
Fight, Flight, Freeze — and the One We Don’t Talk About
Much of the conversation explored the stress response system — fight, flight, and freeze — and how these responses are automatic, not chosen.
Stress activates the lower, more primitive parts of the brain. In moments of threat, chemicals flood the system to prepare us to act. Thinking, reflecting, and perspective-taking — functions of the prefrontal cortex — temporarily drop offline.
This is not a flaw. It is survival.
What often gets missed, however, is freeze.
Freeze is not passivity or weakness. It is a shutdown response that occurs when the system perceives that neither fighting nor escaping is possible. I spoke about seeing this repeatedly in work environments — people becoming immobilised, disengaged, or emotionally flat after prolonged exposure to stress, conflict, or lack of control.
Danielle reflected on her own experience of moving from fight into freeze — a point where the body simply had no more capacity left. When this happens, the system is not giving up. It is protecting itself.
Understanding this changed the way I viewed burnout — both in myself and in others.
Stress, Control, and Why Some Situations Hurt More Than Others
A central theme in the podcast — and one that has stayed with me — was perceived control.
Research consistently shows that people cope better with stress when they feel they have some agency, even in difficult circumstances. When people feel trapped, powerless, or chronically evaluated, stress intensifies and that can also lead to feeling powerless and depressed.
This explains why transitions — promotions, new roles, parenthood, relocations — can be deeply stressful, even when they are chosen or desired. Change itself challenges the nervous system, particularly when expectations outweigh support.
At the time of recording, we spoke about how stress is often less about the event itself and more about:
- how much choice we feel we have,
- how resourced we are,
- and whether we trust ourselves to respond.
That distinction became crucial for me in the years that followed.
How Stress Showed Up for Me After the Podcast
Listening back now, I can see that although I understood stress intellectually, my body was still carrying a great deal.
After that conversation, stress showed up for me in relationships — particularly with people who were emotionally hard work. People who avoided accountability. People who expected me to carry the emotional load, manage the atmosphere, smooth things over, absorb what they didn’t want to feel.
That kind of stress is subtle. There is no obvious crisis. But it erodes the nervous system over time.
Stress also showed up in more unexpected and even joyful ways — like buying my campervan.
Driving to new places. Navigating steep hills, narrow roads, breakdowns, and the constant question of “Will I get stuck?”
It was stressful — but it was a different quality of stress.
The difference was this:
I knew what was happening in my body and I took time to rest afterwards, or sit still with a coffee and allow the body to reorient.
I could distinguish between fear, excitement, alertness, and old trauma responses. I had some control. I could ask: What’s actually in my control right now? What decision can I make?
This stress didn’t wipe me out the way it would have years earlier.
Trauma, PTSD, and the Body’s Memory
There were still echoes of trauma. PTSD doesn’t disappear just because we understand it.
Getting into taxis, for example, often felt like a fairground ride I didn’t want to be on. Even when I was safe, my body sometimes reacted as if I wasn’t. But the difference now was that the response was quieter, shorter, and easier to regulate.
What I discovered — slowly, patiently — was the value of daily reconnection with the body.
Not as a technique to fix myself, but as a relationship to rebuild trust.
Yoga.
Breath.
Mindful movement.
Pausing to notice each flinch, each tightening, each moment of activation — and staying with it long enough for the brain to process what was happening.
This is how trauma resolves: not by force, but by presence.
As the nervous system experiences safety in real time, the brain rewires. The body learns that it no longer has to stay braced. Over time, it lets go.
Stress as Addiction and Identity
One of the most honest parts of the original conversation was acknowledging that stress can become addictive.
Not because it feels good — but because it feels familiar.
Stress can provide structure, purpose, even identity. For some, it is the only state in which they feel needed or alive. Letting go of stress can feel like losing oneself.
I recognised this in myself — particularly after years of working in high-pressure systems where urgency was normalised and recovery was optional.
The work, I realised later, was not just about reducing stress — but about learning how to be without it.
Recovery Is Not Linear — or Fast
Both Danielle and I spoke about burnout — not as a single event, but as a cumulative process. Recovery, we agreed, does not happen on a weekend or a holiday.
For some people, it takes months.
For others, years.
I learned this the hard way.
Removing the stressor does not mean the nervous system immediately recovers. The body needs time to relearn safety. It needs rhythm, consistency, and kindness — not pressure to “get back to normal”.
There is no failure in this. There is intelligence.
What Actually Helped
What ultimately helped was not one big intervention, but small, consistent practices:
- breathing properly again,
- moving the body gently and regularly,
- spending time in nature,
- reducing overstimulation,
- noticing patterns rather than judging them,
- and learning to choose response over reaction.
Stress is not something to live inside. It is not a home. It is a signal.
When we listen to it — through the body, not just the mind — it tells us what needs to change.
Closing Reflection
Looking back now, I can hear the seeds of what I know more fully today.
Stress was never asking me to push harder.
It was asking me to come home — to my body, my breath, my limits, and my truth. But if you are in a constant state of stress, like a wound up coil, unravelling takes a while.
This is where psychology and spirituality meet — not in escaping the human experience, but in inhabiting it more honestly.