Could It Be Stress?
Stress doesn’t always feel like stress. Sometimes you’ve been carrying it so long it just feels like life.
Sometimes stress is obvious. Something big is happening, life is especially demanding, or you are in one of those seasons when everything seems to need your attention at once. You know you are under stress because there is an obvious reason for it.
Other times, life looks pretty normal and you just don’t feel quite like yourself. You may be sleeping but still waking up tired, noticing that your patience runs out faster than it used to, or wondering why your stomach has suddenly become unpredictable. Maybe you are walking into rooms and forgetting why you went there, looking for something sweet every afternoon, feeling more achy or puffy, or realizing that a busy week takes more out of you than it once did. Changes in your hair, skin, weight or hormones may be happening at the same time, which can leave you wondering what in the world is going on.
This is often when we start reaching for one explanation. It’s perimenopause. It’s menopause. It’s cortisol. And sometimes those things absolutely are part of what is happening, but they can also become catch-all answers when the bigger picture is more complicated.
Your body has been adapting to your life all along. It has been helping you through the busy seasons, interrupted sleep, family responsibilities, work stress, loss, worry and all the stretches when there simply was not much room to stop. You may have called most of it normal life and answered “I’m fine” when anyone asked how you were doing because, technically, you were. You kept functioning, kept taking care of things and kept moving on to whatever came next.
The question is whether your body has been working harder than you realized to keep you there.
None of these things automatically mean stress is to blame. There can be many reasons for changes in sleep, mood, digestion, focus, weight, hair, skin or simply how you feel in your body. But the signs of stress in women are not always the ones we expect, and stress can become part of the picture in ways we don’t immediately recognize, especially when life has been asking a lot of us for a long time.
Stress can show up in places you may not think to look
Sometimes the first clue is not feeling stressed at all. It is noticing that sleep, focus, digestion, mood, cravings or recovery seem different, especially during a season when life has been asking more of you than usual.
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Why am I sleeping but still waking up tired?
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Why does my brain feel so foggy when I have too much going on?
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Why does my stomach seem to know I’m stressed before I do?
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Why am I more irritable or emotional than I used to be?
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Why do cravings get louder when life gets busier?
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Why does my body feel more achy, puffy or inflamed when I’m under pressure?
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Why does managing my weight feel harder when everything else feels harder too?
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Why are my hair and skin changing?
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Why does it take me longer to recover than it used to?
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Why do hormone changes seem to turn the volume up on everything else?
There are also seasons of life that change how much we have available for everything else, and grief is one of them. Grief is not a stress signal and it is not something to fix, but it can affect sleep, appetite, concentration, mood, physical tension and how much capacity you have for the ordinary demands of a day. You may still be doing all the things you normally do while wondering why everything seems to require more from you than it used to.
That is why the question is not always, “Am I stressed?”
Sometimes the more useful question is simply,
“Could stress be part of what I’m experiencing?”
Stress doesn’t always look dramatic
A lot of women are very good at handling life. They get up, do what needs to be done, take care of people, keep appointments, answer messages, remember birthdays and make sure everyone gets where they need to go. From the outside, nothing may look particularly wrong, even while their brains are keeping track of what needs to happen tomorrow, who needs something, what was forgotten at the grocery store, whether that email ever got answered and what everyone is going to eat for dinner.
You can love your family and still want everyone to stop asking you questions for twenty minutes. You can enjoy your work and still feel mentally worn out by the end of the day, just as you can genuinely look forward to the holidays while also feeling the weight of planning, shopping, cooking, traveling and remembering all the little things that somehow become yours to remember.
Sometimes stress is not one terrible thing happening all at once. It is the accumulation of too many things needing something from you for too long, and because you are still getting everything done, you may not think of any of it as stress.
That is where “I’m fine” can become a little misleading. You may be fine in the sense that you are still functioning, but your sleep, digestion, patience, focus, appetite or ability to recover may be telling you that keeping up has started to cost more than it used to.
We can’t avoid stress. We can learn how to recover from it.
I don’t think the goal is to get so good at managing stress that nothing ever gets to us. Life is still going to be life, which means people will be difficult, plans will change, someone will need something when you are already tired, and there will be busy weeks, hard conversations, losses, disappointments and days when you simply have too much on your plate.
What matters is whether your mind and body ever get a chance to come back down from all of it.
Recovery does not have to mean a vacation or an elaborate wellness routine. Most of us need something that works in the life we already have, whether that means getting enough sleep that every morning does not begin depleted, eating in a way that helps us get through the afternoon without chasing cravings, getting outside, moving our bodies, or simply having a little quiet before the next thing begins. Sometimes the first clue that we need more recovery is realizing that we have gone from one demanding day into another without ever really stopping.
Over time, it helps to learn your own patterns. Sleep may be the first thing to change when you have too much on your mind, while someone else notices it in her stomach, her patience or her ability to focus. You may begin losing words, find small decisions strangely exhausting, or catch yourself looking for food when what you really want is a break. The more familiar those patterns become, the sooner you can recognize when you may need a little more support instead of waiting until everything feels like too much.
Why I keep asking, “Could it be stress?”
I don’t ask that question because I think stress explains everything. It doesn’t. I ask because it is one piece we sometimes overlook while we are trying to deal with everything separately.
We work on the sleep, then the cravings, then the stomach, then the brain fog, mood or exhaustion without necessarily stopping to notice that several of those things became harder during the same demanding season of life. Midlife can add another layer, especially when changing hormones, caregiving, work, family responsibilities, interrupted sleep or grief are happening at the same time. Sometimes one difficult season runs directly into another before we have had much chance to recover from the first one.
That is also why I am cautious about reducing everything to “cortisol” or assuming every change after forty must simply be menopause. Cortisol is part of the body’s stress response, and perimenopause and menopause can bring very real changes of their own, but our bodies do not experience hormones, sleep, stress, nourishment, grief and daily life in separate little compartments. They overlap, and sometimes looking at that bigger picture makes more sense than trying to force everything into one explanation.
There may not be one neat answer, and I think that is important to say. There can still be value in looking at the whole picture instead of assuming every change is happening on its own.
A place to talk about all of this
That is why I created Could It Be Stress?, the community group for The Stress Less Era. I wanted a place where women could talk about the things we notice in real life, including the things we sometimes have trouble putting into words.
Maybe you are trying to understand why you are so tired even though you slept, why everybody seems to be getting on your nerves, why you cannot concentrate the way you used to, or why you keep wandering back into the kitchen when you are not really hungry. Sometimes the question is even simpler than that: why does a completely normal day seem to take so much out of me lately?
Those are the kinds of conversations we have in the group. We talk about sleep, mood, digestion, cravings, focus, hormones, healthy aging, mental load and the many ways stress can show up in ordinary life. We talk about what the science can help us understand, but we also talk about what all of this feels like when you are standing in your kitchen, driving home from work, awake at three in the morning, or sitting in your car for a few extra minutes because you are not quite ready for anyone to need anything else from you yet.
Products and other tools come into the conversation when they genuinely make sense for what someone is trying to support, but they are not the reason for every conversation. More than anything, I want it to be a place where you can understand yourself a little better, recognize what your own stress signals may look like and begin to see connections you may not have considered before.
If you have ever wondered whether stress could be playing a part in how you have been feeling lately, you will probably feel right at home.
Not sure where stress tends to show up for you?
The Daily Stressors Quiz can give you a place to start. It only takes a few minutes, helps identify the type of stress support your answers point toward, and gives you practical tips based on your results. You’ll also receive a $10 coupon just for taking it.
The quiz may suggest products that fit your answers too, but please don’t look at the results as a list of everything you need to buy. The pricing shown there is based on individual one-time prices and doesn’t always show the better bundle and other savings options that may be available. If something in your results interests you, I’ll follow up and help you sort through what actually makes sense for you and the best way to purchase it without buying more than you need.
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You do not have to figure out everything at once. Sometimes it starts with noticing that you have not quite felt like yourself lately and getting curious about what may be contributing to that, because once you begin seeing the pattern, it becomes a little easier to decide what kind of support might actually help.
And sometimes the first question really is simply this:
Could it be stress?
About Nelea
Written by Nelea Lane, Certified Mental Wellness Coach. Nelea writes about stress physiology, the gut-brain connection, and the ways stress can show up in everyday life for women in midlife.
Sources & Further Reading
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Office on Women’s Health: Stress and Your Health
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National Institute of Mental Health: I’m So Stressed Out!
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National Institute on Aging: What Is Menopause?
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MedlinePlus: Bereavement