The deadline is met. The bill is paid. The conversation you were dreading finally happened. And you’re still wound up, your shoulders are up by your ears, and your head is already looking for the next thing.
Or it’s the other way round. You’ve done the breathing exercise every night for a month, and the thing that’s stressing you is still sitting there, exactly where it was.
Both make sense once you separate two things that usually get called “stress”.
Two things going on at once
There’s the problem: the thing out there. A bill, a deadline, a person, a letter you haven’t opened. And there’s the stress: what the problem sets off in you. A tight chest, a busy head, sleep that won’t come, a short temper.
They’re connected, but they aren’t the same thing, and each one needs its own kind of effort. In 1984 the psychologists Richard Lazarus and Susan Folkman separated these as two jobs in coping: dealing with the problem itself, and dealing with what it’s doing to you. In Burnout, Emily and Amelia Nagoski make the same split in everyday words: dealing with what’s causing your stress is one thing, and dealing with the stress itself is another.
It’s easy to do only one of them. Some of us are good at sorting things out and then wonder why we still feel awful. Some of us are good at looking after ourselves and then wonder why nothing changes.
Why sorting the problem doesn’t always switch the stress off
When something stressful happens, your body gets ready to deal with it. Your heart beats faster, your muscles tense and your mind speeds up. Coming back down from that is its own process, and it can take time. Researchers who study recovery from work describe it as unwinding, where your body and mind settle back to where they were before. Sometimes the unwinding doesn’t finish before the next demand arrives (Geurts and Sonnentag, 2006).
Two things seem to get in the way. One is not having enough time off between demands, like long hours with no real break. The other is thinking about it: going back over what happened, or bracing for what might come next. In laboratory studies described by Geurts and Sonnentag, people who were free to go over a stressful task afterwards took longer for their blood pressure to settle than people who were given something else to do. A review by Brosschot and colleagues (2006) suggests that worry can keep the body’s stress response going after the stressful event, or switch it back on.
So when the problem is sorted, your body may not have caught up yet. That doesn’t mean something is wrong with you.
Why calming down doesn’t sort the problem
This one sounds obvious, but it’s easy to miss when you’re in it. If the bill can be paid, renegotiated or talked about, then breathing exercises, early nights and a long bath can help you feel steadier. They won’t touch the bill, though. And while the bill is still there, so is the thing that keeps setting the stress off.
There’s a reason people get stuck here. Stress can make it harder to concentrate and make decisions (NHS, “Stress”), so the problem can feel impossible to look at. That’s why settling a bit first can help. You don’t need to feel calm before you look at the problem. Just a bit steadier is enough to take one small step.
Which one needs your effort? Ask whether it can change
For whatever is weighing on you, ask: can this actually change?
- If it can, even a bit, it’s worth working on the problem. Pick one small step on the problem itself.
- If it can’t, putting more effort into the problem may just wear you out. More of your effort can go into looking after yourself while you live with it. The NHS puts it this way: “do not focus on the things you cannot change – focus your time and energy on helping yourself feel better.”
- If you don’t know, finding out is the step. Make the call, ask the question, check the numbers. Then decide.
Most real problems have a part that can change and a part that can’t. You might not be able to change your job right now, but you might be able to change when you stop answering emails.
Researchers call this idea “goodness of fit”: matching the way you cope to how much the situation can change. One study followed about 300 men, most of them caring for someone, over two years. At the times when the way they coped matched how changeable things were, their mood tended to be less low. The match mattered most for the problem-solving side (Park, Folkman and Bostrom, 2001). A larger review of 329 studies found that people who cope more flexibly tend to be doing a bit better. The link was strongest for fitting the way you cope to the situation, or feeling able to (Cheng and colleagues, 2014). These studies show links. They can’t show that one causes the other.
Accepting something never means deciding it’s what you deserve. It means deciding to stop spending your energy on fighting something that can’t change right now. It never means staying somewhere that isn’t safe. And it’s worth checking again later, because some things that couldn’t change last year can change now.
What tends to help
With the problem
Be specific about what’s wrong. “Work is too much” is hard to act on. “I’ve got three reports due on Friday and I can only finish two” gives you something to work with: ask which one can wait, or ask for help with one.
Pick one thing and one step. If several things come to mind, take the one that’s loudest or the one that would make the biggest difference. Then pick a step small enough to do this week. The NHS suggests breaking big tasks into smaller chunks and setting small targets you can reach.
Ask for help with the practical part. Someone else can sometimes see an option you can’t, or take something off your plate.
Working through problems in a structured way like this is the basis of a talking therapy called problem-solving therapy. A review of 31 studies found it helped more than no treatment or usual care, though not clearly more than other therapies it was compared with (Malouff and colleagues, 2007).
With the stress
Move your body. A brisk walk, the stairs, cycling home, anything that suits your body and makes you breathe a bit harder. The NHS describes being active as one way to burn off nervous energy. Recovery research links physical exercise in time off with feeling less worn out (Sonnentag and colleagues, 2017).
Breathe out slowly. Comfortable, unforced breaths, longer out than in, sitting or lying down if that’s easier (NHS, “Breathing exercises for stress”). Stop if it makes you uncomfortable. If you’d like something to follow, in Breathe you can pace your breaths with a circle for one to three minutes.
Talk to someone. The NHS suggests talking about how you feel to a friend, someone in your family or a health professional.
Do something different from what wore you out. If your day was all screens and thinking, something physical or something that takes no effort at all may let you unwind better than more thinking. That’s what recovery researchers suggest, though it’s an idea more than a tested rule (Geurts and Sonnentag, 2006).
On a day with no energy, the smallest version still counts. Walk to the end of the road and back. Breathe out slowly three times. Send one message.
Doing both
You don’t have to finish one job before you start the other. Many people find it works to do them side by side: a walk at lunch, then the email you’ve been putting off. It helps to keep doing the second job after the problem is sorted, because your body may still be catching up.
When you’ve got nothing left
If you’ve already hit the wall, working on the problem may be more than you can manage. Then the problem job can shrink to one thing: taking as much as you can off your plate. Cancelling plans, stepping back from commitments, and talking to a doctor about time off work. That counts as working on the problem, because it changes the load. For a while, rest and looking after the stress side may be all you can do, and that’s okay. The rest of the problem can wait until you have a bit more energy.
One thing to keep an eye on later. Stepping back from what wore you out is part of recovering. If, months on, you’re still staying away from things you miss because they’ve started to feel frightening, that may have turned into avoidance. There’s more about that in the first post.
What tends to backfire
Waiting until you feel calm before you look at the problem. You may wait a long time. Steadier is enough.
Treating the stress as another problem to solve. Going over it again and again can feel like working on it. If you aren’t getting anywhere new, it’s probably keeping your body switched on instead (the Brosschot review above). Write it down and set a time to come back to it.
Quick fixes that cost you later. Drinking more, smoking or gambling to take the edge off. The NHS advises against using them to relieve stress, because they can make your mental health worse.
Calling avoidance “looking after yourself”. If you drop a task, your life stays the same size. If you keep avoiding something because it scares you, your life gets a little smaller each time. Both feel like relief in the moment, so they can be hard to tell apart. If it’s the second, there’s more about it in the avoidance section of our post on the different kinds of stress.
Accepting something too soon. Some things feel impossible when they’re only hard. If it’s hard, it may still be worth changing, even if it costs you something.
When to talk to someone
See a doctor if you’re struggling to cope, or the things you’re trying yourself aren’t helping (NHS, “Stress”). The same goes if it’s been too much for weeks, or nothing on your plate seems like it can change. You don’t need to wait until it’s severe. Most people feel stressed at some point in their life, and support is available.
Some problems need a particular kind of help. That might be free debt advice, a talk with your employer or union, or a lawyer.
If you’ve had thoughts of not wanting to be here, seek urgent support. If you’re in danger right now, call your local emergency number. Crisis lines are listed at the bottom of this page.
Where this can go
Seeing which job you’re doing doesn’t make everything easier at once. It can make your effort land in a better place, though: more of it on the things that can move, and more care for yourself around the things that can’t. Progress is usually uneven, and a bad week doesn’t undo it.
If all you can manage right now is taking things off your plate and resting, that’s a real start. The rest can come when you have more to give.
Questions people ask
Why do I feel worse now that it’s over?
One possible reason: while the problem was there, you were busy dealing with it. Once it’s gone, there’s room to notice how worn out you are, and your body may still be winding down. Keep looking after the stress side for a while after the problem is gone. If it doesn’t lift, or keeps getting worse, talk to a doctor.
Isn’t calming down just avoiding the problem?
Not if you come back to the problem. Settling a bit so you can think is part of dealing with it. It turns into avoidance when calming down is all you ever do, and the problem never gets looked at.
What if everything feels like it can’t change?
When you’re worn out, it can be hard to see options that are there. Try asking someone you trust to look at it with you. If it still seems that nothing can change, or it’s been like that for a while, that’s a good reason to talk to a doctor.
Sources
- Lazarus, R. S. and Folkman, S. (1984). Stress, Appraisal, and Coping. Springer.
- Nagoski, E. and Nagoski, A. (2019). Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle. Ballantine Books.
- Geurts, S. A. E. and Sonnentag, S. (2006). Recovery as an explanatory mechanism in the relation between acute stress reactions and chronic health impairment. Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment & Health, 32(6), 482–492.
- Brosschot, J. F., Gerin, W. and Thayer, J. F. (2006). The perseverative cognition hypothesis: a review of worry, prolonged stress-related physiological activation, and health. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 60(2), 113–124.
- Park, C. L., Folkman, S. and Bostrom, A. (2001). Appraisals of controllability and coping in caregivers and HIV+ men: testing the goodness-of-fit hypothesis. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 69(3), 481–488.
- Cheng, C., Lau, H.-P. B. and Chan, M.-P. S. (2014). Coping flexibility and psychological adjustment to stressful life changes: a meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin, 140(6), 1582–1607.
- Malouff, J. M., Thorsteinsson, E. B. and Schutte, N. S. (2007). The efficacy of problem solving therapy in reducing mental and physical health problems: a meta-analysis. Clinical Psychology Review, 27(1), 46–57.
- Sonnentag, S., Venz, L. and Casper, A. (2017). Advances in recovery research: what have we learned? What should be done next? Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 22(3), 365–380.
- NHS. Stress.
- NHS Every Mind Matters. Dealing with stress.
- NHS. Breathing exercises for stress.
