Is It Normal to Feel Stressed All the Time, and For No Reason?
Is it normal to feel stressed all the time for no reason?
Is feeling stressed much or all of the time – and for no real reason you can really figure out – normal?
Well, it is, and it isn’t!
What do I mean by that?
I mean it is normal to feel stressed all the time, and it’s normal to feel stressed for no reason, because it’s a common experience, and many people feel that way a lot of the time.
In that sense, it’s “normal”. Because, sadly, you are very far from alone when you feel that way.
But it’s also not normal to feel stressed all the time, or for no reason! Why? Because your body – your physiology – is not designed to be that way.
Usually the reason you feel stressed all the time, for no reason, is down to biological, physiological causes you can address. But you’ve not been taught how.
Because you don’t know how to release stress stuck in your body (or even know it’s a “thing”), you’re very likely to feel increasingly stressed over time, including feeling stressed for what seems like no reason.
I help people stop feeling so stressed. And a big part of what I do, is explain why you can feel stressed for no reason, and why you can feel stressed all of the time.
Knowing stress is definitely not “all in your head” is super important when it comes to addressing your stress levels.
The more you understand that stress is in your nervous system physiology – in your body – the more able you become to address and reduce your stress (and to get rid of stress that’s literally become stuck in your body).
Most stress isn’t a “psychological” problem.
Our society tends to see being stressed-out for no reason, or being stressed all the time, as an emotional or psychological “problem”.
That’s why counselling or psychotherapy is often suggested if you feel stressed – or practices such as meditation, mindfulness, and yoga.
And these can be of help, for many people.
But – and this is a big but! – the missing piece here is your physiology, your nervous system, your body.
Talking therapies, mindfulness, even practices like yoga, simply don’t fully address how your body stores stress in your nervous system, and how to get it “un-stuck”.
The fact is that you can’t calm your nervous system when it’s stuck in stress mode (or “survival mode”) simply by talking, or by being “mindful” or doing yoga.
This is also why you can’t get rid of your stress through willpower alone - nor through “positive thinking”. That’s not how it works.
You need to more directly un-do the stress that’s got literally stuck in your body, in your nervous system.
And you can.
You can address your stressed-out state – by getting rid of embodied stress, aka stress that’s literally got stuck in your body.
How?
I use a three-pronged approach to get you out of feeling stressed all the time, and to stop you feeling stressed for no good reason:
Self-moving
Self-sensing
Self-knowing
These work in combination to break the truly vicious cycle of stress that gets stuck in your body... enabling you to:
Use movement in specific ways to get out of patterns of stress.
Develop your inbuilt capacity to sense your own body – and the state of your nervous system – as you move, and as you experience stress.
Understand your physiology (your body and nervous system) better, so that you can self-heal from stress, tension, and trauma.
What is this “vicious cycle” of stress that gets stuck in your body and nervous system?
The vicious cycle starts with something stressful happening – to you, or in your environment.
Whenever you experience a big stress or a small one, or something traumatic, then your body (activated by your nervous system) goes into a “stress response”.
Those stress responses involve a bunch of physiological responses in your body, including full-body patterns of muscle tightening.
These responses – and the contractions in specific muscles – are helpful. They prepare you to deal with the stress or the “threat” you’re facing.
They prepare you to “fight or flee”, to deal with the stress through social interaction, or to recognise when the stress, threat or danger has passed, so you can let go of your stress. In some instances, where none of these will work, you might go into “freeze”.
But in any case, these “stress responses” are designed to be temporary. The way humans (like other animals) evolved, was to deal with a stress, then let it go.
But especially in modern life, stress very often gets stuck in your body – and so, builds up in you over time. This happens when (however you responded to the stress) your body was not able to fully let it go.
So, the stress gets stuck in your nervous system – which means the physiological responses to stress, including those full-body patterns of tight muscles, get stuck.
And you experience higher levels of stress, as a result.
Stress that’s stuck in your body makes you less able to deal with future stress.
Because you’re “stuck” with some stress you weren’t able to let go (and I teach more about why that is in my programmes and classes), this means you’re already stressed before the next time something stressful happens.
So, instead of coming to a situation starting from 0% or maybe 5% stressed, you’re starting at 10%, or 30%, or whatever. That means, any new stress will stress you more.
Stress builds up over time, if there’s stress stuck in your body.
All this means that any time stress gets stuck in your body – as tight muscles, and as feelings of over-alertness – you’re less able to deal with the next stress you face. And so it goes on... and on... (and your tight muscles get tighter - which is why so many physical symptoms really are caused - quite literally - by stuck stress!)
This is why you can feel stressed much or all of the time, and why you can feel stressed for no reason.
In fact, there is a reason, right?!
The reason is that you’re storing stress in your body – and that keeps your nervous system on alert, instead of letting it work so you can “rest and digest”.
So, it’s both normal and not normal to feel this way.
It’s normal because it’s so common, unfortunately, in our society. We don’t pay enough attention to our nervous system, because we tend to think we can look after our “body” and “mind” separately, when that’s just not true.
To look after yourself, to become less stressed, you need to deal with your whole self – your physiology that creates stress in your body, even though society tends to consider it an emotional or psychological problem.
And that is what I teach people to do. I teach somatic strategies, movements, and techniques to release stress stuck in your body – to heal yourself so you can deal better with old traumas as well as the inevitable stresses that’ll come up in your life in the future.
Once you understand why you feel stressed all the time, for no reason, then you can figure out the best ways for you to address your stress, and move forward in life with less stress, less tension, and far more confidence and ease.