Stress Isn’t a Failure

It's Information

Samantha Newton FCIPD is the founder of Magenta HR Consulting. She supports leaders in professional services to handle people pressure with calm judgement and fair, defensible decisions, because work should support wellbeing, not quietly erode it.

Many people believe they're stressed because they're not coping well enough.

They assume stress is a sign of weakness, poor time management, or a lack of resilience. So they respond by trying harder: pushing through, staying later, squeezing in more, telling themselves they'll rest when things calm down.

But stress is rarely a character flaw.

In reality, stress is often the most honest data you have. It's information, from your body and mind, about what you've been carrying, for how long, and under what conditions.

Last week we looked at wellbeing as a system: mental, physical, emotional, and social. Stress is what happens when that system is under sustained demand without enough clarity, control, recovery, or support.

Stress is feedback, not a verdict

Stress is the body's response to perceived demand.

In short bursts, it can be useful. It sharpens focus. It helps you respond. It gets you through a deadline, a difficult conversation, a high-stakes moment.

The problem isn't stress existing. The problem is stress becoming the baseline.

When pressure continues without sufficient recovery, the nervous system stays in a heightened state of alert. Over time, that affects sleep, concentration, mood, digestion, immune function, and emotional regulation. You might feel tired but wired. You might feel flat. You might find yourself overreacting to small things because your system has no spare capacity left.

This isn't you "failing". It's your body doing its job: signalling that something isn't sustainable.

Stress isn't always about "too much to do"

One of the most unhelpful myths about stress is that it's purely about workload.

Sometimes it is. But often, stress comes from the conditions around the work — especially when those conditions create uncertainty or a lack of control.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio

Common stress drivers include:

• Unclear expectations: you can't settle when you don't know what "good" looks like.
• Shifting priorities: the goalposts move, and you're always behind.
• Lack of control: responsibility without authority keeps the nervous system switched on.
• Unresolved tension: conflict that isn't addressed doesn't disappear; it sits in the background.
• Constant interruption: you never get to finish, so your mind stays open-loop.
• Psychological unsafety: you feel watched, judged, or unable to be honest without consequence.

These are the stressors that keep people activated even when the to-do list is technically manageable.

Because the strain isn't just the tasks. It's the environment.

The "high-functioning stress" trap

A lot of stressed people don't look stressed.

They're delivering. They're capable. They're reliable. They're the person who "just gets on with it".

Photo by AMIR SAMOH on Unsplash

High-functioning stress can look like:

• being productive but never feeling finished
• being calm in meetings but wired afterwards
• struggling to switch off, even on days off
• feeling irritable, impatient, or emotionally flat
• needing constant stimulation to keep going (coffee, scrolling, noise)
• feeling guilty when resting
• waking up already braced for the day

Because it's not dramatic, it's easy to dismiss. You tell yourself you're fine because you're still functioning.

But functioning isn't the same as being well.

A short vignette: when stress is really about uncertainty

Someone once described their work stress like this:

"It's not that I'm drowning in tasks. It's that I can't predict what will land."

Their days were full of last-minute changes, unclear decisions, and priorities that shifted depending on who had spoken to whom. They were expected to "use judgement", but later questioned for doing exactly that. They weren't micromanaged — but they were constantly second-guessed.

So even on quieter days, their nervous system didn't relax. They were always half-ready for the next demand.

Photo by Anthony Tran on Unsplash

That's the point: stress isn't always about volume. It's often about uncertainty.

And uncertainty is exhausting.

The most common mistake: turning stress into self-blame

When people feel stressed, they often make it personal.

They tell themselves:

• "I should be able to handle this."
• "I'm just not organised enough."
• "Other people cope – why can't I?"
• "I need to toughen up."

But stress is frequently a rational response to an irrational set of conditions.

Self-blame keeps you stuck because it turns a structural issue into a private shame story. It also stops you asking the right questions, the ones that lead to clarity.

Three questions that turn stress into usable information

A more helpful response is curiosity.

Try asking:

• What is this stress responding to?
  (A deadline? uncertainty? conflict? unrealistic expectations? lack of control?)
• What feels unsustainable right now?
  (The pace? the ambiguity? the emotional labour? the constant availability?)
• Where am I lacking clarity, support, or recovery?
  (Do I need a decision? a boundary? a conversation? a proper break?)

These questions don't magically remove pressure. But they change your relationship with stress. They turn it from something to "push through" into something you can learn from.

Why early attention matters

Stress becomes damaging not because it exists, but because it goes unacknowledged for too long.

When listened to early, stress acts as a guide. It prompts small course corrections before exhaustion becomes embedded.

Ignored, it accumulates, often until burnout forces a pause.

Photo by Nataliya Vaitkevich

And burnout is rarely sudden. It's often the end point of months (sometimes years) of tolerating what your body has been trying to flag.

Next week, we'll talk about checking in, not as a wellness routine, but as a practical way to notice patterns early and make small adjustments before stress becomes your normal.

A question to sit with this week: if your stress is "information", what is it trying to tell you?

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Main – Photo by energepic.com