Stress Management Therapy

Feeling Constantly Stressed or Overwhelmed?

Are you feeling constantly stressed and overwhelmed? Many people assume that their life circumstances — such as managing children, work demands, or a high-pressure role — are the primary cause of their stress.

While these factors can certainly contribute, feeling stressed for most of the day, on most days of the week, may be a sign of chronic stress.

Chronic stress occurs when your nervous system remains in a heightened state of alert and has limited opportunity to reset. Over time, this constant “on edge” feeling can become your baseline.

This ongoing stress response can begin to affect multiple areas of your life, including your sleep, immune system, digestion, focus, memory, mood, and relationships.

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How Stress Can Affect You

There are a number of common signs of stress, which can show up in different ways across your thoughts, emotions, and body:

• Changes in mood: Stress can affect your mood in a variety of ways. You may feel more irritable, short-tempered, or impatient, as though the pressure could build at any moment. Others experience ongoing worry or nervousness, with a mind that feels busy or difficult to switch off. Over time, chronic stress can contribute to more significant difficulties such as anxiety or depression.
• Difficulty concentrating and memory issues: Stress can impact your ability to focus and process information. You may find it harder to concentrate at work or school, feel mentally scattered, or become more forgetful. This might include forgetting names shortly after being introduced, or arriving somewhere and not remembering what you came for.
• Digestive discomfort: Stress commonly affects the digestive system. You may notice nausea, a churning sensation in your stomach, indigestion, or changes in bowel habits such as diarrhoea or constipation.
• Headaches and physical tension: Ongoing stress can lead to muscle tension, particularly in the neck and shoulders, which may contribute to headaches or general aches and pains.
• Changes in appetite: Stress can affect appetite in different ways. You may lose interest in food or find it difficult to eat, or alternatively notice an increase in appetite. Some people also turn to food for comfort as a way of coping with feeling overwhelmed.
• Physical symptoms of anxiety and overwhelm: Stress can activate your body’s stress response, leading to symptoms such as a racing heart, tightness in the chest, increased sweating, or restlessness (such as nail biting).

When Stress Becomes a Problem

While stress is a normal part of life, it can become a problem when it begins to feel constant, overwhelming, or difficult to manage. Over time, chronic stress can affect many areas of your functioning, including your thoughts, emotions, behaviour, and physical health.

Common signs that stress may be becoming problematic include:

• Feeling overwhelmed and emotionally reactive: You may feel run-down, more sensitive, or easily triggered. Small things can feel disproportionately difficult, and you may notice yourself taking things more personally or feeling close to “breaking point”.
• Persistent worry and mental fog: Your mind may feel preoccupied or difficult to switch off. You might find yourself going through daily routines on autopilot, struggling to stay present, or not recalling parts of your day.
• Changes in weight or appetite: Stress can disrupt normal hunger cues. Some people experience reduced appetite, while others may eat more frequently or use food to cope with distress.
• Disorganisation and procrastination: Stress can interfere with focus and task completion. You may feel stuck, avoid tasks, or become overly focused on one area (such as work), while other responsibilities begin to build up.
• Weakened immune system: Ongoing stress places strain on the body, which can make you more susceptible to illness and leave you feeling physically depleted.
• Difficulty relaxing or switching off: Even during downtime, your mind may remain active. This can reduce your ability to enjoy activities or feel mentally at ease.
• Impact on relationships: Stress can affect how you relate to others. You may feel more irritable, withdrawn, or distracted, which can lead to tension or disconnection. Physical symptoms of stress can also impact closeness and intimacy.
• Sleep difficulties: You may struggle to fall asleep, stay asleep, or feel rested. Some people experience insomnia, while others sleep more but still feel fatigued during the day.
• Unhelpful coping strategies: You may find yourself relying on alcohol, smoking, drugs, or food as a way to manage stress or escape difficult feelings.
• Physical strain on the body: Chronic stress activates the body’s stress response, increasing heart rate and blood pressure, and placing strain on the cardiovascular system over time.

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How Stress Management Therapy Can Help

In stress management therapy, your psychologist will work with you to understand the underlying causes of your stress — looking beyond your current circumstances to the patterns that may be keeping you feeling overwhelmed.

For example, you may notice unhelpful thoughts arising when pressure increases, such as “I can’t cope,” or find that your mind becomes scattered and difficult to focus, which can further increase feelings of overwhelm. Therapy helps you identify and work through these patterns in a structured and supportive way.

Your psychologist will also support you in developing practical coping strategies, so you can respond to stress with greater calm and confidence, even during periods of high demand.

Importantly, stress management therapy often involves exploring how you relate to yourself more broadly — including your expectations, self-beliefs, and way in which you perceive pressure. These deeper patterns can significantly influence how stress is experienced and managed.

Over time, people tend to find they feel more confident, steady, and in control, with an increased ability to navigate life’s challenges in a calmer and more balanced way.

A Psychologist’s Approach to Stress Management

There are a number of well-researched psychological approaches that are effective in the treatment of stress, including Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), mindfulness-based therapies such as Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), and skills drawn from Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT).

In stress management therapy, your psychologist will work with you not only to reduce your current stress, but to understand the underlying factors contributing to it.

CBT can help identify and shift unhelpful thinking patterns that increase stress, while mindfulness-based approaches support you in developing greater awareness and a more balanced response to difficult thoughts and emotions. Distress tolerance skills from DBT can also be helpful in managing intense stress in the moment, allowing you to respond more calmly rather than react automatically.

Importantly, therapy may also explore deeper patterns that influence how you experience and respond to stress. For some people, this may involve long-standing beliefs about themselves or the world (often referred to as schemas), or coping styles that developed earlier in life. In other cases, past experiences or trauma may play a role in shaping your stress response.

By addressing both the immediate experience of stress and the underlying patterns that maintain it, therapy aims to create lasting change.

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Building Better Stress Habits Over Time

Managing stress isn’t about removing it entirely — it’s about building small, consistent habits that help your mind and body respond in a calmer and more balanced way over time.

Here are some practical ways to begin:

1. Bring your attention back to the present moment

Stress often pulls your mind into the future — what might go wrong, what needs to be done, or what you’re worried about.

Simple grounding strategies, such as noticing the sounds around you or focusing on your surroundings, can help bring you back into the present. This shift in attention can quickly reduce the intensity of stress and create a sense of steadiness.

2. Create space before you react

When you’re stressed, your brain naturally moves into “fight, flight, or appease” mode — often leading to reactive decisions you later regret.

Instead, practise pausing. Step away, take a short walk, or do something calming before responding. Creating even a small gap between feeling stressed and acting on it can help you respond more thoughtfully.

3. Learn to prioritise and let go

Stress can build when everything feels urgent and important.

Taking a moment to check in with yourself — “How important is this, really?” — can help you put things into perspective and decide what actually needs your energy. Over time, this reduces the sense of constant pressure.

4. Set clear boundaries around your time and energy

Without boundaries, stress can easily spill into every part of your day.

This might involve setting limits around work hours, saying no to commitments that aren’t essential, or creating clearer roles and responsibilities at home. Protecting your time allows you to properly rest and recharge.

5. Focus on what matters most (and let go of perfectionism)

Trying to do everything perfectly is one of the quickest ways to feel overwhelmed.

Instead, focus on completing tasks to a “good enough” standard, and direct your time toward what truly matters. Where possible, delegate or seek support in areas that drain your energy.

6. Make your breaks genuinely restorative

Not all breaks help you recover from stress.

Activities like scrolling on your phone or multitasking may feel like downtime, but often leave you feeling just as depleted. Instead, prioritise breaks that help you reset — such as going for a walk, spending time with others, or doing something creative or relaxing.

7. Support your wellbeing through mindful habits

Practices such as slow breathing, mindfulness, and regularly checking in with yourself can help calm your nervous system and reduce the build-up of stress over time.

If you’d like practical ways to bring mindfulness into your day, you can explore more in our article Five Quick Ways to Bring Mindfulness Into Everyday Life. If you’re curious about how mindfulness works and why it’s become such a popular practise as a form as self care, we’ve also explained this here.

8. Recognise significant patterns that may be driving stress

Sometimes stress is linked to significant patterns — such as tying your self-worth to productivity, experiencing parental burnout, or finding it difficult to switch off when you’re meant to be resting.

Understanding these patterns can be an important step in creating lasting change. You can explore these topics further:

If your self-worth feels tied to being productive, read more in blog article, Who am I without Productivity?

For support with parental burnout, including practical strategies, see article Understanding Parental Burnout and How to Find Relief.

If you find it difficult to switch off from stress or anxiety, learn more here.

For more hacks and tips for reducing stress in articles, Five Quick Hacks for Reducing Stress and 3 Tips for Reducing Stress. We also love the Calm app, as it has a range of tools for managing stress, including guided meditations, breathing exercises, movement-based stress release and structured programs for managing stress.