You’re sitting at your desk, inbox open, when an email lands from your boss. Your chest tightens. Your thoughts start racing. And somewhere in your body, it feels, just for a moment, like a threat. It is, well, at least your brain thinks so.
Our brains haven’t changed much in 200,000 years. The threat-detection system, which is often called the ‘caveman brain’, evolved when danger was immediate and physical: a predator, a rival, a sudden drop in social standing. That last one mattered more than you might think. For early humans, being cast out by the group didn’t just feel bad. It meant death. So, the brain learned to treat social threats, criticism, rejection and loss of status, with exactly the same urgency as a tiger in the grass.
The problem is, it still does. Your nervous system can’t distinguish between a sabre-tooth tiger and a difficult email, an unreasonable deadline, or a loaded look from a colleague. The same alarm goes off. The same stress hormones flood your system. And you find yourself running a survival response designed for the savannah, not a chair in an open-plan office.
That’s why understanding the causes of workplace stress isn’t just about workload or difficult people. It starts with understanding what your brain is actually doing, and why it’s doing it.
What stress actually does to your body
Before we look at the specific causes of stress at work, it helps to understand what’s happening inside you when you feel overwhelmed.
Your autonomic nervous system (ANS) runs in the background of everything you do, regulating your internal state without any conscious input. Think of it like a car’s accelerator system with two branches:
Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS) – This is like putting your foot on the gas, ready to act and stay alert. This puts you in ‘action mode’ or what you may have heard of as fight or flight.
Parasympathetic Nervous System (PNS) – This is like taking your foot off the gas. It slows you down, and things calm down. This is where you can rest, restore and repair.
These two systems constantly work together to create balance between ‘action mode’ and ‘rest and restore mode.’ Your system is shifting dynamically between alertness and rest. But there’s a problem. Modern working life, with its constant notifications, emails, deadlines, and always-on culture, keeps the accelerator pressed firmly down. We’ve built what you could call a stress bubble: a state of near-permanent activation that leaves the body with no room to recover.
The good news is that we have ways to influence this system to help us relax and better manage tension and stress in our lives.
Here’s what’s really interesting: your breathing directly influences this on/off switch. When you breathe in, your heart rate accelerates as the SNS is stimulated. When you exhale, your heart rate decelerates as the PNS takes charge. So breath by breath, there’s a dynamic movement between action mode and restorative mode.
Importantly, you can directly influence which system is in charge through your breath. Especially when your out-breath is longer than your in-breath, the PNS takes over. Which means you have more direct access to your own calm than you might realise.
What work-related stress really looks like
When people finally talk honestly about stress at work, the language they use is telling. “I feel like I’m drowning, but I have to keep smiling.” “I’m performing being competent rather than actually feeling competent.”
These aren’t signs of weakness. They’re signs of a nervous system under sustained pressure, and they’re increasingly common. According to Mental Health UK’s 2025 Burnout Report, 91% of UK adults experienced high or extreme levels of pressure or stress in the past year. Among 18-24 year olds, that figure rises to 93%. Work-related stress is now the leading cause of work-related ill health in the UK, with stress-related absences costing the economy billions annually.
Professionals across all industries, from corporate executives to entrepreneurs, all remain terrified to admit their struggles. They believe vulnerability will damage their career prospects, make them look incompetent, or cause others to lose confidence in their abilities.
What makes this harder is that you’re not just managing the stressor itself. You’re also managing how you appear whilst managing it, maintaining professional composure whilst your nervous system is running at full alert. That double effort is exhausting in a way that’s difficult to explain to anyone who hasn’t experienced it.
Why the same pressure hits differently depending on the person
To understand why work stress affects people so differently, we need to look beyond the old ‘fight or flight’ response. Whilst Walter Cannon’s research in 1932 identified this physiological reaction, it doesn’t explain why the same deadline devastates one person whilst energising another.
Psychologist Richard Lazarus developed what he called the transactional model of stress: the idea that stress isn’t simply something that happens to you, but something that emerges from the relationship between you and your environment. Think of it as a seesaw: on one side, your perceived demands; on the other, your perceived resources and ability to cope. When demands outweigh resources, the seesaw tips towards stress.
This is why appraisal matters so much. One person facing a challenging project might read it as an opportunity to grow and feel confident they can handle it. Another might read the same project as a threat to their reputation, doubt their abilities, and spiral into anxiety. Same deadline. Entirely different experience.
It also explains why stress can become chronic. Each time you return to a worry, you’re likely reinforcing the threat appraisal, quietly convincing yourself the situation is more dangerous than your resources can handle.
How you make sense of your stress matters
If appraisal shapes the stress response, then changing how you interpret a situation genuinely changes how you experience it. This isn’t positive thinking. It’s neuroscience.
When your brain registers a threat, and you feel you lack resources to cope, your nervous system activates the same response it would to physical danger. Your prefrontal cortex, the part responsible for clear thinking and decision-making, gets partially hijacked by the threat response. You’re now operating from fear rather than clarity. Recognising this is happening is often the first step to shifting it.
Stress researchers distinguish between two types of coping response.
Problem-focused vs Emotion-focused coping
Our approach to coping can be varied, depending on the stressor and situation, and explains why some work stress management strategies succeed whilst others fail.
Problem-focused coping targets the stressor itself. When you believe you can handle a challenge, you naturally gravitate towards strategies like problem-solving, seeking support, or developing new skills. This approach often leads to long-term solutions and enhanced confidence.
Emotion-focused coping aims to manage your emotional response to the stressor. This can be positive (like mindfulness or seeking emotional support) or maladaptive (like avoidance, worry, or comfort eating). The key is whether your emotional regulation strategies help you function better or create additional problems.
The most effective approach tends to combine both. When you reframe a work challenge as a learning opportunity, you’re changing how you feel about it and positioning yourself to take action.
The language audit
One of the most practical tools for managing professional stress is also one of the simplest: pay attention to how you talk about workplace stress causes and challenges.
Language isn’t just a way of describing experience. It actively shapes it. When you say “I am failing,” your nervous system responds as though your entire identity is under threat. When you say “this project is facing a challenge,” your brain registers it as a problem to solve, not a personal crisis. The words literally alter your physiological response.
Try this: every time you catch yourself saying “I’m struggling” or “I’m failing,” pause and rephrase it. Separate yourself from the situation.
“I’m terrible at presentations” becomes “My presentation skills are an area I’m actively developing.”
“I’m overwhelmed” becomes “There’s a lot on right now, and I’m working out what to prioritise.”
To practise this properly, try the following tonight: write down three current stressors using lots of “I” statements. Then rewrite each one, placing the challenge outside of your identity, separating yourself from the situation. Notice the shift. Not just in the words, but in how each version feels to read.
Using your breath to reset your nervous system
Because your breath directly influences your autonomic nervous system, breathing is one of the fastest routes out of a stress response, and one of the most underused.
The key is the ratio. When your out-breath is longer than your in-breath, the parasympathetic nervous system takes charge and the body moves towards calm. A simple starting point: breathe in for a count of four, and out for a count of six or eight.
The important thing is that the exhalation should be effortless: a slow, passive release, not a forced push. You can’t do your way to relaxation. You can only stop doing, and allow the nervous system to return to its natural resting state.
With practice, this becomes a tool you can use anywhere: before a difficult meeting, mid-afternoon when the accelerator has been pressed for too long, or at the end of a day that’s left you wired and depleted.
Controlled vulnerability at work
Here’s something that challenges most of what we’ve been taught about professional behaviour: showing vulnerability at work tends to strengthen relationships, not weaken them.
Psychologists call this the pratfall effect. When someone comes across as competent but also genuinely human, capable of uncertainty and willing to admit difficulty, they become more relatable and more trustworthy. Colleagues find it easier to connect with them, easier to be honest with them, and easier to ask for help themselves.
Controlled vulnerability isn’t the same as oversharing or losing professional composure. It’s being able to say “I’m finding this genuinely difficult” without it feeling like a confession of failure. It’s the difference between performing competence and actually building it.
When I share that I understand work stress because I’ve experienced it across different roles, my clients immediately relax. They think, ‘She gets it. She’s been where I am.’ This creates psychological safety, and when people feel safe, their prefrontal cortex comes back online. They can think clearly, make better decisions, and ironically, perform better.
Authenticity doesn’t weaken your professional standing. It strengthens it because people trust colleagues who are real, not perfect.
Working with your stress response, not against it
Your stress response isn’t a flaw in your design. It’s an ancient system doing exactly what it was built to do, keeping you alive in the face of perceived threat. The difficulty is that it evolved for a world very different from the one you’re actually living in.
But you can work with it. You can train your nervous system to distinguish between genuine threats and the ordinary pressures of professional life. You can separate your identity from your work outcomes. You can notice the threat response as information rather than instruction.
The professionals who sustain high performance long-term aren’t the ones who push through stress. They’re the ones who learn to regulate it. They understand what’s happening in their bodies and have tools to respond, rather than just react.
Your stress response isn’t a weakness to overcome. It’s a signal to listen to. Start with the language audit. Pay attention to how you’re breathing. Notice when you’re fusing your identity with your work outcomes.
You are not your job. You are the person who does it. That distinction, practised consistently, changes everything.
If work-related stress is something you’re navigating right now, I work with professionals one-to-one and through group programmes, with evidence-based stress management techniques, mindfulness practices, and breathing exercises that support your success and your well-being. A free initial consultation is a good place to start.
