Are You Stuck in a Stress Cycle at Work? (Here’s How to Break It)

Ping.Ping.Ping.

Another Teams message.

Another meeting added to an already full calendar.

A passive-aggressive email.

A difficult client.

A rude comment from a colleague.

A micromanaging boss.

Too little staff. Too much work.And somehow… even more added to the list.

We are constantly bombarded by things that stress us out at work.

And here’s the hard truth most of us don’t want to hear:

that part is not going to change.

You cannot control what people think.

You cannot control what they say.

You cannot control how they behave.

During my last workshop, Confidence Without the Fight, I was asked:“How do I deal with difficult people at work and not feel stressed?”

It’s such a valid question. Because when you’re in it, the irritation, frustration, pressure, and anxiety don’t feel theoretical — they feel personal. They sit in your body. They follow you home. They steal your energy.

Why Stress Takes Over So Fast

The reason managing stress feels so hard is not because you’re failing.

It’s because your reaction is automatic.

Something happens — a comment, an email, a look in a meeting — and before you even have time to think, your body reacts. Your heart rate changes. Your breathing becomes shallow. Your shoulders tighten. And suddenly, you’re already swept away by emotion.

This is because when you’re in the stress cycle, you’re operating from the amygdala, the primitive part of the brain.

The amygdala’s job is not clarity.It’s not calm thinking.It’s not strategy or good decision-making.

Its only job is to keep you safe.

And when the amygdala is activated, your thinking brain — the prefrontal cortex — goes offline. That’s the part of the brain responsible for logic, perspective, emotional regulation, creativity, and clear decisions.

This is why telling yourself to “just calm down,” “be confident,” or “think clearly” so often doesn’t work under pressure. You’re trying to reason when the part of the brain that reasons isn’t even online.

Stress, in this sense, is not just feeling busy or under pressure. Stress is a physiological state in which your nervous system believes you are under constant threat. And when you live there for too long, it starts to shape everything — how you think, how you feel, and how you show up.

It makes you doubt yourself.It pulls you into overthinking, procrastination, or perfectionism.It pushes you into comparison.It leaves you constantly drained and tired.And it makes it almost impossible to truly disconnect, even in the evenings, on weekends, or during holidays.

Living in Chronic Work Stress

Research shows that 7 out of 10 people are currently living in chronic stress at work.

I used to be one of them.

People came to me constantly — with their problems, the team’s problems, everything that was done wrong, and everything that still needed to be done. At the same time, I was pressured from the top, with shareholders demanding results that felt impossible and unrealistic. From the bottom, my team wanted less work, less pressure, fewer spreadsheets. And from the middle, instead of solutions, there was gossip, politics, and conversations happening behind my back.

My stress levels were extremely high.

I felt surrounded by problems and pressure, with no way out. I felt like I was losing control, losing respect, and being undermined by people who were supposed to support me. And the more I focused on the problems, the more trapped I felt.

What I didn’t realize at the time was this:

I was living almost permanently in my amygdala.

I was reacting, firefighting, pushing through, and trying to control outcomes and people. And every time I rushed, solved another crisis, or powered through despite exhaustion, my brain quietly reinforced the same message: urgency keeps us safe — do that again.

I was stuck — overwhelmed, reactive, and running on adrenaline. And the irony was that the more stressed and worried I felt, the harder it became to actually get my work done. My mind was constantly being carried away by drama stories, replaying conversations, imagining worst-case scenarios, wondering what someone meant or what someone else had said behind my back.

I would come home and unload everything onto my husband. I would tell the same stories again and again — how unfair the situation was, how infuriating certain behaviors were, how trapped I felt. I repeated them to friends too, hoping that talking about it would bring relief. But instead, it only left me feeling even more worked up, more drained, more exhausted.

And this went on for months. Month after month.

And you know what?It didn’t matter how much I complained.It didn’t matter how unfair the situation felt.

Nothing changed.

Until I decided to change.

The Moment Things Began to Shift

Things didn’t change because people suddenly behaved better. The pressure didn’t disappear. The environment didn’t magically become easier.

They changed when I started to pause.

When I learned to breathe and regulate my body first, before reacting.

When I stopped trying to manage everyone’s opinions and expectations.

When I consciously chose what was truly worth my time and energy.

That’s when my prefrontal cortex came back online.

And with my thinking brain active again, I had more clarity, better decision-making, more perspective, and something I hadn’t felt in a long time: self-trust. I started leading from calm instead of urgency — not because the pressure was gone, but because I stopped letting it run the show.

You Can’t Control Others — But You Can Control Your Response

This is where the ABC strategy that I teach at my workshops now, comes in.

Not to change others.

Not to fix the workplace.

But to help you stay in control.

Awareness and acceptance create distance from your thoughts. Breathing resets your nervous system and brings the body out of survival mode. And only then do you regain access to choice — the ability to consciously decide how you want to respond.

Many people ask me, “How do I use ABC to get people at work to change?”

You don’t.

You can’t.

And that’s actually freeing.

Because trying to manage people’s behavior only creates more stress, frustration, and agitation — and it doesn’t solve anything.

Every situation is different. Some days you’ll speak up. Some days you’ll set boundaries. Some days you’ll shrug your shoulders and decide it’s not worth your energy.

The point is this: you always get to choose how you respond.

And that choice is where confidence lives.

What Real Confidence Actually Is

Confidence doesn’t come from controlling your thoughts.It doesn’t come from fixing people.And it doesn’t come from pushing harder.

It comes from knowing how to regulate your nervous system on purpose, so you can lead, decide, and live from calm and self-trust.

Because the real question is not whether you can keep living and leading from stress — it’s whether you’re willing to keep paying the price of not choosing calm.