Healthy stress is temporary pressure followed by recovery. Unhealthy stress is sustained pressure without enough recovery, particularly when it begins to affect sleep, focus, mood, relationships or health.
Stress gets talked about as though it is automatically bad. It isn't. We need some stress. It helps us respond, adapt, focus and rise to challenges.
The problem is not that we experience pressure. The problem is when the pressure does not switch off - or when we never properly come down from it.
I see this regularly in people who are busy, capable and performing at a high level. They are functioning. They are delivering. But underneath that, they are always on.
One client described reaching the end of the day with so little bandwidth left that all they wanted to do was go home and look at their phone. Another realised during a conversation that they never actually relaxed. They either distracted themselves or kept busy.
I recognise that pattern because fourteen years working in high-stress humanitarian environments did something similar to me.
Stress is becoming harder to ignore
The scale of the issue is striking. Ipsos' Health Service Report 2025 surveyed more than 23,000 adults across 30 countries.
In Ireland, 58% of those surveyed identified mental health as one of the biggest health problems facing the country.
Those figures do not mean that stress and mental illness are the same thing. They are not. But sustained stress can affect how we think, sleep, feel and function, and it can contribute to a much wider deterioration in wellbeing.
The goal is not a stress-free life. It is knowing the difference between useful pressure and stress that is costing you too much.
Healthy stress vs unhealthy stress
A useful way to think about stress is not simply "stress or no stress", but whether there is enough recovery around the pressure.
Pressure followed by recovery
Healthy stress is generally short-lived. Something asks more of us, we mobilise to meet it, and afterwards the system has an opportunity to settle again.
- Connected to a specific challenge or demand
- Can sharpen attention and motivation
- Feels manageable, even when demanding
- Has a beginning and an end
- Recovery follows the period of pressure
Pressure without enough recovery
Unhealthy stress is different. The demand continues, the mind remains switched on, and there is too little opportunity to recover before the next pressure arrives.
- Feels continuous rather than temporary
- Recovery keeps being postponed
- Sleep, focus or mood begin to change
- Small demands start to feel disproportionately difficult
- Unhelpful coping habits begin to creep in
How do you know when stress has gone too far?
There is no single line that applies to everybody. The amount of pressure that energises one person may overwhelm another.
But there are useful signals that tell us recovery is no longer keeping pace with demand.
You are tired but find it difficult to genuinely switch off or settle.
Your attention is more scattered and clear thinking takes more effort than it normally would.
Your patience is shorter, small things irritate you more, or your emotional reactions feel stronger.
Rest increasingly means distraction - scrolling, television, food, alcohol, constant activity - rather than feeling genuinely restored.
Sleep, relationships, exercise, eating well and the things that normally keep you grounded are beginning to deteriorate.
Why catching stress early matters
We tend to wait until something becomes a serious problem before giving ourselves permission to address it.
But it is much easier to change a pattern while stress is still manageable than after months or years of running depleted.
This does not always require a dramatic life overhaul. I have seen people begin changing their relationship with stress through very small practices - including two one-minute breathing practices a day, five days a week - when they actually do them consistently.
Small interruptions matter because they create moments when the nervous system and the mind are not simply moving from one demand directly into another.
There is also a wider economic case for acting on mental health. World Health Organization research has found that investment in scaling treatment for depression and anxiety can return substantially more through improved health and ability to work.
Stress is not one-size-fits-all
Different people are overstressed by different things.
The deadline that energises one person can overwhelm another. Pressure can land differently depending on mindset, lifestyle, circumstances, what else someone is already carrying, and even what they believe about stress.
This matters in organisations too. Leaders cannot assume that because something feels manageable to them, it feels manageable to everybody around them.
Knowing your own pressure points is important. Understanding that other people's may be different is part of leading well.
How to reduce unhealthy stress
The aim is not to remove every challenge from life or work. It is to stop unnecessary pressure from becoming the permanent background state.
Try two one-minute breathing practices a day, five days a week. If that is already part of your routine, add fifteen minutes each day doing one thing only with no screen or device. Walk. Listen to music. Play with your children. Journal. Talk to someone. Even wash the dishes. No multitasking.
Remove one recurring irritation. A meeting that does not need to exist. A meeting that runs too long. Unnecessary emails. Too many people copied into conversations. Small amounts of friction repeated every day become significant drains.
Ask before you add. Before introducing the next initiative, ask people what is already generating unnecessary stress - workload, systems, expectations or ways of working - and look at what can be simplified or removed.
Stress is not automatically the enemy. The question is whether pressure is helping you rise to something and then allowing you to recover - or whether it has become a permanent way of operating. Learn your own signals, build recovery in early and act before the cost becomes unnecessarily high.
- Ipsos Health Service Report 2025 - global and Ireland findings on mental health and stress
- World Health Organization - research on investment in treatment for depression and anxiety