10 Strange Signals Your Body Sends When You're Under Too Much Stress
If you're going to ignore anyone's advice, don't let it be your own body's.
DimaBerlin | Shutterstock Despite being equipped to handle healthy amounts of stress from our personal or professional lives, our general emotional and physical wellbeing generally takes a toll when burdened with too much anxiety and stress. According to the American Psychological Association, mediating this kind of overwhelming stress starts with recognizing the symptoms and setting boundaries — whether they’re entirely mental or starting to take root in your physical experience.
While there are several strange signals your body sends when you're under too much stress, recognizing them starts with being present in your own body. By carving out space to intentionally connect with yourself and recognize destructive habits in your routine, you can craft a more balanced reality less burdened by stress.
Here are 10 strange signals your body sends when you're under too much stress
1. Brain fog
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According to the Bangkok International Hospital, brain fog, or the experience of struggling to concentrate and being riddled with fatigue, is often associated with higher levels of stress. By overworking yourself, disregarding healthy work life boundaries, or failing to prioritize breaks, self-care, and space to recharge, you overload our brain, making it difficult to truly unwind or live a balanced life.
The hormonal imbalances that typically cause brain fog in people with stressful routines also tend to spark a number of other ailments from digestion issues to irregular menstruation cycles and emotional dysregulation.
2. Waking up tired
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According to psychiatrist Nicole Washington, stress has significant consequences on our sleep schedule when left unregulated, promoting insomnia, difficulty falling and staying asleep, and getting a healthy amount of quality sleep.
When chaotic routines spike our cortisol levels — our body's stress hormone — our sleep patterns tend to fluctuate, making true rest nearly impossible to achieve.
When we're consistently overworked, especially without work-life boundaries or at home, we tend to also take our anxious thoughts with us to bed, ruminating and stressing out over the small things while trying to fall asleep.
3. Always having an upset stomach
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Experts from UChicago Medicine argue that stress often causes our digestive muscles to enter a "fight or flight" mode that can lead to an upset stomach.
When left consistently unregulated and unaddressed, anxiety and stress in our daily routines can be coupled with this uncomfortable digestive experience, forcing us to battle physical discomfort along with mental overload.
Especially for people who already have digestion issues like IBS or a reflux disease, stress can make pre-existenting symptoms more harmful, making you feel worse when you're already feeling bad.
4. Sweating
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When we're in a stressful situation or battling anxious thoughts, it's not uncommon to sweat — it's a natural physiological response triggered by stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, like Piedmont Health experts suggest.
However, when you're burnt out or consistently battling too much stress, this bodily response can happen more frequently than normal, typically without a rise in body heat and much faster than a typical body regulation tactic.
By prioritizing mindfulness techniques and setting healthy boundaries, people experiencing high levels of stress can help to combat this bodily response, being present in their anxiety and actively working to relieve it, rather than combat it.
5. Clenching your jaw
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According to experts from Johns Hopkins Medicine, people battling high levels of stress often clench their jaws and grind their teeth more than the average person, experiencing a condition called bruxism that can occur both at night and during wakeful hours.
With severe implications on dental health and comfort throughout the day, people who subconsciously clench their jaw muscles may also experience headaches, jaw discomfort, and tension as a result of their stress.
While it might seem like a subtle behavior, the strange signals your body sends when you're under too much stress can genuinely impact your quality of life, adding uncomfortable experiences and bodily symptoms to an already chaotic routine.
6. Shortness of breath
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The body's "fight or flight" response often sparked by stress and anxiety tends to lead to a heightened heart rate, breathing rate, and shortness of breath. Sparking tension in the head and chest, many people battling the consequences of burnout and overwhelming stress struggle to relax, both emotionally and physically.
While this experience is often tied to moments of anxiety like a panic attack or emotional outburst, experiencing chronic shortness of breath can also be a consequence of consistently unresolved stress. Without healthy boundaries and routines for de-stressing, our bodies are working overtime to deal with internal turmoil, oftentimes at the expense of our physical and emotional comfort.
7. Getting sick more often than normal
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Stress also has the power to directly impact our immune system, deteriorating typical defense mechanisms against illnesses like the common cold. When our bodies are too busy mediating stress and anxiety from our chaotic routines, our immune system responses tend to be suppressed, like Cleveland Clinic experts suggest, ensuring we're more susceptible to illness.
Also causing more inflammation and stress hormone production, unacknowledged anxiety and stress can have profoundly impact our physical state and ability to effectively navigate daily lives.
8. Constant headaches
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According to an article published in World Psychiatry, muscle pain and headaches are often associated with unacknowledged levels of stress and burnout. Resulting in experiences like chronic back, shoulder and neck pain, and fatigue, our inability to emotionally relax often impacts our bodies as well.
Translating emotional pain and stress into a physical experience, our bodies often send strange signals to remind us that we're under too much stress, urging us to take steps towards relaxing or setting better boundaries.
9. Dizziness
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Considering stress tends to spike cortisol levels in the body, a stress hormone response also associated with the body's balance, people feeling burnt out often feel dizzy in random moments throughout their days. Whether it's feeling dizzy standing up or being unable to concentrate while working, the best way to manage this uncomfortable experience is by managing the stress itself.
Whether it's a lifestyle change like getting a new job or adopting a new healthy habit or more internal emotional regulation, figure out how to mediate the consequences of stress to promote better mental and physical well-being.
10. Noticeable weight fluctuations
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Whether you're constantly looking for comfort foods, coping with stress with sugar, or struggling to maintain a consistent schedule with food as a result of your overwhelming schedule, stress has the power to spark weight fluctuations in people who refuse to acknowledge their burnout symptoms.
Like a study from Frontiers in Endocrinology found, stress can also affect a body's ability to store fat alongside higher releases of hormones like cortisol that have severe implications on our weight. While it might be a subtle change in your body, recognizing changes to your routine — especially with food intake — can be a sign that it's time to set clear boundaries into your routine.
Zayda Slabbekoorn is a staff writer with a bachelor's degree in social relations & policy and gender studies who focuses on psychology, relationships, self-help, and human interest stories.