Understanding Stress and Anxiety: How to Manage Your Mental Load

Stress is something we all experience, yet it can feel surprisingly difficult to understand — let alone manage. Whether you’re navigating a particularly demanding period in your life or simply noticing that everyday pressures are starting to take their toll, understanding why we feel stressed is a powerful first step towards feeling better.

What Actually Happens in Your Brain When You’re Stressed?

Our experience of stress begins with a physiological response — a built-in alarm system in the brain known as the limbic system, often called the “primitive emotional brain.” When we sense danger, whether physical, emotional, or mental, this part of the brain triggers the well-known fight, flight, or freeze response. Its sole purpose is survival, and it works fast — bypassing logical, rational thought entirely.

Why We’re Wired This Way

To understand this, it helps to think about our ancient ancestors. Imagine a caveperson faced with a predator. There’s no time to weigh up the options — the limbic system takes over instantly, flooding the body with adrenaline and cortisol to enable a rapid escape. In that context, these stress hormones are lifesaving.

The problem is that the same response fires in modern life — in traffic jams, difficult conversations, or financial worries — situations where a surge of adrenaline doesn’t actually help. Too much adrenaline can trigger panic attacks; chronically elevated cortisol feeds ongoing feelings of anxiety and overwhelm.

Stress can be acute (a single, short-lived event, such as a minor car accident) or chronic (a prolonged or compounding series of stressors, such as ongoing financial difficulty following an injury). Both can significantly affect our physical and mental wellbeing if left unaddressed. 

Stress can lead to anxiety, low mood and feeling overwhelmed. Anxiety is a symptom of stress and it can persist, in some cases, long after the stressful event has ended.

The Stress Bucket: How Pressure Builds Up

A helpful way to understand how stress accumulates is through the idea of a stress bucket. Let’s follow Kate through a difficult day.

Kate starts her morning feeling fine. But then she hits unexpected traffic and arrives late for a client meeting — one stressful item drops into her bucket. At lunchtime, she steps in dog mess while checking her phone and ruins a new pair of shoes — another item added. That evening, her partner Tom mentions that redundancies are likely at his company. Suddenly her bucket is close to overflowing.

None of these events is catastrophic on its own, but together they accumulate. When our stress bucket fills up and we have no way to empty it, our emotional resilience drops and our mental and physical health can start to suffer. 

(Kate and Tom are fictional characters.)

How Do We Empty the Stress Bucket?  

The most natural way the brain empties the stress bucket is through sleep — particularly REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, the dreaming phase. During REM sleep, the brain processes emotional experiences, converting them into narrative and helping us wake up feeling restored and ready for the day ahead. When sleep is disrupted or we’re struggling with insomnia, this essential processing is interrupted, and stress can accumulate more quickly.

Interestingly, research suggests that the deep relaxation experienced during hypnotherapy can replicate some of the restorative effects of REM sleep — helping to reduce stress, calm the nervous system, and bring greater mental clarity. Many clients find that after a hypnotherapy session, they feel not only deeply relaxed but also able to think more clearly about challenges in their lives.

Mindfulness is another evidence-based tool for emptying the stress bucket. Regular mindfulness practice trains the brain to step back from automatic stress responses, creating a pause between stimulus and reaction. Even a few minutes of mindful breathing each day can help regulate the nervous system and reduce the accumulation of stress over time.

Practical Ways to Manage Stress

Reduce what goes in. Consider where you have agency. Could you organise your time more effectively? Build in more sleep? Identify activities — exercise, creative hobbies, cooking, reading — that genuinely help you unwind?

Respond, don’t react. Unless you’re in immediate physical danger, taking a mindful moment to pause before responding to a stressful situation can make a significant difference. This is a core principle of both mindfulness practice and solution focused therapy — creating space for thoughtful, rather than automatic, responses.

Ask for help. When we’re stressed and anxious, it becomes genuinely harder to think clearly. Talking to someone — a trusted friend, colleague, or therapist — can offer perspective and solutions that feel impossible to access on our own.

Reflect on the positive. Each day, try noting two or three things that went well, however small. This isn’t about toxic positivity — it’s about redirecting the brain’s attention. Problems tend to shrink or expand depending on how we choose to think about them. When we feel calm and grounded, the brain works away quietly in the background, finding solutions that feel out of reach when we’re overwhelmed.

Finding Support

I work with clients experiencing stress and anxiety using a blend of solution focused hypnotherapy, mindfulness, and talking therapy. Together, these approaches help you understand what’s driving your stress, build resilience, and develop practical strategies for feeling better — in a way that’s tailored to you.
If you’d like to find out more, I’d love to hear from you. To get in touch for a free, no obligation initial consultation: Contact

© Tracy Daniels