The Cost of Manufactured Stress
On facts, fear and the stress we create for ourselves
We talk about manufactured stress a lot these days and I think that’s because once you see it, you can’t unsee it. And if I’m honest, the reason it comes up so often is pretty simple. We’ve spent years doing it to ourselves.
If you’re in business, you know life is rarely calm. We’ve run businesses, managed teams, dealt with clients, deadlines, compliance, payroll and all the moving parts that come with carrying real responsibility. Some of that stress is justified and some pressure just comes with the territory.
But over time, and through countless conversations, mostly on the pod, we started noticing a pattern that was hard to ignore. We realised a surprising amount of the stress we were carrying wasn’t actually being caused by real events. It was being created and held in our own heads.
That email you haven’t opened yet but have already decided is going to ruin your day. The delayed payment that instantly becomes a looming cashflow disaster. The customer complaint you’re certain will escalate into something much bigger. The message saying, “Can we talk?” which somehow turns into a full-blown internal crisis before the conversation has even happened.
Nothing has actually happened yet. And still your heart rate rises, your shoulders tense and your nervous system acts as though a tiger has walked into the room.
That is manufactured stress. Not the stress of what is. The stress of what might be.
For a long time, we confused this with competence. Being alert and aware feels like good business. In business, hypervigilance can look an awful lot like professionalism. You convince yourself that staying mentally six steps ahead is what responsible people do. You’re managing risk. Anticipating problems. Staying prepared.
And sometimes that is true.
But there is a fine line between preparedness and living in a permanent state of anticipation for disaster. When you live on that line long enough, you stop simply solving problems and start creating them. We become incredibly efficient at reacting to scenarios that exist entirely in our own heads, and somehow it feels seductively productive.
There’s comfort in thinking through every worst-case scenario because it creates the illusion of control. If I can predict every possible disaster, maybe I can stop it from happening. Maybe I can protect myself from being blindsided.
More often, we suffer twice. Once in our imagination and again if the problem ever becomes real. Most of the time, it never does.
In more recent years, we’ve both become much more aware of how often the stories we create are worse than the facts. That’s the thing about uncertainty. We really don’t like it. We would often rather create certainty, even catastrophic certainty, than sit in the discomfort of not knowing.
So we fill in the blanks.
A short email becomes, they’re angry at me. Silence becomes, I’ve done something wrong. Delay becomes, something’s gone wrong. A small problem becomes the reason you might lose your home.
Our brains are brilliant storytellers, but not always reliable narrators.
And the body, unfortunately, doesn’t care whether the threat is real or imagined. Manufactured stress may start in the mind, but the body pays the price. Poor sleep. Tension. Irritability. Decision fatigue. Snapping at the people you love. Carrying a low-grade hum of anxiety so consistently that when things are calm, you start wondering what you’ve missed.
When we were younger, we wore stress like a badge of honour. Busy was impressive. Pressure was proof that you mattered. Being needed felt validating. Constant urgency became part of our identity as business owners and as people.
But eventually you realise the bill always arrives.
Sometimes it’s burnout. Sometimes it’s a health issue. Sometimes it shows up in relationships or in the middle of the night when everything is objectively fine and you still can’t switch off.
That is not resilience.
That’s a nervous system that no longer knows the difference between urgency and normal life. And once your brain gets moving, it doesn’t take much to build a whole story before logic has had a chance to catch up.
Which is why we keep coming back to the same question.
What has actually happened?
Not what might happen. Not what we’re worried about happening. Not the what if.
Just the facts.
What has actually happened?
Usually, the facts are much smaller than the story we’ve built around them. That pause matters. It creates space between stimulus and reaction and allows logic to catch up with emotion. Often, it reminds us that not everything needs our energy the moment it arrives.
There will always be hard decisions, difficult conversations, financial pressure, illness, uncertainty and loss. None of us get to avoid that entirely. But life is hard enough without adding unnecessary suffering to the unavoidable parts.
That, more and more, feels like wisdom.
Not becoming someone capable of carrying endless pressure.
Becoming someone who recognises which pressure was never theirs to carry in the first place.
Richard and I spoke recently on Richly Told about manufactured stress, nervous systems and learning to stop reacting to every sense of urgency around us.
You can listen to the episode here: Ep 42: Stop Manufacturing Stress