But I’ve been noticing something lately, both with the people I work with and in the conversations happening around me. Many of us are carrying stress silently and holding it inside rather than expressing it. It shows up as subtle tension, slight fatigue, irritability or restlessness, often going completely unrecognised.
What if the real shift isn’t about controlling stress at all? But instead it’s to expand your capacity to hold life’s pressures, physically, emotionally and mentally, without breaking?
Most stress management advice focuses on control by getting us to suppress the tension, distract ourselves and numb our emotions. But from a physiological perspective, this approach has a hidden cost.
When you internalise stress, your nervous system stays in a state of chronic activation. The body carries what the mind won’t express. Cortisol levels remain elevated, inflammation rises and over time, your energy reserves become depleted. Suppressing stress like this quietly erodes your health, your focus and your capacity to perform at your best.
So what’s the answer? Eliminating stress completely is an unrealistic goal, as life is always going to bring some form of pressure, challenges and difficult moments. What we need to do instead is train our system to tolerate stress more effectively by expanding our threshold, starting with one foundational practice: expression.
When you allow stress to move through your body rather than getting stuck inside it, your nervous system can offload pressure instead of internalising it. This takes practice, jut like physical conditioning. It requires awareness, consistency and a balance of challenge and recovery. Raising your threshold doesn’t mean you’ll never feel stress, but it does mean you’ll hold it with more composure, clarity and strength.
Here are three core practices that will help raise your stress threshold:
1. Express: Release Rather Than Resist
Physical and emotional expression are your first lines of defence. This looks different for everyone, but the principle is the same: help your body move the tension out.
Go for a walk. Shake it out. Dance. Hit a punching bag. Write in a journal. Move your body in whatever way feels right for you. Even five minutes of movement or reflection compounds over time, creating a system that naturally releases pressure instead of storing it.
Sharing your stress out loud to a trusted person is one of the fastest ways to release tension and gain perspective. Something shifts when we name the feeling we’re holding, allowing the nervous system to recognise it’s safe to let go.
2. Regulate: Support Your System
Once you’ve started to release the physical tension, you can support your nervous system with grounding practices. Breathwork, meditation or simple stretches all signal safety to your body.
Beyond that, support your physiology with stabilising nutrition by eating warm, whole foods that are protein-rich and genuinely energising. These meals maintain both your physical energy and emotional calm during stressful periods.
Quality sleep and consistent daily rhythms are equally important. They give your system the space it needs to reset and recover from the demands you’re placing on it.
3. Reframe: Shift Your Perspective
This is where mental resilience gets built. Instead of seeing stress as punishment, try seeing it as practice. Ask yourself: ‘What is this teaching me about my limits or my capacity?’
When you reframe challenges this way, something changes. The emotional load becomes lighter and you start to see difficult periods as opportunities to grow stronger rather than evidence that you’re failing.
Stress doesn’t have to be the enemy. It’s part of being alive and engaged with the world. The real question isn’t how to eliminate it but how to expand your capacity to hold it.
This autumn, think about how you can move from suppressing stress to consciously navigating what life brings. When you shift your approach to stress, everything changes. You stop just coping and you start thriving.
If you recognise yourself in these patterns, you don’t have to do this alone. I work with clients to develop personalised approaches to stress resilience that include nervous system regulation, nutritional support and the mindset shifts that make real change possible. Get in touch and let’s explore how you can build genuine resilience that sustains you through life’s challenges.
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