Jump to
Jump to
The 800 lb. gorilla on your back
What makes you feel the most stressed? That growing pile of bills? A relationship that’s on the rocks? Too many responsibilities to cram into 24 hours? I’m getting stressed just listing those off…
Almost without fail, stress comes from feeling like things are out of your control. Whether it’s a jaguar or a jam-packed schedule, both threats and inconveniences rob us of the ability to live life how we planned. They ask more of us than we expected to give, and they introduce the possibility that we’ll fall short.
When something threatens to derail your plans (plans like making your flight, impressing your audience, or not being eaten), your body responds with a flood of focusing chemicals to help you assess the situation and re-adjust.
And because you’re never going to be perfectly in control, stress is inevitable. But what separates good stress from distress is what we do once we find ourselves in the muck.
If stress has been weighing you down instead of pushing you forward, it’s not doing its job. Stick around, and I’ll help you recognize your biggest stressors, identify the opportunities they present, and rise to the occasion by making stress work for you.
Signs & Symptoms of Stress
Stress is normal, but long-term, sustained stress can be deadly.
When you get stressed, your body diverts most non-essential functions to briefly make you superhuman. Your muscles tighten, your attention sharpens, and time seems to slow down to help you make split-second decisions and improve your chance of survival. These are great superpowers for fighting off a home invader or swerving to miss a highway pile-up, but they’re only meant to get you through an immediate crisis. When your body stays in fight-or-flight mode too long and too often, it starts to break down.
The following are some signs that you’ve been soaking in your stress more often than your body can handle. But if these look familiar, don’t freak out. Stress is most insidious when it becomes background noise; but by recognizing your stress for what it is and confronting it head-on, you’ll be perfectly prepared to loosen its grip on your life.
Physical
- Headaches
- Sweating
- Frequent illness
- Difficulty concentrating
- Difficulty making decisions
- Change in sleep patterns
- Change in appetite
Mental & Emotional
- Excess guilt or nervousness
- Increased frustration
- Burnout
- Feelings of insecurity
- Diminished sex drive
- Social withdrawal
- Increased reliance on drugs or alcohol
- Hide Content
What's got you stressing?
Stress is inevitable.
Stress is a universal human experience, but not everyone processes it the same way. One guy might harness his adrenaline to give the most high-energy presentation of his career, while another guy might miss his cue while he’s dry-heaving in the bathroom. A lot of factors determine a man’s relationship with his stress: genetics, environment, relationships, and life experience all predict the way he’ll react when the stress gets too heavy. Even men who don’t suffer from a clinical stress disorder can be overwhelmed by the slow accumulation of everyday stressors.
Here’s a list of clinical disorders that make men more susceptible to stress, as well as a deeper dive into how stress tests men’s zen.
Clinical Disorders
Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD)
People with GAD are extremely worried about most things in their lives (money, relationships, health), even when there’s little or no reason to worry about them. If you worry that your stress is starting to look like anxiety, check out my Gentlemental Health page dedicated to that topic.
Acute Stress Disorder
After an intensely stressful event, some people develop severe anxiety, dissociation, or other symptoms closely related to the experience.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
A traumatic event, such as a natural disaster or assault, can sometimes inflict long-lasting memories that are difficult to escape and cause emotional numbness and anxiety.
Panic Disorder
The introduction of new responsibilities, expenses, stress, and expectations can make the transition into parenthood hard on fathers.
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
Men spend a lot of time preparing financially, but they often don't prepare themselves for what else comes with retirement. Boredom, a lost sense of purpose, and a disconnect from social groups can make some retirements anything but relaxing.
Social Anxiety
Being anxious in a social setting is not uncommon. Even the most friendly, outgoing men can experience anxiety while around other people, sometimes causing them to avoid social situations altogether.
Phobias
A phobia is an irrational, uncontrollable fear that can attach itself to pretty much any stimulus. Certain situations, people, objects, or events can be intensely overwhelming, to the point of inciting a panic attack.
What’s Actually Behind Stress?
Remember those “focusing chemicals” I mentioned a while back in the intro? When your body detects a stressful situation, it starts pumping you full of cortisol, epinephrine (a.k.a. adrenaline), and norepinephrine. This concentration cocktail hits you with all the classic symptoms of stress: increased heart rate, tense muscles, wide eyes, and alertness. It also steals energy away from less urgent bodily functions, like your digestive and immune systems.
This is how your body’s supposed to react, to keep you in peak condition during high-intensity situations. Researchers like to use the term “eustress” to describe the positive, focusing, motivating stress that helps us perform at our best level. In fact, the “flow state” that you get when you’re completely immersed in a tough but attainable pursuit is the ultimate example of eustress.
But it becomes a problem when we hit that stressful state too often or for too long.
Let’s get down to the brass-tacks level. Humans respond to stimuli: something happens to us, and we react to it. Some reactions are out of our control, like pulling away from a grease fire or turning to look at a crying baby. But after most stimuli, there’s a space (however small) where we tell ourselves a little story before responding. When someone cuts you off in heavy traffic, you might think, “That sonuvabitch could’ve killed me. Or at least scratched my car. And at this rate, I’ll never get to work on time, and maybe I’ll get fired, and then I’ll have to take a job shoveling elephant dumps at a circus, and…” Now — instead of just hitting the brakes, avoiding an accident, and moving on with your day — you’re languishing in that stressful state way longer than you need to.
While stress is natural and sometimes even beneficial, the manufactured stress that comes from worst-case thinking is guaranteed to beat you down like a tenderized steak. Fortunately, that means you don’t have to break out the flower necklaces and patchouli to banish stress from your life entirely. All you need is a little management.
Stress management tips for men
Nobody expects you to smile serenely during an earthquake.
The goal isn’t to have zero stress. The goal is to make stress work for you. It’s as simple as that, but it’s not always as easy as it sounds. Breaking the habit of stress can take a fair amount of time and effort. Sometimes it might require an outside perspective to help you sniff out stressors that you weren’t even aware of. But it’s well worth the work.
Reframe
Like we discussed, stress is often compounded by the disaster stories we tell ourselves. When you feel yourself getting agitated, pause. Take a breath. Ask yourself what caused the stress, and whether you need to stay in this state. If you avoided a threat, tell yourself, “I’m sure glad my body reacted how it was supposed to.” If there was no threat to begin with, tell yourself, “I’m glad I caught myself before I spiraled out.”
I’m not gonna lie, it takes an awful lot of mental fitness to stop on a dime like that. But the more you practice, the easier it gets. Once you’re able to stop yourself from wasting effort on ruminating and spiraling, you’ll be able to put your mental energy to better use — like solving the problem that got you stressed in the first place.
Stay Healthy
Exercise increases endorphins, which are drug-like chemicals that have been shown to alleviate stress and increase euphoria. Good nutrition supports your immune system, which helps to reduce the negative side-effects of stress and keep you from adding sickness to your list of things to stress about. While you’re at it, lay off the drugs and booze, which only briefly mask your stress before making it even worse than before.
Prioritize
When a million responsibilities start piling onto your plate, it’s easy to get lost in a cycle of stressful thinking. One of the best tools at your disposal is the to-do list. When you write out everything you need to get done — in order of priority — you’ll find the list falls significantly shy of a million. Plus, you’ll know what to tackle first, which will give you back some of that control you’ve been hankering for. And remember the power of just saying not and embracing the joy of just saying no sometimes.
Find Support
Sometimes, all it takes is a different perspective to help us recognize what stress we can do without. Maybe you set yourself an arbitrary deadline or an impossible standard for a project you’re working on. Someone with a bit of distance can let you know that it’s time to recalibrate your expectations and let yourself off the hook.
Or maybe what you’re stressing about really is a big deal, but it’s not something you need to go through alone. When you share your concerns with people who care about you, you’re giving them a chance to pitch in and find new ways to relieve your stress.
Try Therapy
Stress is like your check-engine light. It’s telling you that something needs attention. And if you can’t figure it out on your own, there’s no shame in reaching out to a professional mechanic.
The right therapist will have a massive toolbox of stress-busting techniques at the ready, whether that means a simple chat to uncover the roots of your stress, mindfulness and breathing exercises to practice at home, cognitive behavioral therapy to help you work through thorny mental hangups, trauma-informed approaches to treat PTSD, or exposure-based approaches for OCD and phobias, the pros have more resources and expertise to draw on than you could ever access on your own.
Don’t let the prospect of therapy stress you out, either. Stress-reduction therapy often doesn’t require long-term treatment, so you can get back to the more important things in life. Like trying every type of sandwich before you die.
Man Therapy Provider Directory
Find a real life man-therapist.
We have partnered with real life professionals who specialize in men’s issues. Talking with a specialist can be way more efficient than googling symptoms. Browse and find one that sounds right for you; they’re ready for whatever you’ll throw at them.
More resources for less stress
The good news: stress is a normal part of life. The bad news: stress is a normal part of life.
There’s always going to be something that threatens to harsh your mellow, so the wise man arms himself with as many de-stressing techniques as he can get his hands on. Here’s an even bigger list of tips, tricks, and resources to help you keep your stress in check. Practice breathing exercises, listen to the experts break down the science of stress, get inspired by men who have harnessed healthy stress in their own lives, and avail yourself of all the other self-help and pro-help tools I’ve organized below.
Below, you’ll find an office chock-full of Gentlemental Health guides just like this one as well as other in-person and online community resources to leverage for your own mental health and to share with other guys who need a hand. Let’s dive in.
Suggested Resources
An office full of support and the information you need to beat stress.
There’s more meat on the mental health bone. try dr. rich’sMental health plan builder.
Gentlemental Health 101
Improving your mental health means taking charge of every aspect of your world. Mental health issues are often interconnected, so explore how other areas of your life can impact each other and get your brain and life into tip-top shape.