Can Your Body Recognise Stress Before You Do?

When you're responsible for supporting others, how easy is it to overlook what your own body might be telling you?

We talk a lot about recognising stress in employees, but I sometimes wonder how much attention we're paying to the people responsible for looking after everyone else. Managers, leaders and those working in HR and wellbeing roles spend much of their time supporting others, making decisions and responding to problems. But when your attention is constantly directed towards other people's needs, how often do you stop to consider your own? And could your body already be responding to stress before you've consciously recognised it?

Your body doesn't wait for you to recognise stress

Stress isn't simply an emotional experience. It's also physiological. Because when the brain detects a potential threat or challenge, the autonomic nervous system can trigger changes in heart rate, breathing and muscle tension. Stress hormones also help prepare the body to respond, and these reactions can begin before we're even consciously aware of feeling stressed.

While occasional stress is a normal part of life, repeated exposure without sufficient recovery can affect both physical and psychological health. You might notice recurring headaches, disrupted sleep, persistent fatigue or muscle tension without immediately connecting those experiences to what's happening at work. Of course, these symptoms can have other causes and shouldn't automatically be attributed to stress. But there's a difference between noticing a physical symptom and recognising what might be contributing to it.

When stress becomes part of the job

I think we've become so accustomed to being busy that stress can start to feel like an ordinary part of working life. A headache becomes something to work through, poor sleep gets dismissed because there's another deadline, and feeling exhausted becomes something we accept.

For people in leadership positions, there's another consideration. When you're expected to remain composed, make decisions and support others, acknowledging that you're struggling yourself can feel uncomfortable. You may recognise when someone in your team needs support, yet overlook similar signs in yourself.

Over time, working through discomfort can become a habit, particularly when there never seems to be a convenient moment to stop. But being able to continue functioning doesn't necessarily tell us how well someone is coping.

Looking after the people who look after others

I think one of the things worth paying attention to is not just whether we're experiencing signs of stress, but how we've started responding to them.

For example, if you're finding it harder to concentrate, are you working longer hours to compensate? If you're regularly exhausted, have you started accepting that as an unavoidable part of your role? And if you're constantly thinking about work outside working hours, have you begun treating that as evidence of being committed?

These responses can become habits. When working longer or pushing through exhaustion helps someone meet an immediate deadline, it can reinforce the behaviour, even if it leaves them with less time to recover. Over time, they may become increasingly accustomed to functioning under strain without questioning what it's costing them.

And this is something organisations need to consider too. If the people who are consistently available, take on additional responsibilities and work through difficult periods are the ones receiving recognition, what message does that send about how leaders are expected to operate?

People in positions of responsibility may feel they need to demonstrate that they're coping, both to their teams and to those above them. Acknowledging that they're struggling can feel like calling their competence into question, even when the pressures they're experiencing are unreasonable.

That's why organisations can't rely solely on managers speaking up when things become difficult. They also need to pay attention to how leadership roles are structured, the expectations placed on managers and whether those expectations allow sufficient opportunity for recovery.

It's also important that persistent or concerning physical symptoms receive appropriate medical assessment, rather than automatically being attributed to stress.

We often use the aeroplane analogy about putting on your own oxygen mask before helping others. And while it's a familiar saying, I think it's particularly relevant to people who spend their working lives supporting others. Because looking after employee wellbeing also means paying attention to the wellbeing of the people responsible for leading and supporting them.