Why You Feel Constantly Stressed

What if the reason you can't relax isn't because you have too much to do—but because your body has forgotten what safety feels like?

You keep showing up. You meet the deadlines. You take care of everyone else. From the outside, you look calm, capable, and completely in control. So when someone asks how you're doing, you automatically say...

"I'm fine."

But underneath the productivity, perfectionism, and endless responsibility, your body may be carrying more stress than you realize.

High-functioning anxiety doesn't always look like panic attacks. Sometimes it looks like being the woman everyone depends on while quietly running on empty.

🎧 Press play to discover why so many women mistake chronic stress for "just having a lot going on," how your body begins speaking through exhaustion, poor sleep, digestive issues, and tension, and why healing doesn't begin with doing more—it begins with helping your body feel safe again.

Resources

✨ Wondering how hidden stress is showing up in your body? Take my free Hidden Stress Pattern Quiz to discover how chronic stress may be affecting your energy, sleep, digestion, and daily rhythms—and receive personalized next steps to help you begin working with your body instead of pushing against it.  

Chelsea Johnson Ayurveda / The Body Rhythm

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_00 0:00

And I think a lot of women are exactly in this place. We don't ask ourselves, am I anxious? We just say we have a lot going on. Right? And maybe it shows up in the body as questions about why you can't relax, or why you're so exhausted, or why your digestion feels off, or why can't you turn the thoughts in your mind off? Right? Welcome to the Body Rhythm Podcast, the podcast for women who are ready to stop pushing through and start feeling like themselves again. I'm CJ, Ayurvedic Wellness Guide, helping women reconnect to the natural rhythm their bodies have been craving. But it wasn't that long ago that I was exhausted in a way that sleep didn't fix, bloated no matter what I ate, and lying awake at 3 a.m. with my mind already running tomorrow's to-do list. I thought I just needed to be more consistent, more disciplined. I didn't realize that my body wasn't feeling me. It was completely overwhelmed because you're not broken. You've just been living outside your natural rhythm for a long time. Hello and welcome to the body rhythm. I am Chelsea and I am so happy to have you here today. And today we're talking about high-functioning anxiety and women and what that looks like in our everyday life. So I think one of the reasons so many women stay stuck in chronic stress for years is because their anxiety doesn't look the way they think it's supposed to. Doesn't always look like panic attacks or falling apart or not functioning. Sometimes it looks like productivity. Maybe it's productivity on overdrive, over preparing, caretaker, caretaking, hyper responsibility, achievement, perfectionism, always staying busy. In Ayurveda, we would call this a pitta qualities. And all of this hyper activity, this achievement, perfectionism would be an imbalance in that pitta dosha, in that fiery element within us. So I read a recent Forbes article, and it talked about how so many women don't realize they're struggling because their anxiety is hidden underneath competence, underneath being the one who handles it all. And honestly, I think a lot of our nervous systems have adapted to pressure so completely that stress, that production, that perfectionism, that always achieving achieving just feels normal. It feels like how things have always been. Like it's just what the life experience is for modern women. But I don't think that's true. In my own life, fairly recently, there was a stretch where I was running almost entirely on stimulation. I was having my fourth and fifth cup of coffee at three, four in the afternoon just to keep going. I was trying to push through the rest of the day to get home, to cook dinner, trying to stay awake, to try to keep functioning. And from the outside, I'm sure I looked fine. Everybody said so, right? I was showing up, I was getting things done, and nobody would have called that anxiety. They would have said, you have a lot going on. But some nights I'd get home and I'd have no energy left. I didn't have the energy to cook dinner. I didn't even have the energy some nights to take a shower. I was running on fumes and I just wanted to collapse into bed until the next morning, when of course I woke up with my two cups of coffee before getting to work. And then I'd have another cup of coffee there. And then in the afternoon, I'd have my additional cup or two. And that's how I was getting through the day because I was taking on a lot of things during that time. Caregiving for an elderly parent with cancer, for another parent who was ill. So the problem wasn't my energy. Although, you know, at the time we don't want to address what's really happening. Because I was looking up iuretic herbs for adrenal fatigue. And I was like, I'm just gonna address it with herbs. And yeah, herbs can help. They're very powerful medicine, but when we don't accompany the medicine with lifestyle change, we're really just covering up the problem. And we can over only cover up the problem for so long before it really tries harder to get our attention. So, you know, I was thinking I could address the problem. I needed to manage it better with the herbs. I needed more discipline. I was gonna work out more, right? And that would make me feel better. But really looking back on it, it wasn't an energy problem. It wasn't an herb problem, it wasn't a discipline problem. It was a nervous system problem. A nervous system that had been running on hypervigilance for so long that it forgot to do anything else. It was starved for safety and support. And here's the thing about how I was living back then. If you'd asked me, are you anxious? I probably would have said, no, not really. I just have a lot going on. And as I mentioned, people would always say, you have a lot going on. And I would just be like, Yeah, but that's that's the way that it is, right? And I think a lot of women are exactly in this place. We don't ask ourselves, am I anxious? We just say we have a lot going on, right? And maybe it shows up in the body as questions about why you can't relax, or why you're so exhausted, or why your digestion feels off, or why can't you turn the thoughts in your mind off, right? Because that's how the body carries chronic stress. And the body can be carrying this chronic stress for long periods of time, long before anyone calls it anxiety or overwhelm. And sometimes that anxiety and overwhelm can lead into depression if we look at how the doshas act with each other, right? If we think of uh this productivity, this hypervigilance as excess pitta, this excess fire, this excess heat. Well, what calms heat is water being thrown on it. Kappa dosha. And what is kappa dosha? That's lethargy, that's stagnation, that's staying stuck in one place, right? And that's kind of what happens if we've been running hot for so long. So our body can be carrying chronic stress for a long time, long before we call it anxiety or or overwhelm, long before it looks like what we think anxiety or overwhelm or burnout is supposed to look like. And something that I think our society, our culture gets wrong is we mistake functioning of getting things done for being okay. If I can just get it done, then I'm doing good, right? I'm just pushing through, marching forward. We can meet all the deadlines, we can take care of everyone, but ourselves sometimes. We can perform well at the job, maybe, maybe not. We can stay organized, we can look completely calm and fine on the outside, but on the inside, everything is a mess. It's frantic, right? Internally, our nervous system is running on vigilance, it's running on fumes, it's running on overstimulation, it's being on guard just in case the threat continues to come, and then the nervous system never gets a break, and then our body, our mind never gets a break. And we're not really taught how to notice this in ourselves. I think society reinforces to women, especially, that we're taught to admire this, admire the high functioning, the perfectionism, the performance, the woman who is endlessly available, who's emotionally responsible for everyone and everything. The woman who is always overprepared, always thinking three steps ahead, the problem solver, the woman who never quite stops. She doesn't get called dysregulated, she gets called someone to admire. And I think about the strong, capable women, female CEOs that we see in the media, Cheryl Sandberg comes to mind, right? And these types of women get called strong and capable and together. But functioning is not the same thing as feeling safe in your body. So are we strong? Are we capable? Are we together? Sure. Absolutely, right? I think what women bring to the table is amazing, but we also have to be aware of the toll that it takes on our bodies, on the toll that it takes on our mind, on our nervous system, because we can't be in that strong, capable together mode with no time off, or else we will burn out, be laid up in the bed as I was, unable to move. And eventually, even if you never miss a beat on the outside, right? If you're always on time, you're always getting things done, the body starts speaking. It starts speaking through fatigue, through inflammation, through digestive symptoms like bloating and gas and heartburn and acid, sour stomach. It speaks through insomnia, not being able to fall asleep or stay asleep. It's tension that doesn't go away, maybe an ache in the body that's always kind of there, and emotional flatness. You can't find the joy in life anymore. It's an inability, perhaps, to slow down, even when you finally have the time. How many times, I know this has been true for me, have I gone to sit down, lay down, and I just instinctively reach for my phone to play a game or scroll through, right? And my brain just has the hardest time of turning off. And that's because the nervous system has become to rely on stimulation as a crutch. But actually, that's just keeping the nervous system dysregulated instead of calming it down and providing the sense, that felt sense of safety and support. And one other thing that is important to remember is that the nervous system is designed to respond to emergencies, right? If you are stuck in a car and you do a Herculean effort to get out, or if you're in the jungle being chased by a lion, right? And you're running towards safety. But in our modern life, we're not living in the jungle anymore. We're not living out on the prairie surrounded by threats. So our nervous system now is responding to the constant pressure, to the pace, to the emotional load, to overstimulation, to the lack of support, the lack of rest, our isolation, which really came to the forefront during COVID. And I think some of us are having a hard time reconnecting with ourselves and with others. It's in the constant vigilance of always having to perform and be perfect and achieve. And over time, the body organizes itself around these conditions that we have given it. And when our nervous system reorganizes itself around these conditions, a lot of women reach a point where they can't tell the difference between stress and who they are, right? These conditions have just become a normal operating way of life. And it's not just a phase, it's not a busy season. It's just who I am. It's always on, always managing, always fine, always going. But here's something that Ayurveda has understood for thousands and thousands of years. It's that women are different than men. I know it's shocking, right? But our biology isn't built on a 24-hour clock the way male biology is, right? Male biology resets every 24 hours, but female biology resets every month. Our bodies move through a cycle that unfolds during the month. We're constantly shifting, we're constantly in conversation with the body. And if we're always on, always doing, always vigilant. Right? Our body has a hard time dealing with it. Our body, our female physiology isn't designed to deal with chronic stress day after day, month after month, year after year. Our biology is rhythm, it's cyclical, it's sensitive to stress, to safety, to nourishment, to rest, to community, to laughter, to joy, to meaning. Right? All of these things are so important for women to incorporate into their life because it's how our physiology was made to function. One of the things that I love about Ayurveda is it calls back to our ancestors. Think about that. Think of your ancestor's story. I think of my grandmother and her story living within me. Also, it says that our fat cells have the stories of our ancestors within them. And wouldn't that change the way that you thought about the fat on your body if you thought that it carried the stories, the struggles of the women that came before you in your family lineage? I have to think about that every time because I've gained 15 pounds in this last year. I have to think about that. So I don't get so hard on myself. I am made up of the stories of the women that came before me, and I am connected to them through what is housed in my body and the way that we live, the chronic stress, the life that we have, the constantly going, the constant need to perform and be perfect takes us away from our body, takes us away from the connection to the women before us. And Ayurveda has known for a very long time, right? That healing is never about dominating the body, willing it into action, willing it to shape, forcing it to perform. I think this is what we get wrong when we see so much of the wellness culture right now. It's willing the body to perform. It's if you dominate the body in this sort of way, it will respond and you'll feel better. But actually, the body responds better to rhythm, to being in constant conversation with it, to being in constant rhythm with it, to learn what your triggers and stressors are and how it affects the body. How does having a bad day at work affect how you feel at dinner time or when it's time to go to bed? So if we look at it a different way, the overfunctioning, the hyper-vigilance, hyper-independence, the perfectionism, the one who is always handling everything, these are adaptations that we've had because of what our life experience has demanded of it. If slowing down never felt safe, if asking for help felt disappointing, if your value got tied to your production, then of course your nervous system has learned to stay switched on. It was protecting you, it was doing its job. And sometimes the overfunctioning begins as survival. So this is something that the body has learned over time. Not something that you consciously chose. It's happening in the background. And so if it's happening in the background, then the healing can't be another performance. It can't be another thing for the nervous system to do, another thing that you have to take care of. It can't be an optimize harder routine, a get better at self-care routine, another sleep routine that you saw on TikTok. Because that's just more of the same. It's the same pattern, only this time it has a wellness label on it. And the nervous system doesn't heal by proving itself, by proving its worth. It heals through repeated experience of safety over time, over and over small moments every day until the body begins to trust it. So maybe anxiety isn't always loud or how you think it should look. Maybe it some sounds like a response, like I'm fine, when someone asks you how you are doing, or I've got it, I'll handle it. I just need to get through this week. Right? All these things are so many things that I've heard myself say, I've heard friends say, other women that I've worked with say, I'm fine. I think that's the number one thing. Whenever someone responds with, I'm fine, I know there's a lot happening in the background that isn't fine, that hasn't come up to the surface yet. And maybe we haven't learned to rest yet because our body has forgotten what's Safety and support feels like. And if you've ever wondered why all this seems to catch up with you at 2 or 3 a.m. when you just want to sleep, when the day finally stops and your body has nowhere left to put all that it's been storing, go listen to episode 21. It's an episode that talks about what is beneath the pattern of waking up constantly at 2 and 3 a.m., what the body has been storing and why it suddenly appears in the middle of the night. So if any of this sounds familiar, I don't want you to leave the episode thinking that you gotta go fix another thing. Because that's not the medicine. The medicine is one small shift. Go back and listen to the episode on the six daily habits to reduce stress and feel better in the body. Those are small shifts that you can start doing that take 60 seconds or less that tell the body, hey, you can begin to trust, you can begin to feel safety, you can begin to feel supported. And today, maybe you notice just once when you say, I'm fine. And maybe you put a hand to your heart and you ask yourself, what is it that I really need? Because usually when we say we're fine, there's something that's underneath of it, something that's asking for a little more care. Don't correct it. This isn't another problem to fix. It's not something to perform. You're just beginning to notice where your body is. Is it actually true that you're fine? Or is it the thing that you say so you can keep moving on? That's it. That's the whole practice for today. Because safety isn't built through a bigger routine. Feeling supported in your body isn't built through another wellness optimization. It's built through small repeated moments throughout the day where your body gets to feel, even briefly, that it doesn't have to hold everything together all the time. And if you'd like to go deeper into your own pattern, what your body has been carrying and how it tends to show up for you specifically, take the discover your hidden stress pattern quiz. It's a good next step. It'll show you where you are and how the patterns might be showing up in your body and some small next steps to help begin to create that feeling of safety and support in your body. And if those 2 a.m., 3 a.m. wake-up calls are part of your story, episode 21 picks up where this episode leaves off. Remember, we're not trying to optimize our way to calm, to rest, to sleep, to feeling better. We're building a rhythm, a real rhythm that your nervous system can finally trust because that's how we live longer and that's how we begin to feel better in our bodies. Thank you for joining me on this episode of the Body Rhythm. If you haven't already, please like and subscribe. And I will see you next week. Be well and nourished.