What If Anxiety Is A Background App You Refuse To Close

Your phone gets hot when a massive app keeps running in the background. So why are we surprised when we feel the same way after weeks of nonstop “mental tabs” we never close? We take a hard, practical look at the mechanics of stress and why modern anxiety can feel like an endless battery drain even when nothing “dangerous” is happening. 

We walk through the stress response the way it actually works: the sympathetic nervous system flips on fight flight freeze with adrenaline and cortisol, then your recovery system is supposed to clear the chemicals and return you to baseline. That cycle is brilliant when you’re facing a real threat. The trouble starts when everyday life, traffic, deadlines, family conflict, workplace pressure, even a single email, gets processed like a bear in the woods. With no physical release and no clear “all safe” moment, stress hormones linger, digestion stalls, sleep suffers, and the alarms start stacking. 

Then we unpack Ches Moulton’s Three Ms, a reframing that can be uncomfortable but freeing: stress isn’t a medical condition, it isn’t proof your mind is broken, and the engine of negative stress is often our own unchecked thought process. Catastrophizing turns “a problem to solve” into “a threat to survive,” and your body responds to that story as if it’s real. We end with a simple, usable tool for stress management: catch the simulation early, name it, and feed your nervous system a signal of safety so recovery can finally do its job. 

If this helped you rethink anxiety, cortisol, and burnout, subscribe for more, share it with someone who’s running hot, and leave a review so more people can find the show. What’s the most common story your mind defaults to under pressure?

Hosted by our AI guides, Adrian and Sarah

Transcript

Sponsor And Stress Premise

SPEAKER_00 0:00

This podcast is brought to you by the Institute for Mental Health and Wellbeing. Building mentally healthy, high-performing workplaces. Mental health matters.

The Overheating Phone Metaphor

Adrian 0:11

You know, uh that feeling when your smartphone is just completely inexplicably hot to the touch.

Sarah 0:17

Oh, yeah, like burning a hole in your pocket.

Adrian 0:19

Right. And you haven't even been using it for anything intense, right? Right. But the screen is like dimming, and that little battery icon is just draining at a terrifying speed. Every swipe is lagging. Exactly. And you're just staring at this incredibly expensive piece of technology, wondering what on earth is going wrong with it.

Sarah 0:37

It's super frustrating.

Adrian 0:38

It is. And then uh you check your settings and realize you have this one massive, really resource-heavy app that you opened days ago. And you just, well, you completely forgot to close it.

Sarah 0:50

So it's just been sitting there.

Adrian 0:51

Yes, silently running in the background, absolutely torching your system's energy to process data that you aren't even looking at.

Sarah 0:57

Aaron Powell It is a frustratingly universal modern experience. You know, you're left holding this overheating device that is fundamentally failing to do its basic job. And it's simply because its internal resources are completely hijacked by a background process. I mean, it can't cool down and it can't recharge until you manually intervene.

Adrian 1:17

Aaron Powell And see, that right there is exactly how we treat our own biological systems. We have this ancient, incredibly powerful software running in the background of our minds, and we just leave it open day after day.

Sarah 1:30

We really do.

Adrian 1:31

It drains our battery, it makes us physically run hot, and then we look around completely baffled as to why we feel so constantly overwhelmed and exhausted.

Sarah 1:40

Yeah, we totally miss the root cause.

Adrian 1:43

So welcome to today's deep dive. For you listening right now, we are going to take a really hard mechanical look at that simmering, constant anxiety of modern life.

Sarah 1:52

It's something we all deal with.

Adrian 1:53

Oh, completely. Today we're pulling from some genuinely fascinating insights found in chapter four of this book called How to Get Control of Your Stress.

Sarah 2:02

Right, by Tess Moulton.

Adrian 2:03

Exactly. He's a certified stress management consultant. And the mission for this deep dive is to completely dismantle how you think about your daily stress.

Sarah 2:11

Aaron Powell Because the goal here is critical. We aren't here just to like commiserate about how demanding modern life is.

Adrian 2:17

No, we want actual answers.

Sarah 2:19

Right. We need to understand the precise biological and psychological mechanics of what is actually happening inside your body when you feel that overwhelming pressure.

Adrian 2:28

Aaron Powell So we can figure out who or what is to blame.

Sarah 2:32

Exactly. Because I mean you can't fix an overheating machine until you understand how the circuitry actually works.

Adrian 2:38

Aaron Powell So let's crack open the back of the machine.

Sarah 2:41

Yeah.

Adrian 2:41

I want to know how this biological battery drain actually happens.

Sarah 2:45

Aaron Powell Well, before we can start pointing fingers at the cause of our stress, we have to look

Stress Biology SNS And RDS

Sarah 2:50

at the physical hardware of what happens when we actually experience it.

Adrian 2:53

Aaron Powell Okay, lay it on me.

Sarah 2:55

And the first major paradigm shift here is acknowledging that the stress system itself isn't inherently a bad thing.

Adrian 3:02

Aaron Powell Wait, really? Because it feels pretty bad.

Sarah 3:05

Aaron Ross Powell I know, I know. We tend to demonize the word stress entirely in our culture. We talk about it like it's some sort of toxic poison.

Adrian 3:11

Yeah, like something to eradicate.

Sarah 3:13

Aaron Powell But the biological mechanism of stress is actually a marvel of evolutionary engineering. It's a built-in, life-protecting gift.

Adrian 3:21

Aaron Ross Powell A gift. Okay, you have to explain that one.

Sarah 3:23

Well, think about the normal intended cycle of the system. Imagine a genuine physical life-threatening situation.

Adrian 3:30

Okay.

Sarah 3:31

The classic evolutionary example is coming face to face with a hungry bear in the woods.

Adrian 3:36

Aaron Ross Powell A classic for a reason. That would definitely be stressful.

Sarah 3:39

Exactly. So in a fraction of a second, your sympathetic nervous system, the SNS, which is responsible for your fight-flight-freeze response, it just kicks into high gear. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

Adrian 3:49

And it does that by flooding the body with a very specific cocktail of chemicals, right? Like adrenaline and cortisol.

Sarah 3:54

Correct. Your SNS immediately acts like a ruthless emergency manager. It draws resources away from literally any bodily function that isn't immediately necessary for survival. It spikes your heart rate to pump oxygen to your muscles. Makes sense. It dilates your pupils so you can see better. It completely shuts down your digestive system.

Adrian 4:15

Wait, it shuts down digestion.

Sarah 4:17

Oh, completely. Because I mean your body doesn't need to waste energy digesting lunch if you are about to become lunch, right?

Adrian 4:23

Well, okay, yeah, put that way, it makes total sense. It's just pure survival mode.

Sarah 4:27

Every ounce of your biology is primed, so you can either fight that bear or sprint away from it.

Adrian 4:32

But the bear encounter is only the first half of the equation, right? Assuming you actually manage to outrun the bear, what happens next?

Sarah 4:39

That brings us to the critical second half of the intended cycle. Once the life-threatening danger has passed, your built-in stress system hands the wheel over to what we can call your rest and digest system.

Adrian 4:52

The rest and digest system.

Sarah 4:53

Right, the RDS. You can think of the RDS as your body's emergency cleanup crew.

Adrian 4:58

Okay, I like that visual.

Sarah 4:59

So once the threat is gone, the RDS kicks in to restore balance. It clears out the excess adrenaline and cortisol, your heart rate slows down, blood returns to your stomach so you can digest food again.

Adrian 5:10

But you just sort of return to normal.

Sarah 5:11

Exactly. Your bodily functions return to a state of calm baseline. The cycle is complete. Danger, response, survival, recovery.

Adrian 5:20

It's an incredibly elegant system, honestly. Danger spikes, then danger passes, and we reset.

Sarah 5:27

It's beautiful.

Adrian 5:28

And the material we are looking at from Moulton categorizes this specific intended use of our biology as P stress.

Sarah 5:35

Right. P for positive or protective?

Adrian 5:38

Protective stress. We absolutely need pea stress. I mean, without that instantaneous physical response, humanity simply wouldn't have survived.

Sarah 5:46

Well, we would have been wiped out by predators instantly. If you eliminated P stress, you literally wouldn't possess the instinct to jump out of the way of a speeding car.

Adrian 5:54

Aaron Powell So

Protective P Stress Explained

Adrian 5:55

it's a vital mechanism.

Sarah 5:56

It is.

Adrian 5:56

But and here's where it gets really interesting, we don't live in the woods dodging hungry bears anymore.

Sarah 6:02

No, we definitely do not.

Adrian 6:03

Aaron Powell The modern glitch and where this whole system starts to really overheat our internal battery happens because we're subjecting this ancient dramatic biological software to mundane modern inconveniences. Yes. We take things like family disagreements or a slow-moving traffic jam, or, you know, just waiting in a long queue at the grocery store, and we process them through the exact same hardware.

Sarah 6:27

It's wild to think about.

Adrian 6:28

We are biologically reacting to a long line at the grocery store as if we are staring down a hungry bear. Our bodies literally don't know the difference.

Sarah 6:36

Aaron Powell And that biological confusion gives birth to what Moulton categorizes as end stress.

Adrian 6:42

And for negative stress.

Sarah 6:43

Exactly. Negative stress. This is the mechanism that slowly destroys our quality of life.

Adrian 6:50

So how does end stress actually do the damage?

Sarah 6:53

The mechanics of why end stress is so damaging are fascinating when you break them down. Let's say you are sitting in a massive traffic jam, right? And you are going to be late for work.

Adrian 7:03

The worst feeling.

Sarah 7:04

Right. So your brain registers this as a major threat. So your sympathetic nervous system kicks into action just like it's supposed to.

Adrian 7:12

The emergency manager.

Sarah 7:14

Yes. It floods you with those emergency chemicals. It pauses your digestion. It accelerates your heart.

Adrian 7:20

But unlike running from the bear, there's no physical release. I mean, I'm just sitting rigidly in the driver's seat of my car, just gripping the steering wheel.

Sarah 7:27

Exactly.

Adrian 7:27

I can't fight the traffic and I definitely can't run away from it.

Sarah 7:30

Aaron Powell Right. The threat isn't physical, and it doesn't resolve in a burst of physical action. So all those emergency chemicals, they just sit there in your bloodstream. Just marinating. Yeah. And because the perceived threat of being late hasn't passed, your rest and digest system, that crucial cleanup crew, never gets the green light to leave the station.

Adrian 7:49

Aaron Powell It's just waiting for the all-clearer that never comes.

Sarah 7:52

Exactly. It can't restore your body to normal. And then before

Why Modern Stress Never Clears

Sarah 7:55

the traffic jam even clears, the next perceived danger presents itself. Aaron Ross Powell Right.

Adrian 8:00

My phone buzzes with a passive aggressive email from my boss asking where I am.

Sarah 8:04

Boom. The alarm bell rings again before the first alarm ever shut off.

Adrian 8:08

Oh wow. So you just get a massive stacking effect.

Sarah 8:10

Precisely. The RDS becomes completely immobilized, the cleanup crew stays trapped in the station because the fire alarms simply never stop ringing.

Adrian 8:18

That sounds exhausting.

Sarah 8:19

It is. The next supposed fight-flight-freeze situation builds on the existing chemical crisis, and then the next and the next. You end up permanently flooded with hormones that were only ever meant to be in your system for a very short, intense burst of time.

Adrian 8:34

And the biological toll of that is severe.

Sarah 8:37

Very.

Adrian 8:38

I mean, if we go back to the mechanics of it, if your sympathetic nervous system is constantly pausing your digestion because it thinks you are in danger, it's no wonder you start developing chronic stomach issues. And if your body is constantly pumping out cortisol, which is essentially an alertness hormone, of course your sleep architecture is going to completely break down.

Sarah 8:59

But keeping your physical hardware in a permanent state of red alert.

Adrian 9:02

Right. So what's fascinating here is how most people fail at managing this because they just fundamentally misunderstand the enemy.

Sarah 9:11

Yeah, because people treat stress as a single monolith. They decide, I hate this feeling, I need to eliminate all stress from my life.

Adrian 9:18

Which we just established is a terrible idea.

Sarah 9:21

It's doomed to fail. You cannot and should not eliminate your protective P stress. The true enemy we must fight is exclusively end stress.

Adrian 9:30

Okay, so if the RDS

The Three Ms Reframe

Adrian 9:32

is trapped and our bodies are getting physically ill from this end stress, the logical next step is to go to a doctor or a therapist, right?

Sarah 9:39

You would think so.

Adrian 9:40

Right. But according to Moulton's three M's, that is exactly where we go wrong.

Sarah 9:44

Yes. This framework systematically dismantles how we misdiagnose our own end stress. It fundamentally shifts the paradigm.

Adrian 9:53

So let's break down the three Ms. What's the first one?

Sarah 9:55

The first M in this framework, M1, states very clearly stress is not a medical condition.

Adrian 10:02

Okay, wait. I need to unpack this. I really need to challenge this because I imagine anyone listening right now who deals with severe stress is just shaking their head.

Sarah 10:11

It's a bold claim. I know.

Adrian 10:13

Because if N stress literally floods our bodies with acidic chemicals and causes verifiable, literal physical symptoms like stomach upsets and clinical sleep deprivation. Yes. And I go to my doctor and they give me a prescription to treat an ulcer. How can Moulton confidently claim that this is not a medical condition? Modern medicine treats it as one every single day.

Sarah 10:34

It's a very fair point, and it's the exact trap most of us fall into. But we have to make a sharp mechanistic distinction between a symptom and its origin.

Adrian 10:42

Okay, explain that.

Sarah 10:43

Yes, high stress levels lead to physical burnout. The symptoms manifest physically, and those symptoms often absolutely require medical attention. Right. But treating the burnout is focusing entirely on the collateral damage rather than what caused the damage in the first place. The originally non-medical issue suddenly becomes a medical treatment.

Adrian 11:03

So you're saying the ulcer is real, but the cause of the ulcer isn't a medical pathogen.

Sarah 11:08

Exactly. If you get a stomach ulcer from chronic stress, it wasn't caused by a bacteria or an organic failing of your digestive tract.

Adrian 11:17

It was caused by the alarm.

Sarah 11:18

Yes. It was caused by your sympathetic nervous system constantly redirecting blood flow away from your stomach. So you go to the doctor, you take a pill to coat your stomach lining, which treats the physical symptom.

Adrian 11:30

But it does nothing to alleviate the overstressed state.

Sarah 11:33

Exactly. That pill does absolutely nothing to turn off the biological fire alarm ringing in your brain.

Adrian 11:38

That is such a great distinction. It's like um if a pipe bursts in my house and starts flooding the living room, I can grab a mop and start furiously cleaning up the water. And the water is real, the damage to my slore is real, and the mopping is completely necessary. Right. But mopping isn't plumbing. If I don't actually go turn off the main water valve, I'm just going to be mopping forever until I collapse.

Sarah 12:02

That is a perfect way to visualize it. The medical treatment is the mop. It doesn't fix the valve.

Adrian 12:08

Okay, so that's M1, it's not medical. What is M2?

Sarah 12:11

M2 is. Stress is not a mental issue.

Adrian 12:14

Now this one also feels totally counterintuitive.

Sarah 12:17

I know.

Adrian 12:18

Because if we accept that chronic stress isn't a medical pathogen that we caught like a cold, the immediate next thought is, okay, well, the alarm is ringing in my brain, therefore my brain must be broken.

Sarah 12:31

We assume it's simply a lack of positive mental health.

Adrian 12:34

Right. Like we have a psychological defect.

Sarah 12:36

It's a natural conclusion, but the text strongly refutes this. It's mechanically incorrect. The framework says we are not born with built-in levels of intense life-ruining stress. Okay. Think about the hardware we just discussed. Your system is actually functioning perfectly. We really. Yeah. When your brain registers a threat, your body responds with the exact right chemicals. The machinery isn't broken at all. It is doing exactly what it is being told to do.

Adrian 13:03

So we aren't mentally ill just because our bodies are reacting.

Sarah 13:06

Exactly. We have to stop pathologizing ourselves simply because our perfectly functioning biological systems are responding to

How We Generate N Stress

Sarah 13:14

terrible data.

Adrian 13:15

Well, that is a massive relief, honestly. We aren't sick with a medical disease and our brains aren't structurally broken. The hardware works.

Sarah 13:22

It works perfectly.

Adrian 13:23

But that leads a rather glaring question. If it's not a medical bug and it's not a mental defect, what is actually feeding the system this terrible data? Who is pulling the fire alarm?

Sarah 13:33

And this is where we hit M3, the absolute fact.

Adrian 13:36

Draw and roll, please.

Sarah 13:37

M3 states that the one who creates this end stress, promotes it, and drives it is you.

unknown 13:44

Ouch.

Sarah 13:44

I know. It is the most uncomfortable yet ultimately the most empowering realization of this entire exploration.

Adrian 13:50

So it's us. We are pulling our own fire alarms.

Sarah 13:53

Entirely. The negative stress is generated by your own actions and your own thought processes. And because it's you, it cannot be cured by warm baths, tea, plants, or fresh air.

Adrian 14:04

Wait, really?

Sarah 14:04

Yeah. It is solely about management. People constantly look for external cures to end stress. We buy expensive herbal teas, we draw hot bubble baths, we try to create this perfectly calm environment.

Adrian 14:17

And I mean, those things are really nice. A hot bath feels good.

Sarah 14:20

They feel wonderful. But as a cure for chronic end stress, they fail because they treat stress as an external force acting upon you.

Adrian 14:29

Back to the burst pipe analogy. Lighting a lavender-sented candle while the water is still flooding the floor doesn't stop the water.

Sarah 14:36

Exactly. M3 demands that we look in the mirror and recognize that we are actively choosing to generate the stress.

Adrian 14:42

Okay, let's unpack this because nobody actively wants to be stressed.

Sarah 14:46

No, of course not.

Adrian 14:47

If we are the ones creating and driving this battery draining and stress, how exactly are we doing it? What is the actual mechanism of our self-sabotage?

Sarah 14:55

To answer that, ask yourself some critical questions from the source. Who is placing the idea in your head that a missed deadline or a late flight is a life or death matter?

Adrian 15:05

It's not peace stress.

Sarah 15:06

No, it's not. The culprit is our own unchecked thought processes. We actively build negative scenarios in our thoughts about potential outcomes.

Adrian 15:16

We're basically telling ourselves horror stories.

Sarah 15:18

Exactly. Let's go back to the traffic jam. You aren't just sitting in your car experiencing the physical reality of a delayed commute. Your brain starts running a simulation.

Adrian 15:28

Oh, I do this all the time.

Sarah 15:29

Right. You imagine walking into the office late, you imagine your boss yelling at you, you imagine losing your job.

Adrian 15:35

And suddenly I'm sitting in a perfectly safe car, but my internal monologue is visualizing complete financial ruin.

Sarah 15:42

Yes. And the biological hardware, your SNS doesn't know the difference between a real threat happening right now and an imagined threat you were just picturing in your head.

Adrian 15:50

It listens to the thought, assumes the danger is real, and just pumps the cortisol.

Sarah 15:55

Exactly. This creates a constant, every part of my life is stressful thought process. The more negative scenarios you build, the more you lock your stress system into that constant state of fight, flight, freeze.

Adrian 16:08

You are literally feeding the end stress.

Sarah 16:11

Yay.

Adrian 16:11

Handing

Real-Time Tools To Reset

Adrian 16:12

it the ammunition.

Sarah 16:13

Yes. You are keeping the emergency cleanup crew trapped in the station.

Adrian 16:17

So what does this all mean for you, the listener, when you're inevitably stuck in that major traffic jam tomorrow?

Sarah 16:23

Good question.

Adrian 16:24

Because if the ultimate goal isn't to get rid of stress, but to manage it, how do you stop inviting end stress into the passenger seat?

Sarah 16:31

If we connect this to the bigger picture, realizing you are the architect of your end stress is actually incredible news.

Adrian 16:37

How so?

Sarah 16:38

Because if it were a permanent medical or mental defect, you'd be a victim. You'd be at the mercy of biology. But because it's driven by your own unchecked thought processes, you hold the ultimate power.

Adrian 16:48

To just stop building those negative scenarios.

Sarah 16:51

Exactly. When you manage your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors properly, you automatically put protective P stress back in charge. The end stress only arises if you manually invite it in.

Adrian 17:01

So in real time, when that annoying email pops up tomorrow, management means catching the catastrophic simulation before it runs.

Sarah 17:09

Yes. It means noticing the physical tension and telling yourself, this email is a problem to solve, it is not a physical threat to my survival, I am safe.

Adrian 17:18

By halting the projection, you cut the wire to the fire alarm.

Sarah 17:22

Exactly. And once you do that, the sympathetic nervous system stops pumping the chemicals. That gives your RDS the immediate green light to deploy and return you to balance.

Adrian 17:32

It really is a profound mechanism to understand. We spend so much of our lives feeling like stress is this heavy weather system that just moves in and ruins our day.

Sarah 17:41

And we just have to suffer through it.

Adrian 17:42

Right. But to provide a concise recap for everyone listening, your body has a beautiful, natural peace stress system flawlessly designed to save your life when a bear actually attacks.

Sarah 17:52

Yes.

Adrian 17:53

But when you let your thoughts spiral out of control, when you mentally catastrophize, you trap your body in end stress. You treat missed deadlines like hungry bears.

Sarah 18:02

It's all in the translation.

Adrian 18:04

And the most vital takeaway is that this isn't a medical flaw,

Using Imagination To Create Calm

Adrian 18:08

and it can't be fixed with a warm bath. It can only be fixed by you managing your thoughts.

Sarah 18:13

And you know, that leaves us with a really final, provocative thought to mull over that builds on Moulton's premise.

Adrian 18:21

Let's hear it.

Sarah 18:21

We've just spent a lot of time breaking down how potent our human imagination is, right? How just by visualizing negative scenarios, we can convince our biological systems that a perfectly safe traffic jam is a deadly threat.

Adrian 18:35

Right, causing real physical damage.

Sarah 18:37

But think about the reverse. Imagine what would happen if we deliberately use that exact same imaginative power to convince our bodies of complete safety, resilience, and calm, even in the midst of actual chaos.

Adrian 18:50

Oh wow.

Sarah 18:50

The biological hardware doesn't care what the external reality is, it only responds to the thoughts you feed it. The mechanism works both ways.

Adrian 18:57

That's genuinely a powerful thought to sit with. It really changes the way you look at that overheating smartphone, doesn't it? The power to close those background apps has been in our own hands the entire time. Well, thank you so much to you, the listener, the third person in our conversation today, for joining us on this deep dive into the mechanics of stress. Stay curious, watch those internal storylines, and above all, keep your P stress in charge.

SPEAKER_00 19:21

This podcast was brought to you by the Institute for Mental Health and Well-Being. Building mentally healthy, high-performing workplaces. Mental health matters.