Stress Awareness Month 2026: Why trying to eliminate stress might be making things worse
Stress Awareness Month is a time to reflect on how we manage stress at work and in daily life. Here’s what both organisations and individuals can do to manage stress at work and build individual resilience.
Presentation deadlines, sales targets, rush hour traffic and disagreeable colleagues. All represent something we have to adapt to or overcome to get through the day.
Stress, as you’ll be well aware, comes in many different forms (and in different places). Think workplace, think home or even your local supermarket.
We are quite literally surrounded by stress… and it shows.
The CIPD’s latest Health and Wellbeing at Work Report states that mental health issues are the leading cause of long-term sickness absence lasting 4 weeks or longer.
This got me thinking about the amount of time (and money) we spend trying to reduce stress.
The following explores how workplace culture, our relationships and lifestyle choices that can help us work with stress, rather than try to eliminate it.
How stress affects the workplace
Many people feel they have to suppress or hide their emotions at work in order to be seen as professional.
As a result, emotions are often something we’re encouraged to manage, control, or ignore, rather than understand.
The greater a person’s emotional granularity - the ability to use different words for different emotions - the more precisely they’re able to experience themselves and the world around them. That matters, because the ability to accurately name what we’re feeling increases clarity, and in turn, helps to reduce stress.
In practice, this can lead to a disconnect between the decisions being made at the top - often using rational, data-led thinking and the experience of employees, which, particularly during times of uncertainty, is driven more by instinct and emotion.
This means that one of the primary responsibilities of any senior leadership team is to create a working environment where people feel psychologically safe.
Additionally, the Global Happiness at Work Index highlights that the strongest predictors of happiness at work are inspiration and belonging.
This suggests that, while organisations may be investing in the operational factors that help prevent stress, such as workload management and role clarity, they may still be underestimating the emotional and cultural factors - such as connection, meaning, and shared purpose - that help people feel engaged and supported at work.
That being said, while the workplace can either support or undermine our ability to manage stress, it doesn’t remove the role of the individual.
There are still things we can do to build resilience in how we respond.
How to manage stress more effectively
Exercise
Some call it a “runner’s high”, others describe a kind of euphoric feeling post-workout, along with a sense that things that weighed heavily on your mind beforehand somehow matter less.
Call it what you will, but on some level I’m sure most of you could share an anecdote that highlights the positive effects of exercise (even if it’s a distant memory).
But is it just an anecdote?
Or is there empirical data showing how exercise improves our mental health and, with it, our relationship with stress?
As it happens, a 2024 systematic review found that walking or jogging, yoga, and strength training were all comparable to psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy in reducing major depressive symptoms.
Social interaction, immersion in green spaces, mindfulness, and increased self-efficacy are all associated with a reduction in symptoms, but no single form of exercise covers all of these mechanisms.
Suffice it to say, exercise doesn’t just help the body handle stress - it also changes how the brain responds to it…
Neuroplasticity
Life, as a rule, is stressful. No matter how big or small, there’s always some change in our environment that we need to adapt to, whether that’s managing workload during a week with a presentation deadline looming or having to find a new recipe last minute because the supermarket hasn’t got that one ingredient.
Generally speaking, with these “run-of-the-mill” stressors, we can draw on previous experience to adapt and keep going.
But what happens when there’s no reference point, when the situation is completely new or unexpected?
In these scenarios, the brain is forced to adapt and form new connections. (Ever tried rubbing your stomach and patting your head at the same time?)
That initial “404 error code” feeling reflects your brain working to form fresh neural pathways so you can learn and execute a new skill.
The next time you’re faced with a similar scenario, it often feels slightly less stressful because the brain has already begun to map a pathway to help you navigate the challenge.
This process is ongoing. There’s always some degree of change in our environment, and the unexpected is never too far away.
In a process known as Neural Darwinism, the brain strengthens the neural pathways that are most useful for adapting to its environment, while those used less often tend to weaken over time, hence the idea: use it or lose it.
The biopsychosocial model of challenge and threat suggests that how we experience stress depends on how we evaluate the situation; specifically, whether we believe our resources meet the demands placed on us.
When resources meet or exceed demands, we experience challenge; when demands outweigh resources, we experience threat.
Crucially, when we voluntarily take on new challenges, we are far more likely to interpret the experience as a challenge rather than a threat.
In these states, increases in adrenaline and vasodilation help us rise to the occasion and return more quickly to baseline (homeostasis).
In contrast, when we feel threatened, the body is more likely to respond with vasoconstriction, higher blood pressure, and elevated cortisol, which has a longer-lasting effect, meaning it can take longer for the body to recover.
Over time, this distinction matters. Choosing to engage with new experiences—rather than avoid them—can shift how the body responds to stress, helping us recover faster and build greater resilience in the long run.
But it’s not just the connections in the brain that matter, the connections we build with other people play a huge role too…
Relational Connection
The connections we form and maintain throughout our lives (social fitness), while not given nearly enough attention as physical fitness or mental health, have actually been shown to be one of the biggest predictors of long-term health outcomes.
I recently sat down with Verity Glasgow, CEO of OnePlusOne, who helps people understand relationships and develop the social fitness skills that support wellbeing at home and in the workplace.
We discussed the importance of being intentional and paying attention to all of your relationships, not just when things are great or when they’re completely broken, but everything in between.
“We talk about when we get together with people, ‘It’s amazing. Everything’s great. It’s wonderful.’ And then we do talk about when it’s completely broken… ‘I hate the person. They’re awful.’
But that stuff in the middle, your day-to-day, when you’ve had an argument and it carries on, or something’s happened, we don’t talk about that bit in the middle.”
We also discussed findings from the Harvard Study of Adult Development, summarised in The Good Life: Lessons from the World’s Longest Study on Happiness. One experiment highlighted how poor we can be at predicting our own future experiences.
Two separate groups were asked whether their morning commute would be better or worse if they:
a) kept to themselves, or
b) actively engaged in conversation with a stranger.
Around 80% predicted that their journey would be worse if they spoke to someone.
The groups were then split: one kept to themselves, while the other struck up conversations with fellow passengers.
The result? Around 80% of those who engaged said their journey was either improved or not made any worse.
It’s a useful reminder that our cognitive biases can sometimes steer us away from experiences that may actually benefit us, and that even small moments of human connection can go a long way.
Closing argument: Stress isn’t something we eliminate; it’s something we learn to understand and work with.
Understanding stress is one thing, knowing what actually helps is another.
In this short video, we explore what the research rally shows and how you can #BeTheChange during Stress Awareness Month 2026 and beyond.