You know that moment when someone asks “How are you?” and you automatically say “busy” before your brain even processes the question?
I caught myself doing this last week. Three times in one day. Each time, the word shot out like a reflex—no thought, just pure autopilot. That evening, I sat in my car after a workout (my go-to method for burning off the day’s tension) and realized something unsettling: I couldn’t remember the last time I felt genuinely relaxed.
Not tired. Not distracted. Actually calm.
After spending over a decade training high-performers who looked bulletproof on the outside but ran on anxiety and caffeine internally, I’d become exactly what I used to help others fix. My body had been stuck in survival mode for so long that constant tension had become my baseline.
Your nervous system doesn’t send you a notification when it gets stuck in overdrive. It just slowly rewires your definition of normal until you’re living at a stress level that would have horrified you five years ago.
Here are eight signs your body has been running fight-or-flight software for way too long.
1) Your shoulders live near your ears
Take a breath right now. Notice where your shoulders are sitting. If you just dropped them an inch or two, you’ve proven my point.
Chronic muscle tension becomes invisible after a while. You stop noticing that your jaw is clenched during emails. Your neck feels permanently tight, but you blame the pillow. Your lower back aches, so you buy a new chair.
I once worked with a CEO who discovered during a massage that she’d been holding her shoulders in a half-shrug for years. The massage therapist asked if she was stressed. She laughed and said no—this was just how her shoulders sat.
When your body stays braced for impact long enough, tension stops feeling like tension. It just feels like Tuesday.
2) Sleep feels like a job you’re failing at
You’re exhausted at 3 PM but wired at 11 PM. You lie in bed calculating how many hours you’ll get if you fall asleep right now. Then you recalculate every 20 minutes.
Even when you do sleep, you wake up feeling like you’ve been wrestling alligators. Your smart watch tells you your sleep quality was garbage, which you already knew because you remember waking up four times.
Here’s what’s happening: your body can’t shift from threat detection to rest mode. It’s like trying to parallel park while your engine is redlining. The machinery isn’t broken—it just forgot how to downshift.
I know my own sleep tanks when I’m avoiding something. The correlation is so reliable I use insomnia as an early warning system now.
3) You’ve forgotten what hunger actually feels like
You eat because it’s noon, not because you’re hungry. Or you suddenly realize at 4 PM that you forgot lunch entirely. Your appetite has become this weird background noise you can’t quite tune into.
Some days you’re ravenous for no reason. Other days, food feels like a chore. You might find yourself stress-eating without tasting anything, or forgetting to eat because your stomach has gone offline.
When cortisol runs the show long enough, it scrambles your hunger signals. Your body can’t tell the difference between “need fuel” and “need comfort” anymore.
4) Everything feels urgent, even when it’s not
That email notification makes your heart jump. A text from your boss on Saturday triggers instant dread. Someone saying “we need to talk” ruins your entire day even when it turns out to be about dinner plans.
You respond to every request like it’s a fire alarm. Everything gets the same level of intensity because your threat detection system has lost its ability to calibrate. A missed call feels as serious as an actual emergency.
I spent years treating every work message like a crisis. My body couldn’t tell the difference between a routine question and an actual problem. Every ping got the full adrenaline treatment.
5) Rest makes you anxious
Sitting still feels wrong. Watching TV requires scrolling your phone simultaneously. A lazy Sunday morning makes you feel guilty, like you’re falling behind on something you can’t name.
You’ve created elaborate justifications for why you can’t slow down right now. After this project. After this quarter. After this year. But the finish line keeps moving because the problem isn’t your schedule—it’s that your nervous system has forgotten how to idle.
The thought of a vacation without Wi-Fi makes you twitchy. Not because you love work, but because silence feels like danger now.
6) Your emotional thermostat is broken
Minor inconveniences make you furious. A slow driver sends your blood pressure through the roof. Someone chewing loudly makes you want to leave the room. You’re either numb or overreacting, with no middle ground.
You might find yourself crying over commercials but feeling nothing during actual emotional moments. Or getting irrationally angry about things you know don’t matter, then feeling guilty about the overreaction.
This isn’t a character flaw. When you’re chronically activated, your emotional regulation goes haywire. Everything either gets an extreme response or no response, because your system can’t fine-tune anymore.
7) Your body keeps score in weird ways
Random headaches. Digestive issues that come and go. That eye twitch that shows up during busy periods. Skin problems that flare up before you consciously register stress.
You’ve probably been to doctors who run tests and find nothing wrong. They might suggest stress, which you dismiss because this is just your normal level of busy. But your body is trying to tell you something your mind won’t acknowledge.
I ignored chronic jaw pain for two years, convinced I needed a new pillow. Turns out I was grinding my teeth at night and clenching during the day—classic fight-or-flight behavior my body was doing while my mind insisted everything was fine.
8) Calm feels suspicious
When things are actually quiet, you get nervous. You check your phone repeatedly, sure you’re missing something. A free afternoon makes you uncomfortable. You create problems to solve because problems feel safer than peace.
You might even sabotage calm moments with worry. Starting arguments, taking on unnecessary projects, or manufacturing drama because your system doesn’t trust stillness anymore.
This is the most insidious sign: when relief itself becomes a threat. Your body has been guarding against danger for so long that lowering your guard feels dangerous.
Bottom line
If you recognized yourself in more than half of these signs, your nervous system needs a reset. Not a vacation (though that might help). Not a meditation app (though that’s not bad either). You need to retrain your body to recognize safety.
Start small. Notice your shoulders right now and consciously drop them. Take three breaths where the exhale is longer than the inhale. Put your phone in another room for one hour today.
These aren’t solutions—they’re experiments. You’re teaching your system that it’s safe to downshift, one tiny moment at a time.
Your body has been protecting you the only way it knows how. It’s time to let it know the war is over.
