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Today I’ll be exploring how perception and possibility shape the experience of chronic stress and its impact on our lives. If this resonates with you and you’re yet to subscribe, then I’d be thrilled to welcome you.
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Curiosity, lively and spirited, invites us toward something gripping and sometimes unsettling, leading us to the crumbling edges of certainty. In myth and folklore, curiosity is both the hand that opens Pandora’s box and the fire Prometheus steals from the gods, a force of creation and consequence that calls us to surrender to the depths of the unknown. Looking back, I see how curiosity wove itself throughout my life, long before I knew what it was asking of me.
Pandora, John William Waterhouse (1896).
In my years as a sports scientist, my attraction to physiology felt like a compelling way to start making sense of all this (waves hands maniacally at everything everywhere). It demonstrated this beautiful flow of logic, something about the architecture of cause and effect, a harmonious order between mysterious, unseen forces and the mechanics of human nature, all wrapped up in terms, intonations and symbols derived from an ancient, exotic sounding language, attempting to speak the ineffable into something comprehensible.
Behind the locked doors of research labs and secretive back rooms in the wings of the world stage, sports scientists stretch aspects of human potential in ways most never see. In the end, what I learned in that world was what I used to recover from a time when my own body refused to keep up with me. This may even be useful to anyone who has ever been exhausted by life, by stress, by the sheer weight of existing in a world that never relents. Today I want to share the most valuable lessons from sports physiology, how it guided my approach to recovering from my own, rather spectacular, stress-related burnout and how it shaped my understanding of human potential.
So let’s dive in.
Sports science is a field of inquiry driven by a fascination with the remarkable human capacity to cope, respond and adapt to a tremendously vast array of stimuli placed before it. The excitement lies within freely borrowing the gifts of the natural sciences to explore the nature of human possibility, and the means by which it can be actualised. The aim is usually focussed on finding competitive edges and supporting athlete progression through implementing strategies to continually improve performance. This is based on applying knowledge of the adaptive processes of the human body and ensuring the right amount and type of “stress” is placed in an athlete's environment at the right time, with relevance to both the demands of sport and the individual athlete.
German track cyclist Robert Förstemann
Elite athletes are a population who are, in some ways, unique, and in others, not so unique. Like the rest of the world, they are exposed to relentless periods of particular types of acute and chronic stress, and are constantly forced to adapt to shifting competitive demands. Sports science is, at its heart, the study of stress, adaptation and transcendence. And at the heart of adaptation is a paradox. Give someone the right amount of stress, and they flourish. Give them too much, or the wrong kind, and they crumble. Why is the “right” amount and type of stress for one person completely overwhelming and detrimental to another?
It’s not possible to write about sport without including Rocky Balboa
As I pored over the work of Hans Selye, Robert Sapolsky, and Bruce McEwen, I was increasingly drawn towards something broader than sport. Beyond an athletic variable, stress is also a phenomena that shapes every aspect of human experience (duh). So what exactly is meant by “stress”? And what’s the value in understanding it a little better?
While there are several ways of understanding the concept of stress, the modern scientific description is most relevant for this article. A “stressor” refers to an external threat or challenge, and the anticipation of it. The “stress response” is the internal, biological events that follow an encounter with a stressor. Stressors include any stimuli that disrupt an organism's equilibrium (called “homeostasis”), and can be physical (e.g., injury, extreme temperatures, athletic training sessions), psychological (e.g., fear, anxiety), or environmental (e.g., noise, pollution).
The biological stress response is orchestrated through a finely tuned neuroendocrine system, which is mediated by two primary structures. The first is the sympathetic-adrenal-medullary (SAM) system, which releases adrenaline and norepinephrine. The second is the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, which stimulates the adrenal cortex to release glucocorticoid hormones (such as cortisol). These hormones have wide-ranging effects including (but not limited to) the mobilisation of energy, maintenance of the immune system and inhibition of non-essential processes (such as digestion and reproduction). Collectively, these functions enable “fight or flight” behaviours that remove the organism from immediate danger[1].
So if you’re an antelope who’d prefer not to have your stomach ripped out by a hungry lion, this part of your biology is more or less what keeps you alive. It’ll put your body into an optimal state for the physical demands of doing a runner as fast as possible.
Monty Python’s Holy Grail: King Arthur and his knights flee the predatory horrors of a small white rabbit.
Hans Selye, known as the father of stress physiology, spent the 1930s running chaotic experiments on lab rats at McGill University. Much of his work laid the foundation for modern stress research in medicine, psychology, and neuroscience.
Hans Selye, in his lab at McGill University
Selye pioneered the General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS) which mapped the stress response as a predictable, three-phased biological cascade of events, which he published in Nature in 1936 [2]. The phases are:
Alarm Phase: Release of adrenaline and stress hormones which increase heart rate, energy availability and priming of skeletal muscle tissue.
Resistance Phase: Stress continues, but with adaptation, biological homeostasis is restored.
Exhaustion Phase: If the demand for adaptation outstrips the body’s resources, the organism becomes exhausted.
Figure 1: Selye’s General Adaptation Syndrome
The brilliance of Selye’s work was in demonstrating the necessity of stress for functional adaptation. Without it, there’s no capacity for learning, resilience or performance improvements. But if the stressor is unrelenting, the very mechanism that fuels growth, becomes maladaptive and eventually erodes the health of the organism.
So on one hand, we have a brilliantly orchestrated psychobiological system, a layered symphony of catecholamines and glucocorticoids that elevate heart rate and mobilise energy to facilitate survival. It’s a complex, dynamic and occasionally overwhelming system, yet undeniably masterful in its execution, a bit like a Brahms composition. On the other hand, chronic elevation of these same effects produce excessive wear and tear on the cardiovascular system that can eventually result in conditions like strokes and heart attacks.
Robert Sapolsky, in Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, provides a comprehensive analysis of the paradoxical nature of the stress response, emphasizing the critical role of psychological state in stress-related diseases[3]. He explains that for most animals, stress is an acute response to an immediate crisis, after which the system returns to baseline. Humans, however, engage in prolonged psychological stress, activating the same physiological pathways meant for acute survival threats over extended periods. This chronic activation is a key factor in the development of stress-related diseases. He notes:
"For the vast majority of beasts on this planet, stress is about a short-term crisis, after which it's either over with or you're over with. When we sit around and worry about stressful things, we turn on the same physiological responses, but they are potentially a disaster when provoked chronically. A large body of evidence suggests that stress-related disease emerges, predominantly, out of the fact that we so often activate a physiological system that has evolved for responding to acute physical emergencies, but we turn it on for months on end, worrying about mortgages, relationships, and promotions."
Sapolsky also highlights the impact of our emotions on our physical health. The intricate relationship between biology and emotions is a significant determining factor in individual susceptibility to stress-related diseases. Sapolsky elaborates:
"We have come to recognize the vastly complex intertwining of our biology and our emotions, the endless ways in which our personalities, feelings, and thoughts both reflect and influence the events in our bodies. One of the most interesting manifestations of this recognition is understanding that extreme emotional disturbances can adversely affect us. Put in the parlance with which we have grown familiar, stress can make us sick, and a critical shift in medicine has been the recognition that many of the damaging diseases of slow accumulation can be either caused or made far worse by stress."
Sapolsky’s book then details the role of a chronically elevated stress response in increasing the risk and severity of a multitude of physical ailments. These include type 2 diabetes, muscular atrophy, central obesity, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, atherosclerosis, stroke, weakened immune system, delayed wound healing, autoimmune dysfunction, impaired memory and learning, poor impulse control and decision making, risk of chronic anxiety, PTSD and heightened fear responses, depression, ulcers and acid reflux, irritable bowel syndrome, gut microbiome disruption, menstrual irregularities, infertility, erectile dysfunction and reduced libido, osteoporosis and skin conditions such as eczema, acne and premature aging.
Anxiety, Edvard Munch (1894)
Bruce McEwen’s work on allostatic load further reinforces the notion that the magnitude of the stress response is deeply intertwined with perception. The same stressor may be manageable for one individual and debilitating for another, with the determining factor being the subjective meaning attributed to the experience. Individual responses to stress are shaped by early life experiences, personal history, environmental influences and cultural conditioning. Negative experiences in childhood and adulthood, including trauma, neglect, and adverse interpersonal relationships, can predispose individuals to heightened stress reactivity [4].
"Stress is a condition of the mind-body interaction, and a factor in the expression of disease that differs among individuals. It is not just the dramatic stressful events that exact their toll, but rather the many events of daily life that elevate and sustain activities of physiological systems and cause sleep deprivation, overeating, and other health damaging behaviors, producing the feeling of being 'stressed out.' Over time, this results in wear and tear of the body, which is called 'allostatic load,' and it reflects not only the impact of life experiences but also of genetic load, individual lifestyle habits reflecting items such as diet, exercise, and substance abuse, and developmental experiences that set life-long patterns of behavior and physiological reactivity."
Figure 2: Central role of the brain in allostasis and the behavioural and physiological response to stressors. Reproduced from reference 4: Protective and damaging effects of stress mediators: central role of the brain. Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience, 8(4), pp.367–381.
In a world that feels uncertain, unstable, and exhausting, stress has become an ongoing state, woven into the fabric of modern existence. Rapid technological advancements create hyperconnectivity, yet many feel more isolated than ever. Institutions that were once reliable now inspire skepticism, while economic instability and rising living costs leave many uncertain about the future. Additionally, unresolved grief and inner turmoil weigh heavily on individuals. There’s a persistent tension between self-perception and societal expectations, between intrinsic desires and external pressures. Personal struggles, strained relationships, career dissatisfaction, financial burdens, and existential concerns compound the stress of a world that never seems to slow down. As a result, many navigate life in a near-constant state of anxiety, attempting to keep up while searching for relief and a sense of “enoughness.”
Recognizing that perception plays a pivotal role in emotional regulation highlights the need for interventions that address the cognitive and emotional frameworks through which stress is experienced. And it was this understanding which had the most significant impact on my own recovery when pharmacological interventions failed to restore my health, and when modern psychological therapies only took me “so far”. For years, I had rooted my identity in physical strength, in the naive certainty that my body would always carry me forward. I exercised, ate well, did everything I was supposed to, but it wasn’t enough when I burned out. Neither discipline, fitness nor modern medicine could repair what had unraveled. So I turned to the essential component of stress - perception. And it eventually led me to contemplative practice and entheogenic medicines which have been more restorative than I ever imagined possible. I’ll be writing a lot about these in future articles.
Know Thyself, carved at the entrance to the Temple of Apollo at Delphi (from Cyprus Today on X.com)
Learning all this was the beginning of the end of academic sports science for me, and I want to end on a note of gratitude for the opportunity to have spent a lot of my life in that world. I was very lucky to spend time with elite athletes, their practitioners and academics, and I was (and still am) in awe of what the human body and mind can adapt to. Without witnessing this firsthand, my sense of possibility would have been far narrower and without it, perhaps I wouldn’t have recovered from the darkest period of my life, or found the through lines of possibility and potential that weave their way through my curiosities still.
In sport, people fall in love with occurrences that “defy expectations”. For example, the achievement of allegedly “impossible” feats such as the sub-4 minute mile, the sub-9.6 second 100m and the sub-2 hour marathon, enraptured and enamoured the imagination of each and every gobsmacked spectator.
Michael Johnson’s honest reaction to Bolt’s 9.58 100m: gob-entirely-smacked.
Such performances are memorable, sublime even, when they dismantle and inevitably call into question the perceived limits of human potential, and the very nature of possibility itself. In doing so, these events stand as another gateway for humanity’s self-realisation. Further contemplation eventually opens the doors to humanity’s eternal questions; What are we? What else is possible beyond the limits of perception?
Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? Paul Gaugin (1897)
Sport itself is captivating because it’s a physical manifestation of a transcendent essence, where an apparent duality of being and becoming collapses into a flowing simplicity. World-class performances frequently induce experiences of awe, wonder and inspiration. We recognise something fundamental and shared about a primordial core of being, expressing the nature of possibility without words. What unfolds is an experience that is direct, spontaneous and uncertain, absent of concepts and symbols that fail to capture the purity of its fullness. Mesmerised in presence, we willingly surrender to a vast spectrum of human emotion, embracing the rising and falling of raw sensations, in and as what is, while imagined boundaries between moments, spaces and individuals are forgotten.
Exceptional performances resonate to this inner yearning that “more” really is possible, affirming that our apparent limits are, in fact, far more “apparent” than they are absolute. They remind us that in harnessing the courage to explore beyond the confines of conventional apparency, we may discover something else about ourselves, something exceptional. Perhaps intuitively guided adventures into the unknown are rewarded by gifts that invigorate a dusty ennui with something rather more juicy and delicious - the awe of the actual surpassing the apparent, adoration of a single realisation rewriting expectations, wonder of an unlikely possibility unveiled amidst likely improbability. Ultimately, it is a celebration of a transcendent reality made manifest in a physical form, and a valuable contribution to human flourishing.
If you’ve journeyed with me this far, thank you. Truly. This exploration of stress, how it shapes us, how we shape it, has been as much about the biology of survival as it has been about the possibility of something more.
We are not merely at the mercy of our stress responses. The way we perceive stress changes how it affects us. The narratives we hold about challenge, about control, about what is happening to us versus what is happening for us can be the difference between stress as a chronically destructive force and stress as a catalyst for growth.
If any of the books and papers I mentioned are piquing your curiosity, you can find them in my reference list and affiliate links below. Using these links won’t cost you anything extra, but it helps support my work.
Now, I’d love to hear from you:
What resonated most with you in this piece?
Have you noticed ways that your perception of stress changes how it impacts you?
What are some of the most powerful tools or mindsets that help you navigate stress?
Drop a comment below - I read every one. Let’s keep the conversation going.
Sapolsky, R.M. (2004). Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers. 3rd edn. New York: Henry Holt and Company. Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers - Robert Sapolsky: [Available here]
McEwen, B.S. (2006). Protective and damaging effects of stress mediators: central role of the brain. Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience, 8(4), pp.367–381. Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3181832/ (Accessed: 12 Mar 2025).
Charlie, Thank you for sharing your story. So much of it resonates with me. The chronic striving in every aspect of life to feel like you are "Enough"/Worthy.
Your use of the word perception with stress clicked for me. I now have a new tool to help me when the stress and anxiety do creep in.
Reading this article (feel I need to reread it a few times to digest it in its entirety) what struck me is perception of stress is enough to cause a stress response. 🤯 reminds me of those times where believing/imagining something is just as bad as literally experiencing it - and can see how that has played a big part in my own mental health.
Charlie, Thank you for sharing your story. So much of it resonates with me. The chronic striving in every aspect of life to feel like you are "Enough"/Worthy.
Your use of the word perception with stress clicked for me. I now have a new tool to help me when the stress and anxiety do creep in.
I am so grateful you are a part of my journey
Reading this article (feel I need to reread it a few times to digest it in its entirety) what struck me is perception of stress is enough to cause a stress response. 🤯 reminds me of those times where believing/imagining something is just as bad as literally experiencing it - and can see how that has played a big part in my own mental health.