When Stress Becomes Normal (Part 2: Working With the Body)

In Part 1, I wrote about what gets crowded out when stress becomes constant—the loss of space, the interruption of inner processes, the way reflection and meaning-making get postponed indefinitely.

But understanding what stress has taken from you does not always change how your body feels.

People often understand exactly why they feel the way they do. They can explain what happened, what changed, and what they wish were different. They may have talked it through many times. And yet their body does not settle.

Their shoulders stay tense. Their sleep is light. Their mind keeps scanning, even when there is nothing urgent to deal with. They know they should relax, but knowing does not make it happen.

This is not a failure of insight or motivation. It reflects how stress works once it has become established in the body.

When a stressful situation cannot easily be changed—an ongoing responsibility, a long-standing conflict, a period of uncertainty—the body adapts. It learns to stay alert. Muscles remain ready. Breathing becomes shallow. The body stays on standby.

At a certain point, the stress response is no longer reacting to a current threat. It is maintaining a pattern.

This is why telling yourself to relax rarely helps. It is also why reassurance, logic, or positive thinking often feel beside the point. The body is not waiting for a better explanation. It is following a habit it has learned over time.

When stress has become a physical pattern, it needs to be met physically.

In these situations, the most effective ways of reducing stress are often physical rather than cognitive. Not because thinking is unimportant, but because the pattern that needs to change is no longer primarily mental.

When stress has become a physical pattern, it must be addressed physically.

This does not mean forcing the body to calm down or overriding its signals. It means working with the systems that have been carrying the load all along. Movement, warmth, and breathing do not “fix” stress so much as give the body a chance to complete responses that have been held open for too long.

These approaches work not because they distract or soothe superficially, but because they speak the same language as the stress response. They change muscle tone, breathing rhythm, circulation, and temperature—all of which shape how safe or threatened the body feels, moment to moment.

For people whose stress has become normal, this kind of physical input often does what insight alone cannot. It gives the body a new reference point. From there, thinking, feeling, and reflection can begin to shift.

Movement and the Stress Response

When stress has become familiar to the body, movement can help in a way that talking or thinking often cannot.

This is not because exercise “burns off” stress, or because it distracts the mind. It is because stress prepares the body for action. Muscles tense. Breathing changes. Energy mobilises. When that preparation has nowhere to go, it lingers as restlessness, tightness, or fatigue.

Movement gives the body a way to use what has been held in reserve.

This does not require intense workouts or high motivation. In fact, for many people under chronic stress, gentler forms of movement are more effective. Walking, swimming, cycling, stretching, or moving rhythmically allows the body to complete patterns that were initiated but never finished.

Many people notice that after moving their body, their breathing deepens on its own. Their shoulders drop. Their thoughts slow slightly. These changes are not the result of willpower. They are physical shifts that alter how safe or threatened the body feels.

Exercise helps most when it is approached as regulation rather than achievement. The aim is not fitness, performance, or improvement. The aim is to let the body move in a way that signals completion rather than effort.

This is why choosing a form of movement that feels tolerable—or even slightly relieving—matters more than choosing the “right” kind. Consistency grows out of relief, not discipline.

Warmth and Letting the Body Unclench

Warmth can have a powerful effect on a body that has been holding itself together for a long time.

Many people notice that when they are stressed, their body feels tight or braced. Shoulders stay raised. The jaw clenches. The stomach hardens. Even at rest, the body behaves as if it needs to stay ready.

Heat invites a different response.

Warmth tends to soften muscle tone and slow breathing without effort. A hot bath, a warm shower, or time in a heated space can signal to the body that it is safe enough to loosen its grip. For some people, this is the first time they notice how much tension they have been carrying.

Unlike many stress strategies, warmth does not require concentration or motivation. The body responds directly. Muscles release incrementally. Breathing deepens without being instructed.

This is why heat can feel deeply relieving rather than merely pleasant. It does not ask the body to calm down. It creates conditions in which calming can occur naturally.

Warmth is particularly helpful for people whose stress shows up as tightness, restlessness, or difficulty settling at the end of the day. It can also be helpful for those who feel disconnected or numb, as heat often gently returns sensation to awareness.

As with movement, intention matters. Warmth works best when it is approached as an opportunity to let go, not as something to endure or optimise. Short, regular experiences of warmth are often more effective than pushing limits.

Breathing and Ongoing Alertness

Breathing is different from movement and warmth in one important way: it is always happening.

When stress has become normal, breathing often changes quietly and persistently. It becomes shallower. The exhale shortens. The body takes in enough air to function, but not enough to signal safety. Over time, this pattern sustains alertness even when nothing is wrong.

Many people are unaware of this until their attention is drawn to it.

Unlike exercise or heat, breathing does not require special conditions. It can shift in the middle of a conversation, at a desk, or while lying awake at night. Because of this, breathing has a unique role in stress regulation: it can interrupt a familiar pattern while it is still unfolding.

When breathing slows and the out-breath lengthens, urgency often eases. Muscle tension softens. Attention becomes less scattered. These changes do not come from thinking differently. They come from altering the rhythm the body is following.

What matters most is not doing breathing “correctly,” but noticing its effect. When breathing changes, people often become aware of how activated they have been. That awareness can feel unfamiliar at first, but it is also informative. It tells the body that something different is possible.

Breathing works best when it is approached with curiosity rather than control. Forcing the breath or monitoring it too closely can recreate the same effortful state that stress already demands. Allowing the breath to slow or deepen—even briefly—often has a more lasting effect.

For people whose stress has become a background condition, breathing offers a way to work with alertness as it happens, rather than after it has accumulated.

Closing

You do not need to do all of this. You do not need a routine, a plan, or a perfect approach.

Often, choosing one physical entry point and returning to it regularly is enough to begin shifting a long-standing pattern. Stress that has become normal did not develop overnight, and it does not unwind through effort or force.

It changes through repeated experiences of settling. Over time, the body learns that it no longer needs to stay on alert, and from there, other kinds of change become possible.