Stress is your body’s natural reaction to a (possible) challenge or change. When your brain senses something important or potentially dangerous—like a sudden loud sound or a difficult conversation—your sympathetic nervous system kicks in. Your heartbeat speeds up, your breathing gets faster, your muscles tense and hormones like adrenaline and cortisol are released. This gives you a short boost of energy and focus to fight, flee or take action.

This short, acute stress is useful: it keeps you alert and improves performance. If the stress continues for too long, the stress system stays switched “on.” This is called chronic stress. It drains your body, disturbs sleep and digestion, weakens your immune system and can lead to physical and mental problems.

Stress is both a physical and psychological reaction to a threat or uncertainty. In the past, stress reactions helped us survive danger, like escaping a bear or fighting in war. Nowadays, stress has a different meaning. The stress we feel now often comes from more subtle threats that our brain still interprets as dangerous—such as big life changes, expectations from others, financial worries or responsibilities.

When you feel stress, it means something in you doesn’t feel safe. Even if there’s no real danger to your life, your body can react to smaller threats, like an important deadline or bills you can’t pay. Stress is your body’s way of protecting you against these challenges. The result: your body goes into survival mode.

Stress symptoms are different for everyone, but there are common signs. Things to look out for:

• Poor sleep
• Overthinking
• Eating too little or too much
• Headaches (like tension headache or migraine)
• Neck and shoulder pain
• Heart palpitations
• Stomach pain
• Skin problems like eczema or acne
• Blurred vision
• Trouble concentrating
• Forgetfulness
• Irritability
• Fatigue
• Low libido

Stress can cause both physical and mental problems. Mental symptoms include anxiety, nervousness, irritability, mood swings, restlessness and poor focus. Physical symptoms can include headaches and migraines, muscle tension and pain, fatigue, exhaustion, sleep problems and digestive issues.

If you experience stress for a long time, this is called chronic stress. It can harm your health. The danger is that chronic stress can lead to depression or even burnout.

When stress lasts too long, your sympathetic nervous system (responsible for fight-or-flight) stays active. This keeps your body in stress mode longer than needed, which can cause many physical and mental complaints.

There are several ways to activate your parasympathetic nervous system and release stress. Think of meditation, light exercise like yoga, breathing exercises and walking in nature.

After a single stress peak, adrenaline usually drops within 20–30 minutes, and cortisol returns to normal within a few hours. But this only happens if you relax afterward. If tension continues for days or weeks, it can take much longer for your nervous system and hormones to return to balance.

If you want to deal with stress symptoms, first accept them. Then you can take action. Ways to reduce stress include:

1. Meditate
2. Move your body
3. Spend time on self-care
4. Do breathing exercises
5. Practice mindfulness

Tackle stress with simple, repeated habits: breathe slower (like the 4-6 breathing method), exercise daily, sleep 7–9 hours, take screen breaks and seek support from friends or professionals. This activates your parasympathetic nervous system, lowers cortisol and increases resilience against future stress.

To cope with stress, do daily activities that help prevent and reduce it. Try one or more of these and see what works for you:

1. Meditate
2. Exercise
3. Take a yoga class
4. Write down your worries
5. Reduce screen time
6. Practice self-care
7. Set healthy boundaries
8. Do a breathing exercise
9. Create a morning routine
10. Get enough sleep

The Meditation Moments app offers different meditations against stress. For mental stress, try the Letting Go of Emotions Meditation.

There are many helpful breathing exercises. Try belly breathing (hand on your belly, breathe in for 6 counts, out for 6), box breathing (inhale 4, hold 4, exhale 4, pause 4) or extended exhale breathing (longer exhale than inhale). In the Meditation Moments app you’ll find several guided breathing exercises with or without a breathing bubble, that you can do anytime.