How can I be stressed but not know it?

Posted on May 09, 2025 by Dr Michael (Mickey) Hobbs, One of Thousands of Entrepreneurship Coaches on Noomii.

Have you ever had that experience of not feeling stressed, yet your body is presenting with gut symptoms, you can sense that knot in your stomach, you feel your shoulders are tight etc.?

Subconsciously, your body may still be stressed, even though your frontal lobe (the front part of your brain responsible for consciousness) is saying that it feels fine. Your blood pressure or heart rate could be through the roof and you may have absolutely no idea.

My patients are sometimes shocked when I tell them their back pain or their headaches are caused by stress. I’m shocked that this is still considered shocking.

Stress affects us biologically, psychologically and socially. Or, more correctly, it affects us biopsychosocially, as we really can’t split the body from the mind or us from our environment. The mind-body split is a lie. What happens in your body affects your mind and how you interact with the world and vice versa. And if you still believe mind and body are separate, you are simply not up to date with Western medicine (not to mention thousands of years behind Eastern medicine).

But what is the anatomy of stress? Well, firstly, there is eu-stress, which is considered good stress, and di-stress, which is considered bad stress. Yes, there is a distinction, and yes this does have a physiological impact on your body. Kelly McGonigal does a great TEDtalk on this, called “How to make stress your friend”. Watch it on Youtube.

But I’m not going to talk about that kind of stress today. I certainly agree with everything she says and know that to be true in my own life too: I thrive in times of stress. It helps provide meaning and drive and helps get stuff done. Yet Kelly is talking about our cognitive awareness and understanding of stress. I want to talk about subconscious stress. I still see many people come undone by stress, even though for the most part we have helpful beliefs about it. Our problem has never been turning on, it’s been turning our bodies off, and we need to be able to do both.

I’m a movement analyst, so let’s bring it back to movement 101: breathing. The diaphragm primarily receives its nerve supply from the bilateral phrenic nerves, originating from the lower part of the neck (C3–5), and the vagus nerve. It is both autonomic and somatic, meaning we have some control over it, however it also works unconsciously (in other words, you don’t need to think about your breathing all day to still breathe). And herein this genius system is where we run into our first issue: our breathing will change depending on what is happening in our body at a subconscious level. This is how many pain syndromes creep up on us. By breathing sub-optimally, we fail to create adequate intra-abdominal pressure to stabilise our low back, we tighten up through our rib cage, we instead breathe into our chest, neck and shoulders and in doing so end up with a whole array of painful conditions. If we do this for long enough, we get stuck in these patterns, causing a whole range of other metabolic and chemical changes and sensitising tissues to make them even more painful. It’s a downward spiral from there. Not good.

Lesson #1: your body (referred to by some as your ‘subconscious mind’) is giving you clues all day as to how it really feels. Abdominal bloating is an equally important symptom to feelings of being stressed out or feeling pain. Therefore, interoception (the process of learning to tune into how your body is feeling) is the first step.

So back to breathing. The brainstem centres that control breathing are closely linked to the amygdala, which is part of the limbic system and, when stimulated by a detected threat, results in activation of a stress response. Amygdala activation communicates directly with the breathing centres of the brainstem and thus changes how our breathing works when we are stressed.

Your amygdala could be detecting threats and causing subconscious changes in your body without you necessarily having any sensation of fear or anxiety. The emotions of fear and anxiety are our conscious interpretation of what is happening within our bodies. In other words, our neocortex, the front part of our brain responsible for consciousness, is searching for an explanation as to why we feel the way we do. To read more on this topic, go read anything by the genius Joseph LeDoux. But in summary, you need to be OK with the fact that, sometimes, you will experience sensations of stress or acute arousal without any conscious explanation as to where they are coming from. Your amygdala has detected a threat; sometimes it’s obvious, sometimes it’s not. It’s notoriously not good at telling you what that may be. Figuring that out is our challenge working together.

If you’re still with me, you should already see the immediate benefits of having a mindful breathing practice. By focusing on slowing your breathing, pausing between breaths and, in particular, prolonging the exhalation, you are communicating to the amygdala that all is well here. You are telling your brain that you are safe. This will quieten the amygdala and, indirectly, help control emotions of stress or anxiety from arising.

As commonly seems to be the way, it tends to begin in our body before it gets to our level of consciousness. Learning to tune into these bodily sensations and then having techniques that work with the body and not only the mind are invaluable. That’s why we always start with breathing and have done as a species for millennia: it’s still considered one of the best ways “in”. To really take control of your stress, you need to work with both the body and the mind. You can’t analyse your way out of this one. Instead, show your body what it means to de-stress and relax. Fall in love with your Yin practices as much as your Yang practices.

As always, begin by learning to embody the change you want to become.