I've never thought of myself as someone who's good at handling stress. I don't have a perfect routine or some calm, always‑composed mindset. Most of the time, stress feels pretty loud and pretty constant, and I'm usually just trying to keep up with everything that's going on.
Sophomore year made that really clear for me. It wasn't that school itself suddenly became impossible. The classes were challenging, but they weren't the main problem. The real stress came from everything stacked on top of school.
At the same time, I was working for a company and trying to make progress on my own projects. I cared about all of it. None of it felt optional. I wanted to do well in school, I wanted to deliver at work, and I wanted to keep building my own things. On top of that, I wanted to maintain my relationships and stay close to the people I care about.
Individually, each of those things felt reasonable. Together, they turned into this constant background noise of pressure. There was always something I hadn't done yet, something I was behind on, something I could be pushing a little harder. It stopped feeling like a list of tasks and started feeling like a general sense that I was perpetually behind.
When Overload Turns Into Avoidance
One thing I've learned about myself is that too much stress doesn't automatically make me more productive. Sometimes it does the opposite. When I have too many responsibilities competing for attention, my brain doesn't calmly sort them out and handle them one by one. Instead, everything starts to feel equally urgent and equally exhausting.
That's usually when I shut down.
The feeling isn't dramatic; it's more like a heavy fog. I'll look at everything I need to do and think, "I don't even know where to start." Once I'm in that state, I don't want to touch any of it. I end up doing smaller, low‑stakes things that don't really matter, just because they're easier to face than the bigger, important tasks that are actually stressing me out.
Of course, that only makes things worse. Time passes, the important work doesn't move, and I get even more stressed about the fact that I'm not doing the things I know I should be doing. It's a very specific kind of spiral: stressed about the workload, then stressed about how I'm reacting to the workload.
Relationships in the Middle of Everything
All of this is happening while I'm also trying to maintain personal connections. Friends, family, people I care about. They don't pause just because I'm overloaded.
This has been one of the harder parts for me. It's not that I don't care about people; I care a lot. But when my brain is crowded with tasks and deadlines, even something as simple as replying to a message can feel like another item on the to‑do list. I tell myself I'll respond "when things calm down," but things rarely calm down on their own.
The longer I wait, the more guilty I feel, and the more awkward it becomes to reach back out. Eventually, I'm not just stressed about work and school; I'm stressed about the distance that has formed in relationships I actually value. It's a slow kind of drift that happens when stress quietly pushes human connection to the edges.
I'm still trying to figure out how to handle this better. I don't want to be someone who disappears when life gets busy, but I also haven't found a perfect way to balance everything. A lot of it right now is trial and error.
Not Being “Good” at Stress (Yet)
I think it's important for me to admit that I'm not great at handling stress. I still get overwhelmed. I still procrastinate when things feel too big. I still let messages sit for longer than they should. I still have days where my instinct is to do nothing instead of starting something hard.
But I'm starting to understand my own patterns a little better. That doesn't magically fix them, but it does make them feel less mysterious. Instead of just calling myself lazy or undisciplined, I can recognize that I'm reacting to overload in a way that's pretty consistent.
One of the biggest realizations for me is that I work much better when I can obsess over one thing.
Why Focusing on One Thing Helps Me
When I can shrink my world down to a single focus, everything feels more manageable. If I can say, "Today, this is the main thing I'm doing," I suddenly have a clearer path. It could be an assignment, a problem I'm trying to solve at work, or a personal project, but once I decide it's the priority, I can usually lock in on it.
Deep focus feels less stressful to me than constant partial focus. When I'm really immersed in one thing:
- The other worries don't disappear, but they get quieter.
- I feel less scattered and more present.
- I actually finish things instead of constantly switching between them.
The problem is that life doesn't neatly organize itself around my preference for single‑threaded focus. School, work, side projects, and relationships all happen at the same time. None of them politely wait their turn. My natural way of operating, going all in on one thing, doesn't really match the structure of my life right now.
That mismatch is a big part of my stress. I want to dive deep, but the world expects me to juggle.
Trying to Bring Focus Into a Messy Reality
Since I can't pause everything except the one thing I care about, I've been trying to bring a little bit of that "one thing" energy into a life that still has multiple moving parts. None of this is a polished system, but these are a few experiments that have helped.
Having One Real Priority Per Day
Even if I have ten things to do, I try to pick one that matters most. Not necessarily the easiest or fastest, but the one that, if completed, would make the day feel lighter.
Some days that's finishing a specific assignment. Other days it's unblocking something at work or making real progress on a personal project. The point isn't to ignore everything else; it's to give the day a center.
When I know the one thing that truly matters for the day, it's easier to fight the feeling of being pulled in every direction at once.
Working in Short, Single‑Channel Bursts
Telling myself I need to be productive for five straight hours usually backfires. It feels too big and too vague. Instead, I'm trying to work in shorter, more focused bursts.
I'll pick one task and commit to working on it for 20–30 minutes. During that time, I try not to think about the other things waiting for me. It's just one tab open in my head, not ten.
The interesting part is that once I actually start, those 20–30 minutes often turn into longer stretches. Getting started is the hardest part. Once I'm in motion, the stress feels less paralyzing and more like something I can move through.
Putting Boundaries Around Worry
Stress for me isn't only about the volume of work. It's also about how much I mentally rehearse everything I haven't done yet. I can be doing something completely unrelated and still be running an internal checklist of unfinished tasks.
To counter that a little, I'm trying to give my worry some structure. Sometimes that looks like writing everything down so it's not just floating in my head. Other times it means telling myself, "I'm going to think about this problem for a set amount of time, take whatever action I can, and then I'm not allowed to keep spinning on it for the rest of the day."
I'm not perfect at this, but even a small amount of containment helps. It turns endless looping into something closer to a scheduled check‑in.
Being Honest About My Limits
A lot of my stress comes from pretending I can be fully available in every direction at once. I want to be a good student, a good teammate, a good friend, and a good person to the people in my life. The reality is that I don't always have the capacity to do all of that at the level I want.
I'm trying to get more comfortable being honest about that. Instead of disappearing when I'm overwhelmed, I'm trying to say, "Hey, things are really busy right now, but I still care." Instead of aiming for constant availability, I'm focusing on being more intentional in the moments when I do show up.
It's uncomfortable, but it feels better than carrying silent guilt around all the time.
Letting Myself Admit That This Is a Lot
One thing I underestimated is how tiring it is to constantly be in "go" mode. Always thinking about the next thing, always optimizing, always feeling like rest has to be earned.
When I ignore that, I push myself into a state where even basic tasks feel heavy. Then I judge myself for feeling tired, as if that's not a natural response to everything I'm juggling.
I'm trying to practice something simple: letting myself admit, "This is a lot."
Not in a self‑pitying way, but in a realistic way. Instead of defaulting to "I should be handling this better," I'm trying to say:
- "It makes sense that I'm tired."
- "Feeling overwhelmed doesn't mean I'm failing."
- "Needing rest doesn't make me weak."
The way I talk to myself about stress changes how heavy it feels. It's a small shift, but it matters.
What I'm Still Figuring Out
I don't have a clean ending to this where I say I solved stress and now everything is balanced. That's not where I am.
Right now, my reality looks more like:
- Still getting overwhelmed when too many things hit at once.
- Still freezing sometimes instead of starting.
- Still learning how to keep relationships from getting pushed to the edges.
- Still trying to make deep focus work in a life that expects juggling.
But I am learning.
I'm learning that the way I naturally like to work, going deep on one thing, isn't a flaw. It's actually one of my strengths. I just need to be more intentional about how I use it. I'm learning that stress won't disappear, but it can be understood, managed, and sometimes shrunk down to a size that feels workable.
And I'm learning that writing about it helps. Putting all of this into words forces me to slow down and actually look at what's going on instead of just feeling crushed by it.
I don't think I need to become someone who's "good at handling stress" overnight. For now, it's enough to understand myself a little better than I did before, and to keep making small adjustments instead of pretending everything is fine.
That's the version of progress I'm aiming for.