The System Behind Your Stress (And Why Discipline Isn’t the Fix)
If you’re feeling burnt out, anxious, or stuck on a hamster wheel—you’re not alone. And you’re not doing it wrong.
Most stress advice targets symptoms, not systems. A bubble bath, meditation app, or yoga class might help you catch your breath—but they don’t change the conditions making it hard to breathe in the first place.
Worse, this kind of advice can make stress feel like a personal failure—something you should be able to out-discipline or out-mindset.
But stress isn’t a discipline problem. It’s a systems problem. It’s your body’s way of saying something isn’t working. And the solution isn’t more effort—it’s a redesign of the system you’re operating within.
Let’s Zoom Out
Most advice focuses on individual fixes: take a break, time-block your day, set a worry timer. These can help—but in a broken system, they mostly help you endure what shouldn’t be endured.
This framing also conveniently lets organizations and leaders off the hook. If stress is seen as a personal problem, there’s no pressure to examine the expectations, policies, and cultural norms that make burnout the default.
Coping tools have their place—but they only work when the system supports them.
So here’s a better question:
What is your stress trying to tell you about the system you’re in?
A Systems Perspective on Stress
This is the first in a three-part series exploring what I call stress management systems—how stress is created, sustained, and (sometimes) relieved by the systems we operate within.
We’ll borrow from systems thinking—a framework for understanding how parts of a system interact to produce patterns over time. It’s used in engineering, climate science, public health—and is remarkably well-suited for exploring well-being in the workplace.
Understanding Your Stress Management System
Everyone has a stress management system, with elements that interact with one another to impact our overall experience of stress.
While it looks different for everyone, here are some common elements:
Workload (both at work and at home)
Sleep, physical activity and nutrition
Mental patterns
Relationships (friends, coworkers, family)
Support structures (tools, policies, processes, childcare, home help)
Let’s look at how these elements often play out.
Balancing Loops
Balancing loops help systems self-correct.
For example: when work demands rise, time for recovery shrinks. You get tired, your health suffers, and at some point you realize you need to pull back.
While this is a healthy loop we all have, at least two common issues prevent us from benefiting from it:
the resilience of our physical bodies often delays the feedback, and
the prevailing “hustle culture” encourages us to ignore the feedback.
The result? We push through until symptoms become so intense that they force us to stop.
Reinforcing Loops
Reinforcing loops create escalation. They’re harder to interrupt.
Say you deliver excellent work. Expectations rise. You deliver again. They rise more. At some point, the expectations will exceed your capabilities (likely, at a point where you’ve reached exhaustion). Despite a record of exemplary performance, you feel like a failure.
Or you respond to messages fast. That sets a new norm. The volume of messages increases. You’re now stuck in a cycle of urgency, and the idea of leaving for a one week vacation suffocates you with its impossibility.
These are textbook reinforcing loops—and once they start, they’re a fast pass to burnout. They’re difficult to interrupt without intentional effort and structural changes. Every loop reinforces the behaviors that created it.
The Role of Purpose
In case it’s not readily apparent, let’s take a moment to acknowledge that the very same elements in your stress system—your workload, support structures, how you spend your time—are also what drive your work performance.
So what happens, in many cases, is that your personal system evolves to serve other people’s goals: what your boss rewards, what your industry expects, what your peers normalize. And over time, your system adapts to keep delivering—even if it’s at your expense.
That means that persistent fatigue, overwhelm, and burnout that you’re experiencing are not indications of your failure. This is simply a system doing exactly what it’s been set up to do.
To truly manage stress, you have to reclaim your system. That means shifting its purpose—from serving output at all costs to supporting sustainable, healthy performance.
Designing a Smarter Stress Management System
Once you recognize that your stress is the output of a system—not a flaw in your mindset or motivation—you can start to shift the system itself. That means redesigning how your routines, feedback loops, and daily behaviors work together to support (or sabotage) your well-being.
There are many levers to pull with a system redesign, but for the sake of simplicity let’s focus on three here:
1. Interrupt the vicious cycles
Notice the elements that are negatively reinforcing, and disrupt where you can.
With colleagues, explore: What patterns are you seeing, and how are they affecting us?
With your friends or partner, unpack: What dynamics support or sabotage our well-being?
Consider: Where could additional support or intervention stop a negative reinforcement loop before it even starts?
2. Find feedback in the system
Balancing loops only work if they activate early and often—which depends on timely feedback.
The more frequently you check in and act on early signals, the healthier your system becomes.
Regularly assess your stress: What are you feeling? What’s driving it? What might help? Pro tip: Building a meditation practice is one highly effective strategy for connecting to yourself and the signals within your system.
Don’t wait for burnout. Notice patterns in how you experience stress, seek out root causes, and intervene as deeply as you can for sustainable improvement.
3. Build a virtuous cycle
This is where the coping mechanisms come in–ideally before you even need them.
Adopt healthier work habits. Block time for deep focus. Minimize transitions. Set communication boundaries. (I’ll share more in future posts, but chances are, you already have a few ideas.)
Invest in social connections. Decades of research—and the U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory—show its power not just in reducing stress, but in improving learning, economic outcomes, and even longevity.
Sleep, movement, and nutrition aren’t just “nice-to-haves.” These are core regulators of your nervous system. Without them, your capacity to manage stress plummets. If your workload consistently interferes with meeting basic biological needs, that’s a systems failure. After all, your cognitive and emotional performance depends on a functioning body—and protecting that isn’t just personal. It’s organizationally strategic.
Let’s talk mindset real quick: When redesigning your stress management system, don’t worry about a complete overhaul. That’s an unnecessary stressor you’re introducing.
Start small. Make a few tweaks. Move in the direction that feels right for you.
Try This: Mapping Your System
To understand your system, ask:
What gave you energy this week?
What drained you?
What supports are you underutilizing?
Are you stuck in cycles of over-responsiveness or overachievement?
What signals tell you stress is building?
When did your system work—and what made that possible?
Small adjustments to key interactions can shift your entire system over time.
Next Up: Teams and Organizations
In the next posts, we’ll zoom out—from individuals to teams and organizations. Because stress isn’t just personal. It’s cultural. It’s structural. And addressing it takes more than self-care.
But for now, begin with your own system.
You’re not broken.
Your system just needs a redesign.
One last note: Chronic stress can be a precursor to more serious mental health challenges. This blog is not a substitute for professional care. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, please reach out to someone who can help. You’re not alone.
Foster Insights helps leaders build systems that support real human performance, grounded in behavioral science. Want to go deeper? Let’s talk.