The word I hear most often, from friends and from readers who write to me, is ‘flat’. Not dramatically unwell, just worn thin. Sleep that never quite lands, a stomach that grumbles at the wrong moments, a short fuse by Thursday. When I ask what is going on underneath, the answer is usually the same: too much on, for too long, with no real off switch.
That slow grind is what people mean by chronic stress, and it is far more common than the big, obvious crises we tend to worry about. The link between wellbeing and stress runs in both directions, which is exactly why small daily habits matter. I am not a doctor and I will not pretend to be one, but I have spent years paying attention to how food, rest and daily habits change the way a body feels. Around here on the Central Coast, that attention usually starts with a morning ocean swim and a few lines in a journal, long before I think about anything grander.
The kind of stress that hides in plain sight
Short bursts of pressure are a normal part of life. A deadline, a hard conversation, a sick child at 2am. The body is built for those. What it handles less well is pressure that never lets up, the low hum that follows you from the commute to the inbox to the dinner table.
Left running for months, that hum shows up in the body’s quieter systems first. Sleep gets patchy. Digestion goes sideways with bloating or discomfort. Vitality dips, and small colds seem to linger longer than they should. None of that is a diagnosis, and if any of it worries you it is worth a proper chat with your GP. But most of us recognise the pattern, and recognising it is the first honest step.
Why women in their thirties feel it hardest
A few years ago the Sydney Morning Herald reported on an analysis of around 30,000 health assessments of Australian executives. The finding that stuck with me was that female executives were more likely to show symptoms of stress, anxiety and depression than their male colleagues, and that women aged 30 to 40 were roughly three times more likely than men in the same bracket to show signs of stress.
The researchers put a lot of that down to the load women in that stage carry: family responsibilities, long-held expectations about who holds the household together, and the pressure to perform at work on top of it all. I read that and thought of half the women I know. It is not that they are less resilient. It is that they are quietly doing two jobs and being asked to look calm while they do it.
The wellbeing of the people at the top shapes the climate for everyone underneath them, which is why it cannot be treated as an afterthought.
The gut is listening
Here is the part I find genuinely fascinating. When we are stressed, the body’s ability to digest and absorb nutrients drops off. That can feed into bloating, food sensitivities, IBS-like discomfort and low-grade inflammation. Over time there is a two-way conversation going on between the gut and the mind, and neither one gets to sulk in private.
You do not need a supplement cabinet to look after this. The single most useful thing, in my experience, is eating a wide range of fresh fruit and vegetables across the week. Different plants feed the trillions of micro-organisms in the gut, the microbiome that helps with digestion and immunity. Betterhealth Victoria has a plain-language rundown on gut health that is worth ten minutes if you want the why behind it. If you want somewhere to start on your plate, I have written before about calming foods and about nailing nutrition without turning every meal into a project.
A breath you can do at a red light
The technique I come back to more than any other costs nothing and takes about a minute. You breathe in for a count of four, then out for a count of six to eight. The trick is the long exhale. Stretching the out breath nudges the nervous system toward its rest-and-recover setting and eases the edge off that wired feeling.
I do it in the car before I walk inside at the end of the day, so I am not carrying the office through the front door. You can do it waiting for the kettle, or in the two minutes before a meeting you are dreading. It will not fix a genuinely overloaded life, but it gives your body a small, repeatable signal that it is allowed to settle. Healthdirect has a simple guide to breathing exercises if you like a bit of structure to follow.
Small recharges beat one big rescue
The mistake I made for years was banking on the annual holiday to undo eleven months of running on empty. It never worked. Two weeks off cannot repay that debt, and you spend the first week just detoxing from the pace.
What actually helps is smaller and more frequent. A walk without headphones. A proper lunch break away from the screen. A weekend where the phone lives in a drawer for a few hours. If your sleep is the thing coming apart, that is worth protecting fiercely, because rest and steadiness feed each other. I have gone deeper on that link in this piece on sleep, and on the wider habit-building side in these tips to reduce stress.
Making the case at work
None of this stays personal for long. A frazzled workforce makes more blinkered decisions, solves problems less well and gets sick more often, and the people at the top set the tone for everyone below them. So looking after your own wellbeing is not indulgence, it is part of doing the job properly.
For women in their thirties especially, carving out time to recharge is not a soft extra. It is a practical tool for staying sharp and lasting the distance. If you want more Australian-backed guidance on the mental side of all this, Head to Health is a solid, free place to start, and there is no shame in reaching out early rather than waiting until you are truly frayed.
Start with the next small thing
You do not have to overhaul your life this week. Pick one thing. Maybe it is the long exhale at the red light, or an extra handful of veg at dinner, or twenty minutes outside without a screen. Do it for a fortnight and notice whether the flat feeling lifts even slightly. In my experience it usually does, and that small shift is often enough to make the next change feel possible. For a few more ideas that are easy to fold into a busy week, my list of wellness tips is a decent grab-bag to pull from.
— Tanya Pryce, Golden Door Living
