Is Stress Changing Who You Are? It’s highly likely that the toll of chronic stress is silently reshaping you, and without understanding how to manage it, the risks to your wellbeing, family life, and leadership effectiveness are only growing.
I would like to share a model to help explain what might be happening, from a neurophysiological perspective, called the Window of Tolerance.
You know the feeling. Not the dramatic collapse — the slow one.
The exhaustion you kept explaining away. The growing sense that something essential had gone quiet, even as everything on the outside looked fine.
Burnout is more than overwork. Here’s what’s actually underneath it — and how to start finding your way back to your Self.
“The people who have survived trauma teach us about what it is to be human — by teaching us what they’ve lost. And they’ve lost the ability to feel safe enough with another.”
That line from Stephen Porges stopped me cold.
Because I know what that feels like.
And I know what it takes to change it.
Most of us know what it feels like to lose touch with ourselves.
Not dramatically, not all at once — but gradually, across years of adapting, performing, and protecting.
This piece is about that disconnection — and about two things most people dramatically undervalue: their needs and their values.
