The thing nobody told me about stress when I was drowning in it

I had a conversation recently with a colleague who has a PhD in psychology.

She mentioned she had been working more with CEOs lately, helping them manage stress.

I paused.

Not because I don't respect the work. I do. But the conversation sent me back to a season of my life I don't talk about often.

Ten years ago I was drowning.

Practicing medicine full time. Traveling overseas to launch a consumer product brand. Raising capital. Pitching investors. Managing a clinical practice. Growing a consulting agency. Trying to be a good wife.

I was doing all the things you're supposed to do to take care of yourself. Exercising every day. Beach walks. Moving my body.

And the stress didn't move.

Because I was treating the symptoms while the source kept regenerating them. The stress was debilitating. My doctor literally told me I was on track for a heart attack in my late 30s.

I See This In Almost Every High Performer I Work With

I tell you this not because my season was unique. But because I've sat across from enough founders, CEOs, executives, healthcare leaders, and financial professionals to know that what I was carrying then looks remarkably similar to what many of them are carrying right now.

The details are different. The industries are different.

But the feeling is the same.

Doing everything right. Carrying everything. And the weight not moving no matter what they try.

Here's what I've come to understand after living it and watching it play out in the leaders I work with:

The most stressed leaders aren't stressed because of how much they're doing. They're stressed because of what they haven't decided.

An unmade decision lives in your nervous system like an open loop. Your brain keeps returning to it, running scenarios, burning energy, generating anxiety, because it's waiting for a signal that never comes.

The signal it's waiting for is a decision.

What I Did Instead of Managing It

During that season I sought out coaches, mentors, and advisors. People who could help me think more clearly and make better decisions inside the complexity I was living in.

That's not to say therapy isn't valuable. I've had my fair share of sessions over the years. But when I look back at what those conversations were actually about, almost every single one came down to a decision I was avoiding.

A relationship that needed to change. A career path that no longer fit. A business that was consuming me in ways I hadn't fully admitted. A version of my life I was holding onto because letting go felt too uncertain.

Those sessions helped me see more clearly. But the stress didn't lift until I actually decided.

I made the hard calls across different areas of my life at the same time. Career. Business. Relationships. Who I was surrounding myself with. What I was willing to carry and what I wasn't.

And the stress that nothing else could touch started to dissolve.

Managing Stress vs. Resolving It

Every tool available for stress is designed to soothe. And soothing is necessary. It keeps you regulated enough to function.

But space isn't a solution if you walk back into the same situation that created the stress in the first place.

You reset. Something opens up. And then Monday comes and the unmade decision is still sitting there. The hard conversation still hasn't happened.

Stress is almost never about the volume of what you're carrying. It's about carrying things that aren't resolved.

Managing stress gives you relief for a day. Resolving what's causing it gives you peace for a season.

What This Has to Do With Leadership

Unresolved decisions don't stay inside you. They show up in how you communicate, how you respond under pressure, how clearly you cast vision when you're operating from a full nervous system vs. a depleted one.

The teams I work alongside feel their leader's unresolved weight even when the leader never says a word about it. It shows up in the culture, in the energy of the room, in how safe people feel to make decisions without checking everything upward first.

The best thing a leader can do for their team is resolve what they're carrying.

Not push through. Decide.

My stress today is at the lowest level of my adult life.

Not because life is simpler. Because I made the decisions I was avoiding. I let go of what was causing me more harm than good. I got honest about what I wanted my life and my work to look like and made the changes that aligned with that, even when they were scary.

The uncertainty of making a hard decision is temporary.

The stress of not making it accumulates quietly until it becomes everything.

If you're doing all the right things and the stress still isn't moving, it might not be a management problem.

It might be a decision you haven't made yet.

If there's a decision you've been circling, I created a Decision Making Tool to help you get clear on what's really keeping you stuck, and what you need to consider before moving forward.

Take the Decision Making Tool here → https://kaseydamato.myflodesk.com/thedecisiondiagnosis

Talk soon from the Maine coast,

Kasey

P.S. Every therapy session I can remember, when I really look back at what they were about, came down to a decision. Not always an obvious one. But a decision. That's not a coincidence. It is the primary driver of what I work on with my clients today.