Are You Living in a State of Permanent Stress? An Old Model May Hold the Key

After over 30 years of practice when I was a psychologist, I find myself drawn back to a simple but surprisingly resilient concept to help explain what many of us may be going through right now. It is not a new discovery from the frontiers of neuroscience, but a foundational model of stress developed in the 1930s by a scientist named Hans Selye. His "General Adaptation Syndrome" is, I believe, the single best map for understanding our collective modern malaise.

A Map for Modern Stress: The Three Stages

Selye’s model is beautifully succinct. He proposed that our bodies respond to any stressor in three stages: the initial shock of Alarm; a longer period of Resistance, where we adapt and cope with elevated pressure; and finally, if recovery is absent, a state of Exhaustion, where our adaptive energy is depleted and burnout takes hold.

Looking around today, this feels less like a theory and more like a documentary of modern life. We are a society living in a chronic state of Resistance, constantly teetering on the edge of Exhaustion. Why? Because the very nature of our stressors has changed. The constant, low-grade Alarm signals from pervasive social media; the relentless pressure of precarious incomes and the rising cost of living; the slow erosion of real-world connection that strips us of our ability to recover. These forces combine to keep us permanently in a high-alert state, burning through our reserves at an unsustainable rate.

The Ancient Greek Remedy: From Chronos to Kairos

For years, the proposed solutions have been rigid and prescriptive: wake up at 5 am, follow this seven-step morning routine, adopt this specific diet. But these one-size-fits-all solutions often fail because they ignore a crucial element: timing. They are products of a world obsessed with Chronos—the relentless, quantitative ticking of the clock.

This is where another old idea, this time from ancient Greece, provides the missing piece. The Greeks had another word for time: Kairos.

Kairos is about qualitative time. It means the right time, the opportune moment, the season for a particular action. It is the wisdom of knowing when. If Chronos is the schedule on your calendar, Kairos is the feeling in your gut that tells you now is the time to act—or the time to rest. It is the art of living in harmony with our own internal rhythms, rather than in servitude to an external clock.

Putting Kairos into Practice

Living by Kairos is the remedy to the relentless state of Resistance we find ourselves in. It is a practice, and it begins with honest self-assessment. The first step is to ask: which stage of Selye’s model am I in right now? Is the jolt I’m feeling a temporary Alarm that I need to sit with? Am I in a resourceful state of Resistance, with the energy to tackle a big project? Or am I showing the first signs of Exhaustion—the irritability, the brain fog, the deep weariness that no amount of coffee can fix?

From this awareness flows the freedom to act appropriately. Kairos teaches us that there is a season for everything. There is a Kairos moment for intense, focused work—a season of productive Resistance where you can lean into a challenge and make real progress. But there is also a Kairos moment for deep, unapologetic rest. A season for retreat. This is not laziness; it is a strategic and necessary part of the cycle. It is the wisdom to know that when your body and mind are signalling exhaustion, the most productive thing you can do is not to push harder, but to stop completely.

When our metaphorical "stress cup" runs overfull, it can take a long time to empty and recover. A rigid, Chronos-based schedule often demands we keep pouring more in, ignoring the mess spilling onto the floor. Kairos gives us permission to notice the overflow, to step away, and to let the cup empty, not on a pre-determined schedule, but at the opportune moment our body tells us is right.

Hans Selye gave us the map for our journey through stress. But a map is useless without a compass. Kairos is that compass. It is the art of navigating Selye's territories wisely, of knowing when to push, when to pause, and when to retreat. In a world obsessed with the ticking clock, learning to live by the right moment may be the most important adaptation of all.