The Hidden System That Controls Your Stress and Anxiety - Sharks Coaching

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The Hidden System That Controls Your Stress and Anxiety

Coach Mark

Updated:<br>June 12, 2026

Category: Emotions and Stress Management, Stress and Anxiety

PrevPreviousWhy You Keep Reacting the Same Way (And Why You Can’t Stop)

Table of Contents

Where Do Emotions Come From and How They Create Stress and Anxiety

“Stress and anxiety are not only caused by external situations. They are created by internal patterns shaped by past experiences, emotions, and learned responses in the body and mind.”

Emotions are basic internal responses to the world around us.

They arise as a combination of perception, bodily reaction, and interpretation.

They are based on our five senses:<br>touch, smell, taste, sight, and hearing.

But emotions don’t stay on the level of a single reaction.

Over time, these emotional responses become patterns that directly influence how stress and anxiety are experienced in the body.

How Stress and Inner Restlessness Start in the Body

I remember how it all started early in my life.

It started happening to me in primary school: that quiet feeling that I wasn’t smart enough. In certain subjects, I noticed I wasn’t doing as well, and my confidence began to drop.

Every bad grade, every humiliation I received from teachers, made the situation worse. Slowly, this feeling began to form, quiet but growing stronger, that I was not smart enough.

It was not something loud. It was not dramatic. But it was there, consistent enough to shape how I saw myself. I wasn’t a good picture of myself.

Overall, I can say that primary school gave me very little confidence. In sports, I felt somewhat confident, but in school, I felt very insecure and had a strong sense that I wasn’t smart enough.

I compared myself to those who were better, especially my friend and my sister, who achieved good results in school much more easily.

That had a strong impact on my confidence.

When I moved to high school, I was lucky that my initial good grades helped me start building confidence. I don’t know exactly why, but I began getting better grades, A’s and B’s, and my average improved significantly.

At the same time, my confidence grew. In high school, I gained much-needed confidence, but it came through enormous effort and constant proving, both to myself and to the world.

It was not the easiest path, but it was my path.

Looking back today, I would definitely do things differently.

Still, I feel that this process pulled me out of that low confidence I developed earlier.

But if I am completely honest, that lack of confidence related to learning and school has never fully disappeared. Even though I later completed multiple degrees, master’s, doctorates, and more, that feeling still stays with me.

On a rational level, I know it is just a feeling and not reality, but it is still there.

When Pressure Turns Into Chronic Stress

A good experience from high school carried over into university and my first job.

Why stress is a physical experience before it is a mental one.

I was working and reacting under pressure.

A good experience from high school carried over into university and my first job. I started working while studying, which meant I had a full-time job while attending university.

All of this gave me a lot of confidence, but at some point, I was no longer acting from clarity.

I was working and reacting under pressure. Even when things were objectively fine, I could not slow down.

I could not sit still.

There was always something unfinished, something missing, something that needed to be done. And I didn’t question it. I just followed it. It brought me a lot of success (attorneyship, professorship, sportsmanship), don’t get me wrong, but the stress and inner restlessness were way too high.

That is the moment you lose control.

Not when something dramatic happens, but when you no longer see what is driving you. You think you are making decisions. But in reality, you are responding to something deeper that you never examined.

And that is inner restlessness. It is not just stress. It is a system that runs in the background, pushing you forward even when you don’t want to move.

How Anxiety Develops (And Why It Feels Out of Control)

All of this created a great deal of anxiety, connected to the fears I had developed.

I definitely did not want to return to that state of low confidence, so I constantly tried to compensate for that fear with excessive effort and work, which only led to more anxiety and an overloaded system.

Unfortunately, I was not aware of this for many years.

I started to feel it in stressful situations, like court hearings or before demanding procedures, when my body began signaling that something was not right.

I felt pain in my stomach,<br>frequent restlessness,<br>and unexplained anxiety that I could not trace back to any clear source.

Looking back now, it was closely tied to my excessive drive for...