Stress as status signaling

Stress can be used as a status-signaling device, particularly among people who primarily seek validation through hard work. They may strongly identify with hard work, generating stress, sometimes chronic, that they think is part of the “package” required for leveling up, earning more money, trust, status, and affiliation in society. Stress becomes part of the identity and clinged to.

Evolutionarily, the ability to bear stress can be a sign of fitness and health, signaling one’s emotional stability (the capacity for stillness even in the most dire conditions), which is a desirable trait for attracting mates and increasing the chances of spreading genes. This may be one of the reasons behind stress as status signaling.

The aforementioned people may complain about stress and how stressed they are, yet not change anything or seek any change. That’s what signaling is: acquiring social status by directly or indirectly raising the flag and shouting, “Look at poor me, how stressed and hard-working I am,” as if that’s all there is and all that will ever matter in life.

Chronic stress may end up burning the emotional energy out of life until the end of your days, unless there is an intentional shift in mindset and behavior. You become what you attend to, and to make a change, there must be a change in attention in favor of where you want to go. To begin change, one must start to move in the desired direction and stop ruminating in thoughts about how to. A good starting point is to write down the vision for a good life in detail. If money didn’t matter at all, how would you live your life?