There is a conversation that rarely happens in organisations. It’s not the one about absence rates, employee engagement scores or workplace wellbeing programmes.
It’s the one about what chronic stress is doing to your managers physically, and why that matters as much as anything else on your HR agenda.
Dr Gabor Maté, physician and author of the landmark book When the Body Says No, spent decades watching patients arrive with serious chronic illness, cancer, autoimmune disease, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, and asking a question most of his medical colleagues were not asking.
What was happening in this person’s life before they got sick?
What he found, again and again, was stress. Not the stress that we can all experience as a reaction to life events like finances, divorce or being made redundant. But chronic, invisible, unacknowledged stress that had been building quietly for years while the person kept going, kept pushing through and kept showing up.
Sound familiar?
Why is Mental Health Training for Managers Important?
Because the people you’re asking to support your workforce are often the last people to acknowledge that they themselves are struggling.
What we’ve seen time and again during our mental health training for managers is the recognition that managers are living in the stress response, and many didn’t realise how much. The training served both as a light bulb moment and a wake up call.
Many had been living in the stress response for so long that it became the norm and they didn’t realise how out of balance they were, or the link between stress and their long list of physical health conditions such as migraines, skin conditions, IBS, lower back pain or constant colds.
Dr Joe Dispenza, neuroscientist and researcher, states that seventy percent of people are living in a state of survival and stress most of the time.
His research also points to seventy five to ninety percent of visits to Western healthcare facilities stemming from the effects of emotional or psychological stress.
The Difference Between Pressure and Stress
Before going further, it’s worth being clear about something. There is a difference between pressure and stress, and it is an important distinction.
Pressure is what we can experience when we have a deadline looming, we’re managing a high stakes project, or we have sales targets to meet for example. The pressure itself isn’t coming from the task in hand, instead it’s our internal response to the task. The mind get’s busier and noisier with what we have on our plate, which in turn creates the feelings of pressure. There is a very fine balance between pressure and stress.
Stress is what happens in the body when pressure tips into the stress response. When the body is producing cortisol, the hormone of stress and adrenaline. The nervous system becomes dysregulated and we are effectively operating from survival mode.
I often hear statements like ‘my job is always going to be stressful’, which highlights that the individual doesn’t fully understand the neuroscience of stress, or the true cause of stress. Statements such as these are a projection based on what someone thinks, not reality. But the danger here is that when operating from this belief, they remain braced, holding the body in survival mode.
A manager operating from a regulated nervous system can handle significant pressure. They can think clearly, make good decisions, hold difficult conversations with calm and compassion, and bring their full capability to their role.
A manager operating from chronic stress is living in a different neurological reality. The executive functions of the brain that support clear thinking, decision making, and emotional regulation are compromised. The body is mobilised for threat even when there is no immediate threat. And over time, this takes a measurable toll.
How Managers’ Stress Becomes Their Teams’ Problem
The stress a manager is carrying leaks into the rest of the team.
I recall working with a private client who had come to me to get help with stress and anxiety. He was a contractor for Wood MacKenzie, a large oil and gas company in Scotland. He’d been brought into the organisation to work on a big multi million pound project.
He described the project leader as a ‘complete stress head’, sharing that she was ‘all over the shop’, couldn’t make decisions and how everyone was on edge around her. Costly mistakes were being made, communication had broken down and my client was questioning how much longer he could work there. Interestingly the MD had also taken several months out of the business for his own stress and anxiety.
People are profoundly attuned to the nervous system of the person leading them. If your manager is emotionally regulated, calm, and present, their team responds differently. They feel safe. They think more clearly. They are more willing to take risks and be creative. They communicate better.
When you invest in mental health training for managers, you’re not just helping the manager learn how to support the mental health and wellbeing of their team. You are fundamentally changing the environment in which their entire team works.
What Gabor Maté’s Research Tells Us
In When the Body Says No, Maté makes a compelling case that chronic stress, particularly stress that is suppressed or denied, is a primary factor in the onset of serious illness. Not a contributing factor. A primary one.
The mechanism is straightforward. When we are under chronic stress and not processing it through emotional regulation, the body remains in a state of physiological activation. Cortisol levels stay elevated. The immune system is suppressed. Inflammation increases. Over time, this creates the conditions for disease.
The body holds an infinite wisdom that is communicating to us all the time, trying to get our attention, but the truth is most people ignore the signs. I often use the example of driving – if you’re driving and you see the petrol or gas light start flashing, you don’t ignore it! You make a conscious decision to stop at the next petrol station and top up. You might also check the water and oil levels or the tyre pressure.
Yet when the body’s warning lights are flashing, we keep going!
These are often the people who have learned, early in life, not to acknowledge difficult emotions, to instead push them down. Who are ‘too busy’ to take a break’. Who don’t use their annual leave. They rarely ask for help. They are the people who keep going no matter what.
Sound like the managers you work with?
The Manager Who Can’t Say No
One of Maté’s key findings is that people prone to serious illness often share a particular personality pattern. They are people who struggle to set boundaries. Who say yes when they mean no. Who prioritise everyone else’s needs above their own. Who have learned that their own discomfort is something to be managed quietly, not expressed.
For managers, this is particularly relevant. Because the role itself demands that capacity to absorb pressure on behalf of others. To hold things together. To manage up and down simultaneously. And if a manager has a lifelong pattern of not acknowledging their own limits, they will simply absorb more and more until their body forces them to stop.
Maté’s research suggests that the body says no in the form of illness when the mind continues to say yes beyond what is sustainable. A manager can ignore the signals their body is sending for only so long. At some point, the body takes over.
99% of physical health conditions start with the stress response. But when someone has been living in survival mode for so long, they may not think they are stressed because they are become so accustomed to living at this level.
Why Mental Health Training for Managers is Vital
Most mental health training for managers teaches the person how to support the mental health and wellbeing of their team. Yet the training has the potential to go much deeper and create a significant impact on the health of managers.
When you help a manager understand what is happening in their body and nervous system, when you give them the awareness to recognise stress before it becomes illness, when you help them understand that emotional regulation is not a luxury but a prerequisite for leadership, that’s when things shift.
A manager who understands and can regulate their own nervous system shows up differently for their team. They make better decisions. They have more patience. They communicate with more clarity. They are genuinely able to support mental health in their teams because they understand it from the inside.
Mental health training for managers can’t just be about teaching managers what to do when someone on their team is struggling. It has to help them understand themselves first.
It has to help them recognise the patterns that have taught them not to acknowledge their own limits, to help them see the cost, not just emotionally but physically, of continuing to operate from chronic stress.
And it has to help them understand that emotional regulation is the foundation of effective leadership, not a bunch of techniques to cope with pressure.
Because when your managers are regulated, your teams are safer. Your culture is healthier. Your business performs better.
That’s what the hidden cost of stress really is. It is not just about absence rates or engagement scores. It is about the physical health and wellbeing of the people you are asking to lead your organisation.
And that’s why mental health training for managers goes deeper than most people think.
Ready to invest in mental health training for managers that goes deeper than the tick box stuff? Download our free guide to Mental Health Training for Managers to ensure your training gives maximum impact where you need it most.
