You’re tired, but you can’t switch off.
You’re getting enough sleep — or at least you think you are. You’re exercising, eating reasonably well and doing all the things you’re supposed to do.
And yet you feel… off.
Perhaps you’re more reactive than you used to be. Your patience is shorter. You’re waking at 2am with your mind suddenly wide awake. You’ve lost a bit of your usual spark. Maybe your stomach is playing up, your shoulders are permanently tense, or you simply feel like you’ve lost your mojo.
Welcome to one of the less glamorous realities of midlife.
We often assume that by this stage of life things should be getting easier. The kids are older, we know ourselves better and we’ve accumulated enough life experience to deal with whatever comes our way.
Except life has a habit of throwing quite a lot at us in our 40s and 50s.
There may be children still needing us, ageing parents to care for, demanding careers, relationships that are changing and a world that seems to be moving faster every year.
And underneath all of this is something we rarely think about: our nervous system.
We spoke to Jane, founder of Sona and a nervous system and stress expert, about what is really happening when we feel overwhelmed, exhausted and unable to properly recover.
Stress isn’t the enemy
One of the most useful things Jane points out is that stress itself isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
In fact, stress is a superpower.
Our sympathetic nervous system is designed to respond to threat. It gives us focus, energy and the ability to act quickly. It helped our ancestors run from danger or chase down food.
The problem is that modern life has created a lot more “threats” for our nervous system to respond to.
The email from your boss.
The difficult conversation.
The news notification.
The financial worry.
The school WhatsApp group.
The deadline.
The argument with your partner.
Your body doesn’t necessarily distinguish between these modern stressors and a physical threat. The same stress response can be activated.
And that’s where things can start to go wrong.
Our nervous system needs to be able to respond to stress and then recover from it.
The sympathetic nervous system is the accelerator.
The parasympathetic nervous system is more involved in rest, recovery, healing and repair.
We need both.
The goal isn’t to spend your entire life in a blissful state of relaxation. It’s about having enough flexibility to move between the two.
As Jane puts it, we want a system that responds to stress but can bounce back quickly.
Midlife can change the equation
For women, there can be another significant factor during midlife: changing hormones.
As estrogen fluctuates and eventually declines during perimenopause and menopause, the brain is affected too.
Estrogen isn’t simply a reproductive hormone. It also plays a role in the brain, which means hormonal changes can influence how we respond to stress.
This may help explain why someone who has always considered themselves calm and resilient suddenly finds themselves feeling more anxious, emotional or reactive.
And this isn’t necessarily “just getting older”.
There can be a lot going on biologically, psychologically and environmentally at the same time.
Which brings us to one of the first places stress often shows up…
Your sleep
Sleep can be one of the earliest signs that your system isn’t recovering properly.
You might struggle to fall asleep.
Or you fall asleep exhausted, only to wake at 2am or 3am feeling completely wired.
That frustrating combination of being tired but unable to switch off can be a sign that your stress response is still active when your body should be recovering.
And once sleep starts to suffer, everything else can become harder.
Your mood.
Your concentration.
Your resilience.
Your ability to deal with everyday frustrations.
It’s not difficult to see how a cycle can develop.
Stress affects sleep. Poor sleep makes you less resilient to stress. More stress makes sleep harder again.
Your body might be trying to tell you something
Stress doesn’t always feel like stress.
Sometimes it looks like a bad night’s sleep.
Sometimes it’s low mood or losing your usual sense of joy.
Sometimes it’s tight shoulders or persistent tension.
And sometimes it’s your gut.
The vagus nerve connects the brain and the gut, which is one reason the digestive system can be particularly sensitive to stress.
That doesn’t mean every episode of IBS or stomach pain is caused by stress — there can obviously be underlying physical causes that need investigating.
But stress can be an important part of the picture.
This is why learning to listen to your body matters.
We spend an enormous amount of time listening to our thoughts. Far less time noticing what our body is actually telling us.
What about HRV?
If you use a Whoop, Garmin, Apple Watch or another wearable, you’ve probably come across heart rate variability (HRV).
Put simply, HRV measures the variation in time between individual heartbeats.
It can provide a useful window into how your nervous system is responding to stress and recovery.
But here’s the important bit: don’t obsess over a single reading.
Jane recommends looking at trends rather than getting hung up on one night’s data.
If your usual overnight HRV drops significantly, it may be a useful signal that your body is under more stress than normal.
Perhaps that’s the week to ease back on your training rather than trying to smash another personal best.
Your wearable shouldn’t become another source of anxiety.
If your ring tells you that you’ve had a terrible night’s sleep and you immediately spend the day worrying about how tired you’re going to be, the data isn’t exactly helping.
Use the information as a clue, not a verdict.
The surprisingly powerful thing you can do for your nervous system
One of Jane’s simplest recommendations costs nothing.
Breathe more slowly.
Specifically, she recommends working towards around six breaths per minute, using a gentle four-second inhale followed by a six-second exhale.
The idea isn’t to force your breath or turn it into another performance challenge.
It’s about slow, rhythmic breathing that can help influence the balance of your autonomic nervous system and increase HRV.
Jane even carried out her own informal experiment, practising slow breathing for ten minutes a day for six weeks. She saw her resting heart rate decrease and HRV increase.
She is clear that a single-person experiment isn’t scientifically conclusive, but the broader principle of slow, rhythmic breathing has been studied elsewhere.
And perhaps the biggest appeal is its simplicity.
You don’t need a gym membership.
You don’t need an expensive wearable.
You don’t need another app.
You just need ten minutes — and your lungs.
Don’t turn recovery into another competition
This is an important one.
Even things designed to help us relax can become another opportunity to perform.
Breathing techniques. Meditation. Cold water. Exercise. Sleep tracking.
We’ve become very good at turning wellbeing into a competition.
How long can I hold my breath?
How many days have I meditated?
What’s my recovery score?
Did I hit my target?
But if the goal is to regulate your nervous system, creating more pressure probably isn’t the answer.
Jane’s approach is much simpler: start small.
One minute of breathing.
A ten-minute walk.
A little more sleep.
Time with people you enjoy.
Small things that you can actually sustain.
Then build from there.
What about years of accumulated stress?
This is perhaps the most hopeful part of the conversation.
Many of us reach midlife carrying years, even decades, of stress.
Some of us have experienced significant events and simply had to keep going.
There was work to do. Children to raise. Bills to pay. People to look after.
So you dealt with it and carried on.
But sometimes the body catches up with us later.
Jane talks about how stress can compound over time and show up physically in different ways — from digestive problems and inflammation to brain fog, pain and changes in mood.
But that doesn’t mean we’re permanently damaged.
The brain has an incredible capacity to form new connections and adapt.
Our bodies have an enormous capacity for healing and repair.
Which means that midlife isn’t too late.
Far from it.
Recovery needs to become something you actually do
Perhaps the biggest lesson from our conversation with Jane is that recovery isn’t something that happens automatically just because you’ve stopped working.
Sitting on the sofa scrolling through your phone isn’t necessarily recovery.
Neither is answering emails while watching television.
And a weekend packed with errands, social commitments and jobs around the house isn’t exactly downtime.
Recovery needs to be intentional.
That doesn’t have to mean spending an hour meditating in silence every morning.
It can be a walk.
A conversation.
A proper night’s sleep.
Slow breathing.
Exercise that energises rather than exhausts you.
Time outside.
Doing something you enjoy simply because you enjoy it.
The basics still matter.
Sleep, relationships, movement, nutrition, social connection and having a sense of purpose are the foundations.
The trick is not to wait until you’re completely burnt out before you pay attention to them.
And finally: say it out loud
Jane’s final piece of advice might be the simplest of all.
Acknowledge that you’re struggling.
We often wear stress and busyness like badges of honour.
“I’m fine.”
“Just busy.”
“Lots going on.”
“I’ll be alright.”
But admitting that you’re struggling isn’t weakness.
It’s actually the first step towards doing something about it.
So if you’ve reached midlife and you’re feeling more reactive, more exhausted or less able to cope than you used to, don’t automatically assume that you just need to try harder.
Your body may be asking you to do something different.
Slow down.
Pay attention.
Recover.
And perhaps, for once, stop treating being exhausted as a sign that you’re winning.
Because the aim isn’t to eliminate stress from your life.
It’s to become better at responding to it — and much better at coming back from it.
Your nervous system doesn’t need perfection. It needs recovery.
And that might be one of the most important things you can give yourself in midlife.