Cortisol has terrible PR these days. It is portrayed as a health saboteur, blamed for stress belly, insomnia, brain fog and emotional exhaustion. Women are taught that it needs to be lowered, calmed, switched off, as if it were something foreign that latched onto the body and must be shaken away. And yet cortisol does not appear without reason. It is a response, not a mistake. The problem is not that the body produces it, but that it produces it at the wrong time and without a clear signal of when to stop.
Cortisol is a hormone of adaptation. Its role is not to damage the body, but to enable survival. It releases glucose, raises blood pressure and sharpens attention. Thanks to cortisol, you are able to act when a situation demands it. But when this mechanism stops being a short-term response and becomes the permanent background of everyday functioning, the body does not enter a state of stress. It enters a state of constant anticipation of threat.
Cortisol reacts to anticipation, not to danger itself
This is one of the most overlooked aspects of stress physiology. Cortisol does not rise only when something bad is already happening. It rises when the body decides that something might happen. It is a hormone of anticipation. If for a long time you lived in conditions of uncertainty, tension, emotional instability or the constant need to stay in control, your nervous system learned one thing. It is safer to be prepared too early than too late.
In this state, cortisol stops being a reaction and becomes a strategy. The body no longer waits for a real threat. It maintains a heightened state of readiness. This is why so many women say they cannot truly relax, even when objectively nothing is going on. Silence is not a relief. Silence feels suspicious. And a suspicious environment demands vigilance.
Why your test results are normal but your body disagrees
Classic cortisol diagnostics rely on a single measurement taken out of context. Cortisol does not function in a linear way. Its biological meaning lies in rhythm. A healthy body produces cortisol intensively in the morning to support waking and mobilisation, then gradually suppresses its secretion throughout the day to prepare for rest. That decline matters just as much as the morning rise.
When cortisol is low in the morning, the day begins with heaviness, lack of energy and the sense of having to force yourself into motion. When it remains high in the evening, the body cannot switch off, even when the mind is exhausted. A single blood test will not capture this dysfunction, because the result may still fall within statistical norms. A norm, however, does not equal optimal functioning. It simply means the result does not deviate from a population average that is itself increasingly overloaded.
Cortisol rarely acts alone
The issue is not cortisol itself, but the way it gradually dominates other regulatory mechanisms. The body has natural systems designed to balance the stress response, yet those systems have limits. When tension lasts too long, regenerative capacity declines. What emerges is often experienced as burnout, apathy or a loss of psychological resilience. Not because something is wrong with you, but because the body has spent too many resources simply staying functional.
At this stage, attempts to motivate yourself, force positive thinking or engage in intense relaxation often backfire. The body does not register them as support, but as another demand. A nervous system that has been on high alert for years does not calm down on command. It needs evidence of safety, not instructions.
Why rest can feel harder than effort
One of the most misleading assumptions is that rest automatically reduces stress. For a nervous system conditioned to constant mobilisation, the absence of stimuli can feel like a loss of control. Effort and tension are familiar. Calm is unfamiliar. From a biological perspective, the unfamiliar is not neutral.
This is why some people feel worse on holiday than in their everyday routine. This is why insomnia appears when there is finally time to rest. This is why the body generates tension in moments that look safe from the outside. Cortisol does not rise because you are doing something wrong. It rises because the body has not yet received enough signals that vigilance is no longer required.
Cortisol is not telling you that you are weak
This is the most important shift in perspective. Chronically dysregulated cortisol is not proof of low resilience. It is proof of long-term adaptation to conditions that demanded constant readiness. The body does not distinguish emotional stress from physical threat. If for years you had to anticipate, react, take responsibility and hold everything together, your organism did exactly what it was designed to do.
The problem begins when this mode is no longer necessary, yet the body remains stuck in it. Not because it refuses to let go, but because no one taught it how. Regulating cortisol is not about fighting it. It is about gradually rebuilding the nervous system’s trust in the world, in the rhythm of the day and in yourself.
Cortisol is not your enemy.
If you treat it as an opponent rather than a signal, your body will fight alongside it against you.
How I learned to regulate my cortisol
We all know it is stress. The problem is that the diagnosis usually ends there. Much more rarely do we receive a practical answer to what can actually be done with that stress, or how to repair something that has been operating in alarm mode for years. For me, cortisol regulation did not begin with dramatic changes or miraculous methods. It began with noticing that my body reacted at the same time every single day.
Almost every afternoon, just after four o’clock, fatigue would arrive. Drowsiness, hot flushes, headaches, jaw tension and a very specific craving for sugar or fast food, as if the body were demanding an immediate reward for surviving the day. For a long time, I treated this as just another stress symptom. Only when I started analysing my day rather than my emotions did the pattern become visible.
Four o’clock was never neutral
Around four o’clock, my children and my husband come home. That realisation was uncomfortable. When the children were younger, this time meant noise, chaos, tension, conflict and constant reactivity. Later came adult problems, conversations that were never neutral and emotions that always carried a cost. My body learned one thing. From this hour onwards, it had to be ready.
It was as if an internal alarm switched on automatically, regardless of whether a real threat still existed. My body developed its own private stress prime time, just without adverts and with a far worse script.
Predictability instead of control
Regulation began when I stopped fighting this pattern and started respecting it. From that point on, roughly from four o’clock, I do the same thing every day. Repetitively. Almost obsessively. I dim the lights, reduce stimulation and eat in peace. I limit conversation, avoid debates, stop explaining myself and do not react to provocation. I do not answer the phone. I do not make decisions. I watch a film or read a book.
Not to relax. To give my body predictability.
The key realisation was that my body does not need stimulation or motivation. It needs proof that from this hour onwards nothing is going to happen. That vigilance is no longer required. That reaction is no longer necessary. And that this signal must be repetitive, boring and consistent, because only then does it become believable.
Teaching the body that the war is over
This was not a quick change. It was a long process and it still is. Over time, however, the symptoms began to soften. The afternoon crashes became less intense. Sugar cravings lost their desperation. Slowly, my body began to understand that four o’clock no longer signals danger.
I did not fix my cortisol.
I taught my body that it no longer has to prepare for the worst.
