Breaking the Cycle of Manufactured Crises - When Small Things Feel Like a BIG Deal

The other night, I found myself wide awake, heart pounding, convinced we were painting our fence the wrong color. 

Rationally, I knew it was just paint. But the thought of changing it—of all the time, money, and effort—felt overwhelming. 

This wasn’t the first time I’d spiraled over something so seemingly minor. For me, paint colors have consistently been a trigger, a way to turn the mundane into a crisis.

Addicted to the Rush: Why We Manufacture Stress

Growing up, I was the calm one in a crisis. It became a strength, but also a habit. 

Over the years, I realized I sometimes manufactured crises because it’s familiar, almost comfortable. The adrenaline rush gives me energy, a sense of purpose, a reason to push through.

And I know I’m not alone. Many of us, especially over-functioning leaders, find ourselves more at ease when the stakes are high, but struggle with the daily grind.

When we get addicted to the rush of responding to an emergency, it’s easy to manufacture a crisis over something mundane - whether it’s paint, chores, or a small mistake at work.

The Pressure We Put on Ourselves

This habit of using stress as a motivator is hard to break. 

We overreact to nominal mistakes - a typo in an email, forgetting to reply to a message, missing a meeting invite, or accidentally putting pepper on homemade chocolate-covered popcorn instead of salt (my daughter still insists it tasted yummy).

The reaction is outsized because we put so much pressure on ourselves. We jump to conclusions that one misstep is going to cascade into overwhelming catastrophes. It’s not even the mistake we are overreacting to, it’s what it means for our future and livelihood. Like we just started an unstoppable chain reaction leading to our untimely demise. 

But when we start to notice these patterns, when we get curious and show ourselves compassion, we can begin to shift the dynamic. 

Not everything needs to be a big deal. Setbacks aren’t the beginning of the end. And motivation doesn’t need to be served with unhealthy doses of adrenaline and cortisol. 

Manufactured Stress Clouds Our Thinking

I remember setting up QuickBooks for my business after years of using spreadsheets. The whole process was overwhelming because I didn’t know what I was doing. It was all new to me. 

I was so frustrated, I wanted to throw my computer out the window. My anger made me turn red in the face as I huffed around my office. I was thwarted at each attempt to figure out why it wasn’t working, which escalated my outsized reaction. 

My stress made it impossible to think clearly or solve the problem. 

I’ve had similar moments of escalating aggravation - struggling to find a “register here” button on a website, or getting stuck on a simple task. Then my blood boiling over with rage, clouding my thinking and my vision. My frustrations makes me blind to the obvious answer right in front of me.

When I paused and noticed my stress, suddenly solutions appeared. The button I’d been searching for was right in front of me all along. From a place of calm, a simple next step to troubleshoot is clear to me.

The Neuroscience Behind Our Reactions

There’s a reason for this. 

When we’re stressed, our brains release stress hormones that trigger the amygdala - the part of the brain that senses threats. When the amygdala activates an unmanaged stress response, we experience dysregulation. 

As a result, our executive brain, the part that solves problems, checks out. That’s why I couldn’t find the solution with QuickBooks: my executive brain was “out to lunch.”

But I learned to self-regulate, to acknowledge my feelings, to validate myself - “wow this is hard Ariana” - and to downshift from reactive to responsive. When I consciously stepped out of crisis mode, I could see practical next steps - search for a tutorial, ask a friend, or simply take a break.

Finding Ease in Everyday Challenges

It’s tricky when we’re used to stress and crisis as motivators. 

Every day life isn’t a crisis (though more and more people feel like it is thanks to the news and social media and fear-mongering). And when we turn little things into a crisis, we limit our ability to succeed and drain our resources for real emergencies. 

The more we practice noticing, pausing, and showing ourselves compassion, the more we can access our creativity and resilience - even when the fence is the “wrong” color (or the popcorn has pepper instead of salt).

Spoiler alert, the fence looks great. I was, yet again, making a big deal out of nothing and losing unnecessary sleep over it. But hey I noticed it and didn’t spiral out of control. Instead, I co-regulated with my cat purring on my chest and fell back asleep.

If you’ve found value in what I wrote here and you want to support me in continuing to create, guide, write, and make space for deeper transformation, I invite you to buy me a tea.

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