How Do You Tell Normal Stress From Something More Serious? Expert Explains

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Only 23 per cent of employees in India felt engaged at work in 2025, the lowest level in four years, according to Gallup. Behind that number are people who still turn up, still reply and still function, while quietly running on empty. The signs of stress that get noticed, such as tears and outbursts, tend to arrive late. The ones that matter most rarely make a sound.

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We spoke to Sanjay Desai, Author, Entrepreneur, and Founder & CEO of ConsciousLeap, who explained how to spot the signs of stress early, and why life skills should be taught long before a crisis.

The Signs of Stress Hiding in Plain Sight

The obvious markers, Desai said, are not the early ones.

"The signs everyone thinks of first, crying, snapping at people, missing work, those are actually late stages. If you're seeing that, someone's already been struggling a while."

The quieter version is easier to miss.

"Someone who's in every meeting, replying to every message, doing everything they're supposed to, but a day later they genuinely can't tell you what got decided. They were there, but not really there," said Desai.

Sleep is another giveaway, though not in the way most people expect. "Not that someone can't sleep, more that they sleep a full night and wake up just as tired as when they went to bed, and that keeps happening," he added.

"I've Just Been Tired"

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Families often spot the change before workplaces do.

"A parent who's normally fine answering a kid's tenth question suddenly isn't, and it's almost never actually about the question," Desai said.

He pointed to this year's research from MHFA India on working hours, which found that fatigue showed up in people's behaviour well before they called it stress. "People will say 'I've just been tired' for weeks before they call it what it is."

When Stress Stops Being Temporary

Desai uses two checks: how long it lasts, and where it spreads.

"Stress before a big presentation that goes away once the presentation's done, that's just stress doing what it's meant to do."

It becomes a concern when it lingers. "It's a different thing when it doesn't go away, or when it starts leaking into stuff completely unrelated, like getting short with your partner over something small, or just not caring about a hobby you used to actually like," shared Desai.

He linked this to a report by the Institute of Directors, in collaboration with Gallup, which put engagement in India at 23 per cent, with 59 per cent of employees classed as not engaged.

That's not people having one bad week. That's stress and disconnection that never actually got a chance to reset before the next demand piled on top of it.

Soft Skills, Serious Protection

Emotional awareness, communication and boundary-setting are often dismissed as soft skills. Desai disagrees.

"People call these soft skills, which I think undersells them a lot. They're actually pretty close to the whole mechanism behind whether someone's wellbeing holds up or slowly falls apart," highlighted Desai.

Naming a feeling helps catch a problem while it is small, he said, and holding a boundary avoids "that slow build up of resentment that happens when you keep saying yes and meaning no." The MHFA India research, he added, tied poor boundaries around work hours directly to exhaustion.

They're prevention. Not something you add in after therapy's already needed.

Wellness Without the Checklist

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There is an irony in how many people approach self-care. "People turn wellness into a checklist, ten minutes of meditation, journal a bit, hit some step count, and then feel like they've failed if they miss even one of those things on a given day," said Desai.

What works better is flexibility. "Someone with real emotional awareness knows the difference between a day that just needs rest and a day that needs an actual hard conversation instead. That flexibility is honestly what keeps wellness from turning into one more obligation," emphasised Desai.

Resilience, Minus the Drama

Resilience can be built, Desai said, and it is "a lot less dramatic in practice than the word makes it sound."

It was never really about staying calm no matter what. It's about getting knocked off balance and not letting that spill into everything else.

Desai described a teenager who fails a test, feels bad for a day, and still turns up to practice the next morning. The skill grows the way most do: "small manageable setbacks, some support close by, not by avoiding hard things altogether."

Why Prevention Has to Start Early

This is the question ConsciousLeap spends most of its time on. "A lot of mental health support, in India especially, still only kicks in once something's clearly gone wrong, a diagnosis, a breakdown, a referral that finally happens after months of things piling up," said Desai.

Life skills education tries to move that moment earlier. "If a fourteen-year-old can already name what they're feeling, ask for something directly, or say no without spiralling into guilt over it, that's doing more preventive work than an intervention offered at twenty-five after years of nobody addressing anything," explained Desai.

The gap, he said, is timing. Schools and workplaces still treat wellness as something to switch on once symptoms justify the spend, and "reactive systems always show up after the cost's already been paid." What is missing is everyday skill building, not a once-a-year wellness week.

"Prevention only really works if it keeps happening. Right now, most of the system just isn't built that way yet."

Bottomline

Desai concluded, "The first signs of stress are rarely loud. They look like a meeting you cannot recall, a night's sleep that restores nothing, or a hobby that has quietly stopped mattering. Learning to notice them, and having the words and boundaries to respond early, is what Desai calls prevention. Done well, it makes asking for help feel unremarkable. It just feels like something people have quietly been doing all along."

Disclaimer: The information provided in this article is for general informational and educational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or a qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition.