When Life Hands You the Entire Stress Scale at Once
Stress looks like sharks. I taught myself to swim anyway.
There’s a reason psychologists created something called the Holmes & Rahe Stress Scale back in 1967—a list ranking the most stressful life experiences a human can endure. What they didn’t know back then was that one day, a woman named Angela would check nearly every box… sometimes all in the same season.
I used to look at that list and think, No wonder I’m overwhelmed.
Now, because of what I’ve learned through Heroic, I look at it and think, Of course it’s been hard—but look at who I’ve become in the process.
This is the story of how life handed me the entire stress scale… and how Heroic taught me to respond differently.
The Psychology of Stress—Lived in Real Time
According to psychology, the most stressful life events include things like:
Major moves
Career upheaval
Deployment
Health crises
Caring for aging parents
Financial changes
Identity transitions
Unexpected housing issues
Legal/administrative stress
Family shifts
Relationship strain
Major uncertainty about the future
For many people, one or two of these show up at a time. For me?
Try a rotating carousel of almost all of them over the last few years.
Deployment + Identity shifts + Moves = Exponential stress
When Dave deployed to Pakistan for a year, it wasn’t just the emotional weight—it was the role changes, the loneliness, the responsibility of managing everything alone. Then, right when we settled into some sense of rhythm, he returned home only to prepare for move number 19 and his last assignment on active duty. What could have been a “pleasant” 18th month assignment actually became a firehose of stress scale experiences.
Aging parents and their health challenges
Launching a business
Building Heroic Tucson
Supporting our adult children through their own life changes
Dave’s retirement planning and medical documentation
A government shutdown
Unanticipated surgeries, and injuries
A child’s wedding
An unexpected 20th move locally with surprise issues
Psychology calls this accumulation stress—when multiple stressors combine and multiply their impact.
I call it “Tuesday.”
But something changed.
Something big.
Before Heroic… and After Heroic
Before I found Heroic, stress flattened me.
Not because I was weak, but because I was human.
I reacted. I spiraled. I carried it all in my body.
I lost sleep. I lost perspective.
I lost pieces of myself.
Heroic didn’t remove the stressors—this isn’t a fairy tale.
But it did help me create a new identity, a new philosophy, and a new set of tools that changed everything about how I responded.
Here’s how.
1. Identity First: Who I Choose to Be When Life Gets Hard
My chosen identity—Antifragile—has become the foundation of how I meet the world.
Instead of asking, Why is this happening?
I now ask, Who do I choose to be in this moment?
When the gas wasn’t turned on and we froze our first night in the new place…
When I heard scratching in the attic and convinced myself “roof rats”…
When appliances died…
When family issues resurfaced…
Identity anchored me.
Identity changed the story.
Identity changed everything.
2. Protocols Over Panic
Brian Johnson says, “The worse you feel, the more committed you need to be to your protocols.”
Living that truth has been transformational.
When my nervous system wanted to shut down, I still:
Breathed
Moved my body
Got sunlight
Hydrated
Journaled
Hit my targets
Practiced gratitude
Meditated or prayed
Reminded myself of my values
Do the next right thing
My circumstances didn’t magically improve.
But my capacity dramatically did.
3. W.I.N. — What’s Important Now
When life piles on, the mind wants to spin out into catastrophizing.
Heroic taught me the discipline of micro-decisions.
Not,
“How am I going to survive the next six months?”
but,
“What’s the most Heroic thing I can do in the next 60 seconds?”
This practice alone has turned chaos into clarity a thousand times over.
4. The Power of Perspective
Here’s the truth psychology affirms: stress feels heavier when we feel powerless, unsupported, or stuck in ambiguity.
Heroic reframed my lens:
I am not powerless.
I am not alone.
I am not defined by the uncertainty of the moment.
Now when something goes wrong, I actually pause and think,
“Okay… what’s the lesson? Where’s the opportunity? How is this shaping the next-best version of me?”
And somehow, it always is.
5. From Survival to Service
Perhaps the biggest transformation?
I used to think survival meant keeping my world from falling apart.
Now I understand that survival expands into meaning when you use your struggles to serve others.
Launching Heroic Tucson in the middle of all this?
That wasn’t insanity.
It was alignment.
Taking what I’ve learned about stress, courage, purpose, protocols, and identity—and turning it into workshops, community, and service—has been healing in ways I didn’t expect.
None of us get through life without being stretched.
But we don’t have to be stretched alone.
My Life Didn’t Get Easier. I Got Stronger.
Move #20 didn’t break me.
Deployment didn’t break me.
Retirement transitions, career shifts, business building, family complexities, and personal health challenges didn’t break me.
Why?
Because my experience with Heroic taught me how to become the kind of person who can move through stress—and grow from it.
So if you’re carrying your own stack of stressors right now, hear this:
You are not defective for feeling overwhelmed.
You are not behind.
You are not failing life’s test.
You are human.
And you are capable of so much more strength, clarity, and groundedness than you realize.
Heroic didn’t remove the stress from my life.
It taught me how to become the kind of person who can rise through it.
And that has made all the difference.
