When we are chronically stressed out, our ability to deal with continued stress is reduced. Our body continually perceives mundane and otherwise typical experiences in life as stressful, leading to constant activation of our fight-or-flight processes. Routine activation of our fight or flight systems, without a return to our restorative, rest-and-digest processes, leads to breakdown throughout our system, especially within the systems that are there to calm us down. I know, I know, what a silly mechanism to install into a “resilient” species. Believe me, I have a few pointers for whoever decided to build this into us.