Please seek support if you have come to this page because your wellbeing isn’t great.
Recall:
the job of the stupid brain is to keep everything the same
the job of the smart mind is to invent a better future.
Sometimes these jobs aren’t possible. That’s almost the definition of stress.
Really, stress is the experience we have when these jobs can’t be done. The cause of that experience is something outside of ourselves: a stressor. A stressor is something that fundamentally threatens our security. A threat triggers the stupid brain to do its thing: freeze, flee or fight. And then to silence the smart mind.
So, if an essay is stressing me, my stupid brain will not let my smart mind work on it, which is, to say the least, ironic. It is obviously bad design, but we have to work with it.