Mission, philosophy and history of stressinsight

Stressinsight's Philosophy

Our mission

Stressinsight exists to change how stress at work is understood — and how it is addressed.

Too often, stress is treated as a personal weakness to manage, or a cost to minimize.
We see it as a signal: a sign that demands, expectations, or pressures have exceeded what people and systems can sustainably adapt to.

Our mission is to help individuals and organizations make sense of that signal — and respond in ways that restore clarity, stability, and sustainable performance.

This means supporting professionals in understanding how stress shapes perception, decisions, and energy, and helping organizations examine how work is structured, led, and experienced under pressure.

Work should not require constant self-sacrifice to function.
It should be both effective and sustainable — for people, and for the organizations they work in they work in.

Our approach

Stress is rarely caused by a single factor — and it is rarely resolved by a single solution.

Most stress advice focuses on one layer at a time: techniques to calm the body, habits to improve productivity, psychological insights, or workplace tips. Each can be useful, but chronic stress emerges when biological responses, perception, and working conditions interact over time.

Stressinsight works across these layers — in sequence, not in isolation.

1. Stabilize before acting

When stress is high, the nervous system prioritizes survival over reflection.
Our first step is therefore not change, but regulation: helping people reduce hyperarousal enough to think, interpret signals, and make decisions without reacting.

This creates the conditions for clarity — not as an end goal, but as a starting point.

2. Restore adaptive capacity

Chronic stress depletes energy, attention, and flexibility.
Rather than pushing resilience, we focus on restoring capacity: improving recovery, reducing cognitive overload, increasing predictability, and supporting emotional and mental stability over time.

This allows people to respond to demands with flexibility instead of strain.

3. Adjust the conditions that sustain stress

Lasting change rarely comes from individual effort alone.
Stress often persists because of how work is structured, led, and experienced — including workload, role clarity, decision pressure, autonomy, communication, patterns of conflict, and the broader organizational culture.

We support individuals and organizations in adjusting these conditions, so pressure is managed where it actually arises.

By addressing stress at the level of regulation, capacity, and context, Stressinsight helps people respond to pressure in a way that is evidence-based, realistic, and sustainable — not just in the moment, but over time.

From Philosophy to Practice

Stress rarely resolves all at once.
People and organizations need different kinds of support at different moments — and often need help understanding where they stand and what deserves attention next.

Stressinsight is therefore built as a guided system: not a collection of tools, but a way of supporting progress without pressure.

1. Orientation — Making Stress Understandable

The first step is understanding.
We help people make sense of stress as a signal — biologically, psychologically, and in the context of work — so it can be addressed without blame or urgency.

This orientation helps people recognize patterns in their stress, understand why they arise, and develop a clear, non-blaming way to think about pressure at work.

2. Stabilization — Support When Pressure Is High

When stress escalates, the priority is not change, but regaining enough stability to think clearly.

This support helps interrupt escalating stress responses, restore perspective, and create enough stability to think and decide without reacting under pressure.

3. Guided Progression — Staying Oriented and Moving Forward

Understanding and stabilization are often not enough on their own.
People may still wonder:

Am I focusing on the right thing?
Is this the moment to change something — or to wait?
Why does stress keep returning here?

Guided progression provides continued sense-making and direction over time.

Through structured guidance and regular reflection moments, we help individuals and organizations:

assess where they stand as conditions change
revisit priorities without urgency
translate insight into realistic next steps
avoid getting stuck, overwhelmed, or reactive

This support keeps progress steady — without adding pressure or new expectations.

4. Change — Addressing What Sustains Stress

When stress persists, it usually points to conditions that need adjustment.

We support individuals and organizations in identifying where stress is sustained — personally, relationally, or structurally — and guide changes that restore clarity, coordination, and sustainable performance.

Why this approach matters

By working across understanding, stabilization, guidance, and change, Stressinsight helps people respond to stress in a way that is realistic, evidence-based, and sustainable — not just in the moment, but over time.

Our history

About stressinsight

Stressinsight has evolved over more than a decade — shaped by a growing understanding of what people actually need when dealing with stress.

We began in 2013 within the Biosphere Science Foundation (BSF), a non-profit we co-founded to bring scientific knowledge to the public. Stress quickly emerged as a central theme. Research in neuroscience and physiology offered powerful insights — but much of it remained inaccessible to everyday working lives.

To close that gap, we launched a dedicated Stressinsight platform and published a book on stress in the Netherlands. The response was encouraging: readers valued the clarity and scientific grounding. At the same time, it became clear that static content had limits. Stress science evolves, and people wanted understanding that could grow with it.

This led to the next phase: a membership-based stress journal, inspired by traditional newspapers. It allowed us to share new research, interpretations, and practical reflections as they emerged — rather than freezing knowledge in a single publication.

In 2021, Stressinsight became fully independent from BSF. With that independence came a clearer focus — and a clearer insight:
information alone is not enough.

People didn’t just want to read about stress. They wanted help making sense of it in their own situation.

That realization led to the launch of the Stressinsight Community in 2023 — creating a space where knowledge could be discussed, questions could be explored, and guidance could adapt to real-world complexity.

Over time, Stressinsight has shifted from sharing information to supporting understanding, orientation, and change. The current form reflects that evolution: a system designed not just to explain stress, but to help people and organizations respond to it intelligently and sustainably.

What has remained constant throughout is the goal:
to bring scientific insight into everyday work life — in ways that respect human limits and support sustainable performance.

Meet the team

Erwin van den Burg

Co-founder — Neuroscientist & Stress Researcher
Specialist in stress physiology and workplace stress, with a focus on how chronic pressure shapes perception, decision-making, and behavior. His work bridges neuroscience and real-world working conditions, translating complex stress research into practical understanding and guidance.

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Inés Gomez Campos

Co-founder — Psychiatrist
Specialist in the clinical impact of stress on mental health and functioning, with extensive experience supporting individuals and teams under sustained pressure. Her perspective grounds Stressinsight’s work in clinical reality, ensuring that guidance remains humane, responsible, and effective.

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