Stress doesn’t change your personality. But it sure can turn up the volume.

Under pressure, the behavioural patterns you normally manage quite well can suddenly become impossible to miss.

You know how people say: “That wasn’t really me. I was just stressed.”

Well. Maybe.

I have some bad news. It probably was you. Just … louder.

Stress has an annoying habit of taking behaviours that normally work perfectly well and turning the volume knob several clicks off the chart.

The decisive person becomes controlling.

The enthusiastic person becomes chaotic.

The calm, accommodating person withdraws completely.

The careful person starts checking everything. Then checking the checking.

Same person. More pressure. Less finesse.

Obviously, human behaviour is more complicated than simply saying stress makes everyone “more themselves”. Sure. Some people compensate. Some become unusually quiet. Others suddenly become much more forceful than normal.

But the principle is useful: Pressure exposes patterns.

And those patterns matter because stress is exactly when we tend to notice everybody else’s behaviour — while becoming strangely blind to our own.

We think: Why is he being so aggressive? Why won’t she make a decision? Why is this person suddenly talking without breathing?

Meanwhile, someone across the room may be thinking exactly the same thing about us.