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The Cauldron: A New Way to Think About Stress and Anxiety

With Byron McCaughey · 17 January 2026

In this episode of In Session with Byron, psychologist Byron McCaughey shares a powerful metaphor used with many of his founder clients: the stress and anxiety cauldron. This cauldron is always at least a quarter full - and that's not a problem. In fact, it's expected if you're building something meaningful, like a startup, family, or creative pursuit. Learn why a baseline level of stress is normal (and even healthy), how acceptance reduces the heaviness of stress, and what boundaries, routines, and self-awareness can do to stop your cauldron from boiling over. If you're trying to build something ambitious while also staying well, this mental model can help you live and perform sustainably - even when pressure is part of the game.

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Transcript

I want you to imagine that you have a stress and anxiety cauldron. Now, this is a concept that I've brought into quite a few sessions lately, so I wanted to share it with you.

This stress and anxiety cauldron is always a quarter full. That is, there is a baseline level of stress and anxiety, consistently - quarter full. And that's okay, because of decisions you've made for the right reasons - like starting a business, which will always come with a baseline level of stress and anxiety. That quarter-full cauldron.

Now, in accepting that there will always be a certain level of stress and anxiety in your life, we take the heaviness out of it, and we allow ourselves to focus on the important bit - which is making sure that cauldron doesn't fill up. Making sure that we put things in place that stop that cauldron of stress and anxiety from filling up, because then there is a cost.

We can stop it filling up with things like setting boundaries, self-care, and the relationship we have with stress and anxiety. And in doing so, we allow ourselves almost the permission to have that quarter-full level of stress and anxiety in a way that doesn't have a detrimental impact on our lives.

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