Why does a stressful week flatten me when my colleague bounces back?

How hard stress hits and how quickly you recover is partly biological. The COMT gene controls how fast your brain clears dopamine and noradrenaline. So-called slow-clearing variants keep these chemicals around longer, which can sharpen focus but also make you more reactive and slower to settle after a stressful stretch. The FKBP5 gene shapes your cortisol feedback loop, the system that switches the stress response off; certain variants are linked to a more prolonged or sensitive stress reaction, especially in people who faced early-life adversity.

These variants are common everywhere, including South Asian populations. They interact strongly with sleep, workload and support. In high-pressure Indian work and exam cultures, where long hours and short sleep are normalised, a more reactive stress system can tip into burnout faster, and people often read that as personal weakness rather than wiring plus environment.

The takeaway: if you recover slowly from stress, you are not weaker, your nervous system just resets at a different pace. The levers that work are the unglamorous ones: protecting sleep, regular exercise, downtime that genuinely disconnects, and asking for help early. Your colleague's faster bounce-back is partly luck of the genetic draw. Knowing that can replace self-blame with a plan to guard your recovery deliberately.