My husband would be deeply distressed. When your body registers something stressful going on in your life many complicated chemical reactions start percolating. Your body will prepare itself by tensing up muscles, revving the metabolism and increasing respiration and pulse rates. Protein and fat levels rapidly increase in the blood stream to prepare for the anticipated energy needs and the liver will churn out ten times the amount of glucose than it does under non-emergency circumstances. Trying to determine if stress has become a problem in your life can be difficult.
Self assessment is the best route but requires brutal self-honesty and admitting to weakness.
Not many of us do that willingly. One way to start is being open to input from friends and loved ones. They are incredibly in tune with you and can notice a problem cropping up long before it pings on your internal radar. The signs and symptoms of stress are a book on their own. And, as I mentioned earlier, each of us is very individual in our perceptions and reactions to stress.