5 Signs Your Cortisol Stress Hormone may be Dysregulated 📈. What causes your cortisol hormone to be imbalanced? 🤔- Long-Term Emotional Stress. Basically 👉 too much pressure, too much worry, holding onto anger, not enough sleep, high intensity exercise/ overtraining when we are stressed and need rest 💤, and too much chronic stress will cause cortisol problems 🔁 the research 🔬 shows long term activation of this stress response increases risk or anxiety, depression, adrenal fatigue, digestive