Feeling stressed?

STRESS: One of the most common reasons for taking time off work is stress. According to the British Health and Safety Executive, Britons lose 13.5 million working days a year to stress-related illness. But is stress always negative?

Some analysts believe that feeling pressure at work actually makes people perform better. Others, like British author Angela Patmore, say a whole industry has grown up around the unnecessary treatment of stress.

“There are more than 650 definitions of stress and even the highest medical authorities don’t know what it means,” says Patmore, author of The Truth About Stress . “The problem is that stress is perceived to be everywhere and we use the term to interpret everything we feel,” Patmore told The Guardian. “It suggests we have all got this terrible disease but the reality is that we need to be courageous and learn to cope by facing challenges.”

"Even the highest medical authorities don't know what stress means," says author Angela Patmore.

Stevan Rolls is an occupational psychologist and head of human resources at the financial management firm Deloitte . Rolls says that stress needs to be accepted as a normal part of working life. “Stress is inevitable,” he comments. “It goes hand in hand with the work we do. People don’t hire us to do easy things, they hire us to do difficult things, and to think that you can remove stress from that is a fool’s errand.”

Glynis Kelly, senior lecturer in psychology and sociology at Cornwall College, thinks that a stress-free life is not just impossible but undesirable. “To live without stress would be to live in a vegetative state,” Kelly says. “Even the act of getting up in the morning requires effort. For many workers, it is the fact that they feel driven that makes the job worthwhile, and once that feeling is gone, it is time for them to move on.”