The 4 biggest job stressors

By Alice Lesch Kelly

For three years, Heather Case had little time for anything but her job. During that period, Case, now 30, worked in public relations in New York City. She routinely put in 60- to 70-hour workweeks, not including the time she spent working at home or commuting 90 minutes each way from Westchester County, N.Y. "You had to work those kinds of hours to keep your clients and your boss happy," she recalls.

But Case was not happy. She felt fatigued, run-down and irritable. She lost touch with friends. She rarely had time for the five- to six-mile training runs she loved or to compete in 10k's and half-marathons. "In a nutshell, I was burned out and stressed to the max," she says.

About 40 percent of people who work report that their job is "very" or "extremely" stressful, according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health in Washington, D.C. Workplace stress can cause or contribute to a variety of health problems, including headaches, insomnia, depression, high blood pressure, aching muscles, loss of appetite, exhaustion and irritability; and people who suffer from occupational stress (women are 60 percent more likely than men to suffer from it) miss four times more workdays than those with other occupational injuries and illnesses, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The primary cause of job stress is knowing that we have little control over what goes on in the workplace. No matter how hard we try, we can't have power over a mercurial economy, back-stabbing co-workers or temperamental managers. "People who feel they don't have control are the most stressed," says Barbara Reinhold, Ed.D., director of the Career Development Office at Smith College in Northampton, Mass., and author of Free to Succeed: Designing the Life You Want in the New Free Agent Economy (Plume, 2001).

When your job sends your stress levels soaring, your body reacts by unleashing torrents of stress hormones into your bloodstream, and your muscle tension, blood pressure and heart rate increase. This set of physical symptoms, known as the fight-or-flight reaction, won't cause much trouble if stress occurs only occasionally. However, if you're chronically stressed and your body is constantly in red-alert mode, your risk for a variety of diseases and ailments, including headaches, muscle pain and heart disease, goes up.