The Burden of Stress
Six questions that reveal whether you are running your life, or whether it is running you.
Begin here — six questions. Answer yes or no, honestly, in your head. No one needs to see your work.
- Do you feel overwhelmed juggling the roles and responsibilities of your life?
- Do you think about work when you are with your family or friends?
- Do you feel tired even after a full night of sleep?
- Does your daily routine feel like a treadmill you cannot step off?
- Do you experience headaches, chest pain or digestive issues your doctor cannot explain?
- Has sleep become a problem?
If you answered yes to one, you are experiencing stress. If you answered yes to three or more, you are carrying a load your biology was not designed to carry indefinitely.
The good news — and the bad news — is that you are not alone.
The national picture
In The Burden of Stress in America, the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and NPR surveyed 2,505 adults across the country. Forty-nine percent reported a major stressful experience in the prior year. Among those describing a great deal of stress, nearly half pointed to one familiar culprit: juggling family schedules. Others cited the daily drip — politics (44%), news (40%), household tasks (39%), errands (38%).
When our basic needs get frustrated, the frustration converts into stress.
What it costs at work
Among employed respondents experiencing significant stress, seventy percent said it was impacting their professional lives. Half said it was harder to concentrate. Forty-one percent said it made them less likely to take on the high-visibility assignments that advance a career. More than a third said they were missing deadlines. These are not character defects. These are the predictable, measurable consequences of a sustained physiological state the body was never meant to hold.
What to do with this
A yes on any of the six questions is not a diagnosis. It is a data point. The useful next step is not to berate yourself, but to recognize that stress is a process — one with predictable biology, predictable warning signs and predictable interventions. The framework that follows is for anyone ready to stop reacting and start regulating.