While it might seem like being stressed or anxious is binary, it’s more like a sum. Each stimulus accumulates even if they appear separate and unconnected e.g. personal vs work stress.
The accumulation raises the temperature of your emotional thermometer and each additional stimulus feels larger than it is making it difficult to do anything. That’s why it’s surprising that something seemingly so small feels outrageously difficult or causes you to ‘snap’.
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Anxiety Doesn’t Give You an Edge
I hear it often enough that it seems like a commonly held belief that anxiety somehow improves performance at work and gives one an edge. I believed it too, but with the help of therapy, I came to realize it’s not true. If anything, this belief makes us worse at a lot of things—not the least of which is feeling okay.
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CEO Lifespans Decrease 1.5 Years in a Downturn and They Look Older
In a paper CEO Stress, Aging, and Death, the authors studied the effects of managerial stress on lifespan and visible signs of aging. They found that CEOs' lifespan decreased by 1.5 years in response to an industry wide downturn. They also look older than there age by one year over the decade following a ‘distress shock’ like the Great Recession—James Donald, CEO of Starbucks, looked 3-5 years older than his biological age base on pictures from 2004 to 2010.
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Hypochondriacs Have an Increased Risk of Mortality
Worrying about being sick seems to increase your risk of death. A recent study published in JAMA Psychiatry found that people with hypochondriasis (a psychiatric disorder characterized by a pre-occupation about having a serious illness) have an increased risk of death compared to those who do not have hypochondriasis.
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Depression Is Living in the past, Anxiety Is Living in the Future
One can think of depression and anxiety as two ends of a spectrum. Depression often involves ruminating on things that have happened in the past. Anxiety often involves worrying about the future where something might happen.
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89 Percent of Employees Said They Experienced Occupational Burnout in the past Year
A survey by Visier found that 89% of employees experienced burnout in the past year. The primary factors that contributed were workload (being asked to do more work, faster, work-life balance), culture (toxic workplace, micromanagement, lack of support from managers or co-workers), and world events (COVID-19 pandemic, police brutality, climate change).