Your Job: A Stress or a Challenge

Copyright ©  2008  Regents of the University of Minnesota. All rights reserved.

Occupational stress and its link to chronic illness is receiving increasing attention from medical and social scientists. General dissatisfaction about the nature of a job, heavy work load, competition with fellow workers, tight deadlines, and inability to get along with the boss causes occupational stress. Also the fear of being fired or laid off is stressful. Some stress situations occur when the demands of the job on the person become greater than he or she can handle, given available time, resources, and abilities.

Prolonged stress situations can result in heart disease, rheumatism, arthritis, ulcers, inflammatory and allergic diseases. These may be caused by the body's attempts to adapt to stress rather than by any external factors directly. Tension-producing situations can also result in a lowering of bodily resistance during which a variety of infectious diseases may develop.

In one study, prolonged emotional strain related to job responsibilities preceded 91 percent of the heart attacks in 100 heart patients. In a study of college professors, those who felt overworked had higher cholesterol levels than those who did not feel their work was too much for them. Duke University found that among people aged 60 to 94, those who lived longest had expressed the most satisfaction with their work.

Coping with a difficult work situation may consist of:

• Reorganizing schedules and activities to ease and speed up work procedures.
  
  
• Gaining new skills to deal better with the job.
  
  
• Calling on others for help to reduce the work load.
  
  

What may be a "demanding job" to one person may just appear as a pleasant "challenge" to another. The level of stress tolerance varies from person to person. Differences in abilities, training, and values may make some people feel dissatisfied or frustrated, while others at the same job may feel quite comfortable. If a person begins to show symptoms of stress, he or she should slow down, change attitudes or habits, or take a vacation. Or—find a new job.

Ronald Pitzer
Family Sociologist

Originally published in August 1982

College of Human Ecology in cooperation with the University of Minnesota Extension Service

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