Stress Is Contagious

You leave home in a good mood. By half past nine, a colleague has sighed at her screen three times, your manager has sent an email written in capital letters and the man beside you on the train has spent twenty minutes on a tense phone call. Nothing has gone wrong in your own day, yet your jaw is tight and your shoulders have crept up towards your ears.

You have caught someone else's stress.

Wednesday 4th November is National Stress Awareness Day, set up by the International Stress Management Association to draw attention to pressure at work and the ways to manage it. Most advice on stress looks at your own workload and your own habits. Far less of it looks at the stress you absorb from the people around you, and the stress they absorb from you.