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Stress, according to the Samaritans, is a looming spectre. And next Friday's Stress Down Day is a chance for "anyone with work or financial concerns to seek support ... to discuss thoughts feelings and problems".
The organisation is keen to raise awareness about the impact of stress in the workplace. Laudable, but haven't we heard it all before? Almost weekly there's a wellbeing survey, study or piece of research warning the nation's workforce that stress is coming to get them. It's the cloud on every employee's horizon. The Health and Safety Executive has calculated that work-related stress lies at the root of more than a third of all new incidences of ill health, while 13.5m working days are lost each year thanks to work-related stress, depression and anxiety.
Could this national obsession with workplace stress be doing as much damage as it professes to prevent? If we tell ourselves that we are stressed at work won't we become just that, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy?
Angela Patmore certainly thinks so. The Truth About Stress (Atlantic), her eye-opening reassessment of the subject, has earned her vitriolic criticism from those within the "stress industry" as well as support from those who believe we should toughen up.
"There are more than 650 definitions of stress and even the highest medical authorities don't know what it really means. Yet the term is bandied about dangerously," Patmore explains. "The problem is that stress is perceived to be everywhere and we use the term to interpret everything we feel. It suggests that we have all got this terrible disease but the reality is that we need to be courageous and learn to cope by facing challenges."
That doesn't mean that our emotional responses to workplace situations are not valid. There is no question that some people are wracked with anxiety and unable to fully function as a result. It simply means that too many of us have developed the habit of labelling normal reactions to deadlines or meetings as abnormal. In short, are we becoming a nation of softies?
Stevan Rolls, head of human resources at Deloitte, believes we must accept stress as an integral part of the workplace. "Stress is inevitable. It goes hand in hand with the work we do. People don't hire us to do easy things, they hire us to do difficult things and to think that you can remove stress from that is a fool's errand. Isn't this pressure why people work in the first place? I work with people who are up for the challenge, focused on being successful and pressure helps them reach their goals."
The problem is where one employee's idea of healthy pressure is another's idea of breakdown-inducing chaos. After all, is it really possible to compare the pressures of brain surgery to the pressures of childminding? The general consensus is that it's not - each one of us has different tolerances and expectations. Being locked in a room with a shrieking child could send a brain surgeon over the edge while a childminder, faced with the gore of the operating theatre, could feel exhilarated.
Charlie Bagot Jewitt is a former Royal Naval commander and now chief executive of the National Memorial Arboretum, which houses the recently opened Armed Forces Memorial, in Staffordshire. He has a keen understanding of what stress means to different people. "I think that my job is stressful because I have to manage a 150-acre site, increasing visitor numbers, up to 10 Royal visits and 200 events a year. Yet I have to put that into the context of the experiences of armed forces personnel who are prepared to lay down their life in the service of their country. That's real stress."
But Bagot Jewitt believes that working under pressure lies at the heart of his success. He was attracted to his current role by the pace and variety and wouldn't have it any other way.
"I don't think you should shy away from stress," he says. "It forces you to perform to live up to your full potential. I like to think that even when I am on the verge of retirement I'll still be pushing myself. It's what gets me out of bed in the morning."
Which is why events such as Stress Down Day could be doing the UK's workforce more harm than good. The blanket assumption that we are all stressed and that this stress has to be eradicated is a premise that, taken to the extreme, could leave us all taking to our beds. Rather than realising that our nerves can make us shine in interviews or understanding that we feel pressure because we want to succeed, we'll define anything that raises our heartbeats as dangerous and to be avoided.
"To live without stress would be to live in a vegetative state," warns Glynis Kelly, senior lecturer in psychology and sociology at Cornwall College. "It's just not viable. Even the act of getting up in the morning requires effort. For many workers it is the fact that they feel 'driven' that makes the job worthwhile and that once that feeling is gone, it is time for them to move on. It is this environment that allows them to produce their best work."
Sara Robinson can vouch for that. She is an account director at Cardiff-based Working Word PR and even though she describes her job as stressful, she thrives on it. "I come up with my best ideas when under pressure," she says, "and when I am staring a deadline in the face I get a sense of flowing adrenaline and real buzz that helps me produce good work.
"My company has introduced Indian head massages as a benefit and I was told that my back is so badly knotted that I must be constantly bubbling with tension. But I don't see that as a bad thing and can't picture myself doing a job that left me feeling bored."
It's time to wrest control back from the doom-mongers, time to embrace the daily challenges of working life. "Spikes of stress help us to develop and survive," says Dr Wolfgang Seidl, executive director of the Validium Group, which provides employee assistance programmes. "So view being stressed as being resilient. Resilient people see pressure as a challenge, trust that they have control and don't see themselves as powerless. Those kinds of attitudes are at the root of any career success."
Relax! You're not overly stressed if ...
• Work leaves you feeling tired but satisfied with your progress
• You only feel stressed when outside your comfort zone
• You leave your comfort zone in ways and situations that you enjoy
• You're able to get over stress quickly with no lasting effects
• You don't feel constantly under pressure and have time to relax
• You feel as if you have some control over the situation that you are in
• You have confidence in your ability to cope
• You're a high achiever who seeks out challenges
• In our follow-up video, Laura-Jane Filotrani interviews experts, including Lancaster University's Professor Cary Cooper about coping with stress and redundancy at work. You can also put your questions to Professor Cooper and Joe Ferns from the Samaritans in our live webchat this Thursday, 5 February from 1pm to 4pm, again at guardian.co.uk/money/careerstalk
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