Is a publishing professional with more than twenty years of

Chapter 23
the War on 
Stress

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215
Y
ou know you’re too stressed if you wonder if brewing is 
really a necessary step for the consumption of coffee.”
That’s part of a puckish self-examination that circulated 
on the Internet recently. “You know you’re too stressed,” the “test” 
continued, if
•  You can achieve a “runner’s high” by sitting up;
•  The sun is too loud;
•  You begin to explore the possibility of setting up an I.V. drip 
solution of espresso;
•  You believe that, if you think hard enough, you can fly;
•  Antacid tablets become your sole source of nutrition;
•  You begin to talk to yourself, then disagree about the subject, 
get into a nasty row about it, lose, and refuse to speak to your-
self for the rest of the night;
•  You find no humor in WASTING YOUR TIME reading silly 
“you know you’re too stressed if . . .” lists.
Such satire never hits home unless it holds at least a kernel 
of truth.
Two social scientists named Holmes and Rahe created a more 
serious scale for measuring stress back in 1967. The Holmes-Rahe 
Social Readjustment Rating Scale assigned stress points to life situ-
ations. If you tallied 300 points or more on the scale within the last 
year, you were presumed to be at increased risk of illness or serious 
depression. Some of the events, with their point values, were:
 
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T I M E   M A N AG E M E N T
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•  Death of a spouse (99)
•  Divorce (91)
•  Getting fired (83)
•  Marital separation (72)
•  Jail term (72)
•  Personal injury or illness (68)
•  Death of a close friend (68)
•  Sex difficulties (53)
•  Trouble with boss (45)
•  Trouble with in-laws (43)
No big surprises here—but some serious omissions, according 
to sociologist Georgia Witkin. In 1991 she added new elements to 
the stress scale to more accurately reflect modern life in general and 
the evolving role of women specifically. Witkin’s scale includes:
•  Raising a disabled child (97)
•  Single parenting (96)
•  Depression (89)
•  Abortion (89)
•  Child’s illness (87)
•  Infertility (87)
•  Crime victimization (84)
•  Parenting parents (81)
•  Raising teenagers (80)
•  Chemical dependency (80)
•  Son or daughter returning home (61)
•  Commuting (57)
Great  deal,  huh?  Stress  depresses  you,  and  then  depression 
increases your stress.
Perhaps the only major surprise here is that “raising teenagers” 
only rates an 80. (800 seems more accurate, at least on the bad days.)

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217
How about you? Can you tally 300 points or more, based on 
life events of the past twelve months? If you can, can it really make 
you sick?