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Life's Work: If Chocolate Doesn't Work . . .
By LISA BELKIN

Facts to relax you as you sip your morning coffee: Nearly a quarter of all American workers have been driven to tears by the stress of work. Nearly half describe their office as a place of "verbal abuse and yelling," and one-third admit to yelling themselves. One in eight of us have called in sick because we were too stressed out to work, and one in five have up and quit. Thirty percent say their work is filled with "unreasonable deadlines," and 52 percent have logged 12-hour work days. Half routinely skip lunch. A third of us find ourselves too stressed to sleep. Sixty-two percent end the workday with neck pain, 44 percent with strained eyes and 38 percent with aching hands. One in 12 complain that their desk chair "hurts my butt." All right, O.K., enough with the statistics (which, by the way, are all from a poll by Integra Realty Resources). We already know that we are stressed. What, then, are we supposed to do about it?

The experts talk a lot about taking deep breaths. I always thought it was the oxygenated equivalent of counting to 10, ensuring that I pause before I do something rash. But Dr. Bill Crawford, author of "All Stressed Up and Nowhere to Go," explains that breathing is not about restraint but about control. The pace of your breathing, he says, is something you have control over, even when everything else is falling apart. The next step, Dr. Crawford says, is to say the word "relax" when you exhale, to loosen up the muscles that have tightened in your shoulders and your neck (but never, unfortunately, in your abs or your gluts, which might make this stress worth it). While saying the word"relax", ask yourself, "How would I rather be feeling?" then envision a time when you felt that way and play the memory like a movie in your head. Our bodies respond chemically to our thoughts, Dr. Crawford says, the best example being a sexual fantasy. "You know it isn't happening, but your body responds as if it were," he explains.

Barbara Reinhold, author of "Toxic Work: How to Overcome Stress, Overload, Burnout and Revitalize Your Career," takes all this imagining a step further. Instead of just thinking about lovely things, she wants you to do them. Her strategy includes making a list of 20 small, instantly gratifying acts that make you feel better, like telling a joke, putting fresh flowers on your desk or romping with the dog. Keep copies wherever you might need them so when you find yourself on the brink you have "an emotional apothecary from which you can extract an ameliorative suggestion or two." I've made my list (read vacation brochures, call Mimi, have a manicure). I'm practicing my breathing (the last time I practiced breathing, however, I asked for an epidural anyway). But I've also mined another nugget from all this data. According to the Integra survey, stress drives 26 percent of us to consume chocolate. The pollsters describe this as a problem. I like to think of it as a solution.