I don’t mean the normal level of stress like, “if I don’t show up to work I will get fired and miss a house payment.” I mean more like the Craig Toomy level of stress?
Is that normal for some people? Can they function if things all go their way?
SSG Schwartz
It may be their norm but it’s not normal. Most people (IMHO) deteriorate gradually under unrelieved stress. I’m good under pressure but training takes care of most of that but I can’t rock on and on. It has to stop eventually, as all bleeding does. I can function until the job is done but I’ve never had to do it without help for hours on end. I don’t need pressure, excessive or otherwise, to do my job. It is fact easier to stay on top of things.
Cyn, RN
Not that crazy level of stress … but I do function better as the pressure increases. I think I am generally good at my job, but I know that every time I have “proven” myself to the higher-ups, it’s been because of some stellar performance in a crisis. When I get praise at the office for excellent work in one of these crisis situations, I feel a little guilty because OBVIOUSLY they don’t realize how mediocre I am with routine day-to-day stuff.
This is all very work-related, I am super laid back in my personal life.
I can see how the Craig Toomys of the world get that way, though … it seems very believable to me that a person could slowly move in that direction and not snap out of it until they were on the verge of a psychotic break.
Yes, to a point. I can only take about 3 to 5 years of hysterical OMG nowNOWnow, do or die, all or nothing before I need a break, but I am spectacular during those 3 to 5.
I’m also old, cranky, and experienced, so I’ve learned to tell when I’m teetering on the verge a mini-burnout. Then I take a leave, or quit (on good terms) and come back, or find another employer after a month or so of playing Happy Holly Homemaker. If I didn’t have a break, I might make 10 years straight before having to pay the nice young men in their clean white coats. 
I’m very good, in an industry with traditionally high turn over. I would not be successful in field that required 30 years of devotion, nor in a less intense industry.
I am known to be perpetually high strung at work. I fight it every day and it makes me uncomfortable both mentally and physically. I am still competent and polite but stress always takes a toll on me. However, in any type of emergency situation including extraordinary work demands, my stress level does not increase at all while my coworkers have always flown off the handle. I basically have the same level of stress whether I am sitting quietly, dealing with extraordinary work circumstances, fighting a fire, or rescuing two people from a fast moving river (that really happened). I honestly think that I calm down during high stress situations because my mind is constantly anticipating it and I am relieved when it finally arrives.
I have a good friend like this. He suffers from depression and refuses to seek treatment, so in order to prevent himself from ruminating and thereby being unable to get out of bed, he keeps himself perpetually busy so he doesn’t have time to think depressing thoughts.
For example, he’s in college full time, works 30-35 hours a week, and volunteers whenever he’s not working or studying. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but there was a time when he virtually lived with me (long story) and I got to see his schedule first-hand. He’d wake up shortly before 8, head to an animal shelter to volunteer for 2 or 3 hours, then go to class. After school, he would change and head into work, where he’d work until 11 or 12. Once every couple of weeks, his schedule would be such that he’d get a day where he only had to work, or volunteer, or go to class, but he never got a day off.
Last summer he couldn’t get into the classes he wanted, so he took the semester off and worked full time, then promptly freaked out because “he didn’t have anything to do.” So he volunteered to foster a litter of puppies whose mother had died, which required bottle-feeding them several times a day.
He’s a weird one.
I seem to work better under pressure, but only if the pressure is for a limited time. You see, I HATE routines. Pressure, if applied long enough becomes a routine. I prefer stretches of ‘regular’ followed by frequent intermittent stretches of high pressure. Luckily, the medical profession does that for me. (truthfully, not as often as I like. I really hate routines)
While I don’t need high pressure to function, I work beautifully under pressure. I prefer jobs where there is a lot to do (so long as there are the resources to do it) to one with lots of face time. I’ve had periods when I was working 70-96 hour weeks but, because it was producing results, it didn’t burn me out - I got physically tired and in one case caught gastrenteritis but that was it (and the ge came after having had to swallow something that was Not Right, and later the people who’d made us swallow it backpedaled and apologized); I’ve had periods where I was at work but not working for 60 hours a week and it burned me out before the end of the first week - I was tired, cranky, more asocial than ever, barfing, getting the shakes, getting dizzy… definitely not fun.
40-hour weeks of a relatively low-thinking job, but where it’s in the nature of the job and recognized by the bosses (for example as a lab tech, where a lot of time is spent waiting for the next sample with a novel in your hands), I can do fine. When I’ve had jobs that were like that but we were expected to look busy during the waiting periods (results have been handed out, paperwork is filed, lab is spotless by a mother’s standards), those sucked whether the waiting went on for five hours or twelve.