First his fingers, forearms and toes tingled¹; then he was gripped by a mental paralysis². “I couldn’t think about how to make a decision,” says the banking⁴ executive in his mid-forties. “I completely froze. I felt my IQ had dropped 50 points.” The trigger for his anxiety, he says, was unrealistic work demands. “Not making decisions made it worse as I was then not performing.”

先是手指、前臂和脚趾感到刺痛；然后他的精神陷入了麻痹。“我无法思考如何做出决定，”这名四十五岁左右的银行业高管表示，“我完全呆住了。我感觉我的智商下降了50点。”他表示，不切实际的工作要求引发了他的焦虑。“不做决定让事情变得更糟，因为这样我就没有在产生绩效。”

Yet this City worker , who prefers not to be named, tried to conceal⁵ his anxiety because he feared his employer would think he was not cut out for the job. The prevailing⁶ culture at his office was to keep your head down, work hard, admit no weakness. He wanted to be seen as efficient and resilient. People noticed that his work — rather than his mental health — was suffering. “Given that I have always been pretty much the ‘golden boy’, when my boss took me to task I imploded⁷.”

然而，这位希望不具名的伦敦金融城(City of London)从业人士试图隐瞒他的焦虑情绪，因为他害怕他的雇主会认为他不适合干这份工作。在他所在的办公室里，盛行的文化是埋头苦干，不承认自己有任何弱点。他希望被视为一个高效和抗压能力强的员工。人们注意到他的工作业绩——而不是他的精神健康——变差了。“由于我几乎一直是‘金童’，所以当我的老板责备我的时候，我爆发了。”

Plagued by a fear that he was a fraud he considered suicide. That was in 2014.

自己其实是个骗子的念头一直困扰着他，这让他在2014年考虑过自杀。

After receiving psychiatric help he is now back at work and has become an expert atspotting the signs of anxiety in others. “The characteristics that contribute to stress can also be the reason high achievers have reached their positions — people pleasing, perfectionism, the need to be strong and to be hyper vigilant⁸ to emerging threats,” he says.

在接受精神治疗后，他现在已经回到了工作岗位。他变得特别善于发现其他人出现焦虑情绪的迹象。“造成压力的性格特征同时也可能是高成就者取得他们现在的地位的原因——取悦他人、完美主义、希望做强人、以及对威胁的出现高度警觉，”他说。

His case is a stark⁹ example of the anxiety and stress that employees experience, and employers are increasingly having to pay attention to. It is a global phenomenon¹⁰, but in the UK alone the most recent report from the chief medical officer estimates that the number of sick days lost to “stress, depression and anxiety” increased by 24 per cent between 2009 and 2013. The statistics are alarming: one report from Rotman School of Management in Toronto, published this year shows that 41 per cent of employees from a range of industries reported high levels of anxiety .

他的经历鲜明地体现出员工感受到的焦虑和压力，雇主越来越有必要对此加以关注。这是一个全球性现象，然而仅仅在英国，据政府首席医务官最新的报告估计，2009年到2013年间“压力、抑郁和焦虑”导致的病假天数上升了24%。统计数据令人惊恐：多伦多罗特曼管理学院(Rotman School of Management)今年发表的一份报告表明，在来自一系列行业的员工中，有41%的人称自己焦虑水平很高。

The increase is often blamed on modern working life. The constant buzz of texts, emails and tweets mangles¹¹ our brains and stalks our sleep; robots are in the ascendancy¹², threatening to steal our jobs. New technologies emerge from left-field to flatten¹³ established companies; work appears insecure, corporate¹⁴ ties loose. And expectations of professional life have changed. Work, once the activity we did for money and status, is now supposed to provide personal fulfilment. The upshot? We are afflicted¹⁵ with unease, fear and worry.

人们常常将这种压力的增加归咎于现代工作方式。短信、邮件和Twitter持续不断的提示音把我们的大脑搅得一团乱，甚至在我们睡觉的时候也如影随形；机器逐渐占据优势地位，威胁着要偷走我们的工作。意想不到的新技术轻而易举地击败老牌公司；工作似乎没有保障，企业纽带很松散。对职业生活的期望也改变了。以前我们工作是为了钱和地位，现在我们据说应该通过工作实现自我价值。结果呢？不安、恐惧和忧虑困扰着我们。

“After a decade of disruption, cutbacks and lay-offs, anxiety among employees is running very high,” says Bill George, a senior fellow at Harvard Business School.

“经过10年的扰乱、削减和裁员后，员工的焦虑已经非常严重了，”哈佛商学院(Harvard Business School)高级研究员比尔吠治(Bill George)表示。

The diagnosis¹⁶

诊断

Anxiety is typically described as a feeling of unease, worry or fear. When it becomes acute the effects can be debilitating¹⁷. Some people are more vulnerable to it than others, at different periods in their lives. It is not something we can ever wholly eliminate and it can, at times, be helpful in improving our performance. But too much and it can be corrosive¹⁸, on occasion leading to alcohol and drug abuse.

焦虑通常是指不安、担忧或恐惧的感觉。当焦虑变严重时，会使人萎靡。在人生的不同阶段，有些人会比别人更容易被焦虑影响。我们不能完全消除焦虑，有时焦虑有助于提升我们的表现。但过度焦虑就会变得有害了，有时候会导致酗酒和吸毒。

Absenteeism is just one problem for employers. The loss of productivity — dubbed¹⁹ “presenteeism” — is another. This occurs when employees come to work but function below par³ because of ill health. Research suggests this trend predominantly affects white-collar workers and that the costs can be high. One report estimated that presenteeism, including all medical and mental health issues, shaved 2.7 per cent off Australia’s gross domestic product in 2010. A study in the Journal of Applied²⁰ Psychology²¹, published earlier this year, reported: “Anxiety interferes²² with people’s ability to process immediate²³ events, resulting in lower performance.”

对于雇主来说，缺勤只是焦虑造成的问题之一。另一个问题是工作效率降低——又称“假性出勤”。这是指虽然员工来上班了，但是由于健康状况欠佳，工作效率低于一般水平。研究表明，受这种影响的主要是白领，其代价可能十分高昂。一份报告估计，2010年，包括所有身体和精神健康问题在内，假性出勤使澳大利亚国内生产总值(GDP)损失了2.7%。《应用心理学期刊》(Journal of Applied Psychology)今年早些时候发表的一份论文称：“焦虑干扰了人们处理即时事件的能力，从而导致表现低下。”

In response, companies are introducing programmes to help workers cope better with stress and anxiety. Even in hyper-competitive industries such as finance or technology, there is increased understanding that attending to their employees’mental wellbeing may be good for profits.

因此，一些公司引入了一些项目，帮助员工更好地应对压力与焦虑。甚至在金融和科技这样竞争极为激烈的行业，也有越来越多的公司认识到关注员工的心理健康可能有助于提高利润。

The causes

起因

Michael Sinclair, a psychologist in the City of London, sees a “tremendous” number of bankers and lawyers with work-induced anxiety. “They work at a relentless²⁴ pace,” he says. “The pressure is always on and there is a culture of incessant²⁵ email communication.”

在伦敦金融城工作的心理学家迈克尔鬠克莱博士(Michael Sinclair)发现，因为工作感到焦虑的银行家和律师数目“巨大”。“他们无休无止地工作，”他说，“压力如影随形，而且有一种不间断邮件沟通的文化。”

But he also believes there is a bigger problem for companies: such anxiety can be infectious. “A company’s fear of failure breeds the same fear among its employees creating a ‘company sickness’ and culture of anxiety,” says Dr Sinclair. “Ironically this backfires and impacts the bottom line.”

但他还相信，对企业来说还有一个更大的问题：这种焦虑会传染。“一家公司对失败的恐惧会造成员工产生同样的恐惧，引起‘企业病’和焦虑的企业文化，”辛克莱博士说，“讽刺的是，这适得其反，反而影响了公司的利润。”

Technology is a contributing factor, says Nigel Jones, a lawyer and co-founder of the City Mental Health Alliance, a non-profit organisation²⁶ for London’s financial services workers. He believes the intensity²⁷ has increased since he started work 30 years ago.

针对伦敦金融服务业员工成立的非营利性组织伦敦金融城心理健康联盟(City Mental Health Alliance)的联合创始人、律师奈杰尔琼斯(Nigel Jones)表示，科技是一个促成焦虑的因素。他认为，从他30年前参加工作开始，工作的强度就一直在增加。

“Clients want more in terms of speed, quality. There is more pressure at work and the risk of anxiety is higher,” he says, adding that 27 City employers have become members of the network within two years. “Expectations of a speedy response [to a client] have got higher but the expectations of the quality of work have not gone down.”

“客户对速度和质量的要求提高了。工作的压力变得更大，出现焦虑情绪的风险也就更高，”他说，并补充道两年内已有27家伦敦金融城的雇主加入了该联盟，“（客户）对于反馈速度的预期提高了，但对于工作质量的预期却没有降低。”

Gianpiero Petriglieri, associate professor of organisational behaviour at Insead Business School, sees the rise of social media as triggering what has become known as “presentation anxiety”, making people feel vulnerable. We suffer from “being always on”, he says.

欧洲工商管理学院(Insead)组织行为学副教授詹皮埃罗簠靟里利埃里(Gianpiero Petriglieri)认为社交媒体的崛起引发了所谓的“展示焦虑”，让人们感到脆弱。他说，“总是在线”让我们感到困扰。

Although unemployment in the UK is at a seven-year low, short-term contracts and overall job insecurity have risen for millions of people, from steelworkers to nurses and bankers.

虽然英国的失业率处于7年来的低点，但对从钢铁工人、护士到银行家的数百万计的人来说，短期合同和总体上的工作不安全感还是增加了。

Some argue that it is impossible to calculate the impact of changing technology and employment conditions on the rise in reported cases of anxiety.

有人认为，无法推算出不断变化的科技和就业条件对焦虑增加的影响。

“Trying to directly compare levels of anxiety between eras is a fool’s errand,” says Scott Stossel, author of My Age of Anxiety. “Modern poll data and statistics about rising and falling levels of tranquilliser [use] aside, there is no magical anxiety meter that can transcend²⁸ the cultural particularities of place and time.”

“想要直接比较不同时代的焦虑水平只会徒劳无益，”《我的焦虑时代》(My Age of Anxiety)的作者斯科特施托塞尔(Scott Stossel)表示，“排除现代民意调查数据和有关镇静剂使用水平起伏的统计数据，根本不存在一个能够超越不同时空文化特点来衡量焦虑水平的神奇尺度标准。”