ABSTRACT
It seems that every day there are stories in the media about the ever-increasing prevalence of stress in the workplace, its cost to employers and the economy as a whole, as well as the harmful physical and psychological effects on those individuals experiencing it. Stress is one of the major reasons employees cite for their absence from work, and stress-related absence is increasing (Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, 2008). Employees complain of, among other things, longer hours which adversely affect home life, job insecurity, tedious and tiring commuting, increased demands but with fewer staff to meet them, too many meetings, email overload, dif®cult colleagues, uncaring and incompetent managers, meaningless targets, and rapid technological changes they have to keep up with as well as the faster pace of work these technologies require. So what is stress? It can be de®ned as occurring when pressures that you face exceed your ability to cope with them (Palmer and Cooper, 2007). A CBT-based view of stress would focus on how you appraise both the challenges you're facing and your ability to cope with them in order to understand more fully your current dif®culties.
