stress. Most of us know the anxiety we experience when someone we love is ill and we are on alert, constantly waiting. We now live that stress, to some degree, all the time, and it is as damaging as a situational, short-term state of acute stress. Actually, in some ways it is worse, because the demand for hyperavailability never eases and the situation that requires such availability is never resolved. We never get that phone call that allows us to finally stop listening for it. As one woman I know put it, “It’s like never quite being finished with the job, whatever that job may be.” Our new
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