Good post HD. A few years ago I would have agreed 100% with your views on pressure versus stress. However, as an en-route controller, these days that feeling of "being in control", whilst it may be true when I am actually "in the hot seat", evaporates rapidly elsewhere in the working environment.
PPP is one factor, but that applies equally across NATS. However, add in the delays to NERC with all the attendant disruption of lives "put on hold" for years, the years of long-distance commuting, the upheaval of relocation, the constant staff shortages, the insensitive comments by senior management ("sixty odd controllers" and "you should listen to rumours" are two classics that spring to mind), the pressure to give/sell rest days back, the added complications of OCT for a system that people don't really believe in, and you have STRESS. At the same time, the usual outside pressures haven't gone away. People still have marital problems, health worries, financial pressures and numerous other distractions. It all adds up!!!
Hardly any wonder then that morale is at an all-time low, sickness rates are high and increasing and that early retirements and resignations are rising too.
The bottom line is that stress is an everyday feature of life in en-route, and it is unlikely to go away for the foreseeable future - whatever that may hold.
What are management doing about it, to protect their greatest asset? Whinging about non-existent "sick outs", blaming people for "trying to sabotage NERC", staeling days off and sticking up silly posters!!!