Recovering From Toxic Stress A CPA’s Personal Journey to Managing Tax Season by Jay Allen Varcoe, CPA, MBA This is the “busy” time of year for most CPAs and for most of us it is really the “too busy” season. I’ve been through 26 “too busy” seasons and for me “too busy” also means too much stress in my life. Add on top of that, the additional pressure of setting high standards and trying to provide perfection for each and every client. Nobody wants to let a client down by missing something or making an error, and I think most CPAs want to prove their worth with each engagement despite occasional self-doubt. Eventually I began to joke with my wife that one day during a tax season she might find me dead at my desk as I struggled with never-ending stress that I always felt at that time of year. It was not a good joke, and I soon realized that the joke was hitting too close to home.
MARCH/APRIL 2020 AZ CPA
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