This study uses Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) in exploring the experience of working long hours with elevated stress levels in the context of corporate organisations. This approach contrasts the abundance of quantitative and solution-focussed literature on workplace stress. The concept of stress and its evolution in modern corporate life is reviewed through psychoanalytic and existential ideas, arguing that it could precipitate virtual trauma. The findings illuminate largely unconsidered themes around the debilitating impact of the experience on the self and relationships; work being experienced as an alternate reality; the meaning that participants ascribe to the experience; and coping. Psychoanalytic theories such as attachment patterns and ego development, and existential ideas around the significance of authentic being and finding meaning in suffering further elucidate the findings.