High psychological pressure

The "high psychological pressure" you feel recently is never essentially "too many to-dos", but the result of a "feeling out of control in life" and "a lack of meaning in what you are doing". There is no one-size-fits-all solution, and all circulating solutions are only suitable for specific groups of people and scenarios, and there is no right or wrong.

Last week, I received a visit from a 27-year-old Internet operator. When I walked in, I still had a company anniversary keychain hanging on my backpack. The first thing I said when I sat down was, "Doctor, I feel tired even when I watch short videos recently. I can't even laugh at the funny ones. Am I a loser?" During that time, she was simultaneously responsible for the 618 big promotion plan, quarterly performance review, and taking care of two new recruits from the school. She also had to deal with the reminder calls from her parents three times a week to "go back to her hometown to take the public exam." She said, "I have to go through my to-do list three times before going to bed every day. I always feel that I have missed something. When I fall asleep, I dream about the plan being called back by my boss."

Do you also feel that this is "too many things to do"? I used to think so until I met another visitor last year, a mother of two children who is a teacher in a university and is studying for a doctorate at the same time. She also takes three days a week to run a half-marathon. She came to me because she felt guilty because too many of her students failed. I asked her, "Don't you feel overwhelmed by the pressure when you are carrying so many things at the same time?" ”She was stunned for a moment and said, "No, I chose these things myself. I know whether it is enough to get 60 or 80 points for everything. It doesn't have to be full marks."

When colleagues who do cognitive behavioral consulting encounter this kind of situation, most of them will first hit you for "catastrophizing thinking" - many people will subconsciously connect the consequences of a small thing infinitely: the plan is not done well = the boss does not approve = I will be laid off = can't pay the rent = I am a loser in this life. It was only a 10-point thing, but you made it up into a 100-point disaster. Can you not be stressed?

But friends who engage in psychoanalysis don't like to talk about this. They will say that you have "internal friction greater than external friction" - you don't agree with what you are doing from the bottom of your heart, but you don't dare to resist. You say "Okay, I will change it right away", and you roll your eyes eight hundred times in your heart. This kind of self-pushing consumption is more tiring than actually working three days of overtime. I received a visit from a public institution before. Her daily work consisted of sorting out documents and holding meetings. The work was light enough to fish and read novels. However, she was still so stressed that she suffered from long-term insomnia. She said, "I can't breathe when I think that my life will be spent until retirement." This is a typical stress caused by the absence of a sense of meaning, and it has nothing to do with the workload.

The junior sister who does positive psychology research talked to me last time and said that young people nowadays are under a lot of pressure, and most of them have "broken sense of boundaries" - if the leader says "take on the hard work," you will take over all the work that is not yours.； When a friend says "Why are you so unreasonable?", you bite the bullet and agree to a game you don't want to go to. You put everyone's expectations on yourself, and of course you can't make it.

Speaking of which, there was a period of time last year when I was so stressed that I had to write 5 case reports, receive 12 visitors a week, and help my tutor write textbook chapters. During that time, I even had to watch teaching videos at double speed even when eating. I always felt that "wasting a minute is a sin." Later, my supervisor couldn't stand it anymore and threw me a pack of cat strips and said, "After get off work every day, you feed the cat downstairs for 10 minutes. You are not allowed to look at your phone and just stare at the cat." At first I thought it was a delay, until the third day I squatted on the side of the road and watched three orange cats fighting over the cat strips. I bit one of the ears red and suddenly started laughing. I used to think that "I have to do everything before I can rest," but how can there be such a thing as "everything"? Things can never be done, and I’m not God, so why should I compete with myself?

Nowadays, many people on the Internet provide stress relief solutions. To put it bluntly, they are a bit "standing and talking without back pain." Some people say, "If you are under great pressure, resign naked. The world is so big. Go see it." Last month, I married a girl who had been naked for three months. She was so happy when she resigned. After lying at home for half a month, I started to panic. I checked the friends of my classmates every day and watched others get salary increases and promotions. The pressure was even greater than when I was at work. In the end, I didn't even dare to leave the house. Some people say, "If you are stressed, just go for exercise or travel to distract yourself." But if you are already too tired to get out of bed, and you ask him to run five kilometers, he will only feel, "I can't even exercise, I'm useless," which will only add new pressure.

I really want to tell you, if you are dizzy in front of the computer right now, why not stop for three seconds: first put down your hunched shoulders, squeeze the hard muscles in the back of your neck, take a sip of warm water, just for these three seconds, don't think about anything, you are actually releasing your pressure. You don’t have to force yourself to solve all the problems right away, and you don’t have to feel like “I can’t even handle the pressure, I’m so weak.” Really, this is the first time for everyone, who hasn’t been so stressed that he squatted on the roadside crying?

Last week, the little girl who worked in operations sent me a message, saying that after she went back and made a to-do list, she went directly to talk to her boss and gave half of the job of bringing in new people to another senior colleague. She also extended the deadline for the plan by three days and granted herself five days of annual leave. Next month, she will go to Western Sichuan to see the snow-capped mountains. She said, "I used to think that if I couldn't do these things well, the sky would fall. But now I realize that the sky will not fall at all. Before, I was stupid and insisted on carrying the sky on my shoulders."

You see, it is actually never difficult to relieve pressure. You just need to put down what you are carrying a little bit.