High psychological pressure

The core logic of solving high psychological stress is never to forcibly "eliminate stress", but to first separate "objective sources of stress" and "your cognitive response to stress" into two things and deal with them separately - if the former can be adjusted, give priority to it; if it cannot be adjusted, lower the perception threshold of the latter. There is no one-size-fits-all solution, and the one that suits you is the most effective.

Last week, I met a girl who works in Internet operations in the consulting room. She had half a plate of unopened stomach medicine in her bag. When she sat down, her first sentence was, "I cried for ten minutes yesterday over the spilled takeaway. I don't know whether it was because I felt sorry for the food or because I really couldn't hold on any longer." She has 6 projects on her hands at the same time and has to stay up until 12 o'clock at least 3 days a week. She had burnt out twice in a row last month and did not dare to ask for leave, fearing that the progress of the project would fall and she would be scolded.

Regarding where stress comes from, there are actually two parallel explanation logics in clinical psychology. There is no one who is right or wrong, and the corresponding solutions are completely different. As early as the 1960s, researcher Holmes made relevant statistics. All kinds of events that a person encounters in a year, from the death of a spouse, unemployment, to moving, promotion, and even holidays, are counted as stressors. If the cumulative score exceeds the critical value, the probability of physical and mental discomfort will increase by more than three times. To put it bluntly, as long as the rhythm of life is broken, even "good things" in the eyes of everyone will put a burden on you. Practitioners who hold this view will advise you to "cut the load" first: push the work that can be pushed first, put the work that can be put away first, and then cut the to-do list to the level that you can handle it. Like the operations girl I just mentioned, she later applied to the leader to transfer three non-core projects. When she came for a follow-up visit the next week, she said she could eat dinner normally and had never had stomach pains since the time she cried.

Another cognitive school holds the completely opposite view. Representative scholar Lazarus believes that stress is never caused by the event itself, but because your assessment of the event is wrong: you first determine "I can never handle this matter", and then you will feel overloaded with stress. I once met a junior high school teacher who had to suffer from insomnia for three days in advance every time she was due to invigilate the final exam. When I asked her carefully, I found out that her mind was always thinking, "If someone cheats and I don't catch it, I will be notified and criticized, there will be no hope for my professional title, and I will never be promoted in my life." But in fact, the school's penalty for missing cheating is only a 50 yuan deduction from performance. She has magnified the consequences a hundred times, and the pressure has naturally doubled. The solution to this situation is not to involve external affairs. First, pull out the "imagined disaster" that is magnified in your mind and compare it with reality. Most of the time, half of the anxiety will be eliminated directly.

What’s interesting is that most of the people I’ve seen who are overloaded with stress actually have two situations stacked together: on the one hand, they actually have a lot of life objectively, and on the other hand, they have to think about themselves and say, “Why do you have so much to do when others can handle it?” “It’s useless if I can’t even bear this little pressure.” It’s equivalent to carrying ten kilograms of rice on the road and having to stuff five kilograms of stones into your bag yourself. A while ago, a visitor told me that she worked overtime until 10 o'clock every day when she got home, and she had to read posts on "How to use three hours after get off work efficiently." The more she read, the more anxious she became, and she felt that she was guilty of even relaxing. My advice to her was to block all those posts. When she gets home, she will be paralyzed if she likes it, and if she likes to binge-watch TV shows, she said half a month later that she feels like she is "alive."

Don’t believe the standard answers on the Internet about “mindfulness meditation is necessary” and “exercise is necessary to relieve stress”. It’s really unnecessary. Among the visitors I have come into contact with, there are far more people who relieve stress by visiting the vegetable market after get off work than those who insist on righteous thoughts for more than a month - touching the tomatoes with water droplets, listening to the uncle and aunt cutting down the price for two yuan, the atmosphere of fireworks is wrapped up, and the strings in the mind are instantly relaxed. There was also a programmer visitor who tried writing a stress diary as others suggested. After writing it for two days, he felt it was like writing a daily work report and became even more annoying. Later, he found a way to go home from work and build a few thousand yuan of aerospace Lego. Don't tell me, the effect is better than the sleeping pills he took before.

Of course, some people say, "Pressure is motivation. If you carry it, you will grow." This is true, but the premise is that the pressure is just enough for you to "touch it once enough." If the pressure is so heavy that you have trouble breathing, and you force yourself to carry it with chicken soup, you will end up like the salesperson I met before, who had an acute anxiety attack and was sent to the emergency room, which delayed more work. Some people think that "just run away when you are stressed and just change the environment." It's not impossible. There is someone around me who resigned from a major Internet company and opened a coffee shop. Now he enjoys the sun and makes coffee every day, and the insomnia and headaches he had before are gone. As long as you can bear the consequences of your choice, there is no shame in any choice.

To put it bluntly, pressure is like having sand in your shoes. You don’t have to force yourself to run the entire distance in shoes that hurt your feet. If you can stop, you can just put them down. If you can’t, you can just change to a pair of soft insoles. There is really no need to compare with others who can carry more sand. After all, only you know whether your feet hurt or not.