stress management strategies

There is no universal stress relief formula. Truly effective stress management is to "first identify your stress tolerance threshold, and then use layered intervention to adjust the pressure to a comfortable stretch zone - neither overwhelming the body or mind, nor wasting the mobility brought by stress."

Not long ago, when I was doing EAP services for an Internet company, I met two operators from the same department. They were both working overtime until 11 o'clock every day for three weeks in a row. One could buy a cup of ice cream and squat on the side of the road to feed stray cats for 10 minutes. The other had been suffering from insomnia for almost half a month. He went to the hospital and was diagnosed with sinus arrhythmia. Even drinking milk tea made him feel flustered. Do you think it's strange? The exact same stressors have completely different weights on different people. This is why there are so many "universal stress relief tutorials" on the Internet that you always feel are useless if you follow them - most of them use the "average tolerance value" to prescribe medicine to everyone.

I talked to a CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy)-oriented counselor before, and they have clear evidence-based data: 30 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise such as jogging and swimming three times a week can reduce the stress hormone cortisol in the body by an average of 17%. If you persist for a long time, your anxiety level can be reduced by more than 20%. But many friends around me also complain, saying that they are so tired at work that they stagger when walking, and they force themselves to run 5 kilometers after get off work. Before the cortisol drops, they give themselves emo treatment first, but instead add new pressures like "I can't even decompress well."

Counselors with an existential orientation do not advocate this "correct but anti-human" operation. Their core logic is: Don't be busy fighting the pressure first, and allow yourself to "stay with the pressure for a while" without feeling guilty. My insomniac operating friend used to force himself to practice yoga every day after get off work. The more he practiced, the more irritated he became. Later, he simply stopped yoga and sat on the bench downstairs in the company for 15 minutes every day after get off work. He didn’t think about anything and just watched the square dancing lady perform "Little Apple". Within two weeks, his sleep was stable. There is nothing mysterious about it, but in those ten minutes, she didn't have to think about whether the plan was approved or not, and she didn't have to reply to the leader's message. She was completely freed from the state of "solving the problem".

Let me talk about a wild method that I have been using for several years. There is no high-level academic endorsement, but it works for me and at least seven or eight friends around me: when the pressure is so great that my brain can’t move, I take a mobile phone and start recording, and speak out my current feelings in the third person, such as “Oh, now this plan that has been revised four times has been rejected by the client. Now you feel tight in your chest, and you feel like throwing the mouse, right? ”, don’t worry about logic, just say whatever comes to mind, talk for two or three minutes, delete it directly after recording, no need to save. The last time I was working on a 100,000-word project report with only three days left on the deadline, I relied on this method to avoid the breakouts and insomnia I had before.

Don’t underestimate this little trick. It’s actually a “dissociation technique” in psychology. To put it bluntly, it pulls you out of the “stress-wrapped state” and allows you to look at your emotions from the perspective of a bystander, which will make you feel less uncomfortable.

Oh, by the way, many people tend to turn stress management into stress escape. When they feel bored, they will watch short videos or play games. It feels really good when they play. But when they put down their mobile phones and see a mountain of to-dos, their anxiety triples. This point is specifically mentioned in ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy): Effective stress management is never about letting you completely avoid the source of stress, but that you can continue to do the things at hand step by step even if you are a little anxious - to put it bluntly, as long as the pressure does not weigh you down to the point that you are unable to act, it is not a bad thing. I once met a boy who worked in To B sales. He had no orders for three months in a row. He was so stressed that he sat in bed and cried every morning. He did not force himself to exercise or take any emotion management classes. He just walked around the company every day before going to work and counted the magnolias that bloomed on the way. Gradually, his mood stabilized, and he opened a million-dollar order at the end of the third month. He later told me that it wasn’t that there was any magic in counting flowers, but that in those ten minutes he didn’t have to think about KPIs or the cold faces of customers, and he felt very solid when his feet were on the ground.

I also met an old professor from a university who is well-known in the industry and has three national-level projects on his hands at the same time. His way of relieving stress is even more outrageous: he spends an hour every week to go to the vegetable market, touch the dewy lettuce, ask the stall owner whether today's tomatoes are sweet, and buy half a freshly braised elbow to take home. He said it was much more effective than participating in some mindfulness workshop. As soon as he entered the market, his ears were filled with the smell of bargaining, and the pressure of those projects and the worries of the review suddenly seemed less serious.

All said and done, there really is no great secret to managing stress. You don’t have to force yourself to follow the online checklist, and you don’t have to think that you can’t use the methods that others can use because you have poor willpower. Just like some people want three-quarters of sugar when drinking milk tea, and some people want all sugar. The threshold that suits you is the best. When you have three things to do on your hands and still have time to take a sip of hot coffee, and you are not in a hurry, you have found your rhythm.