Stress management and psychological adjustment

The essence of stress management has never been to completely eliminate stress, but to learn to control stress within the individual's threshold, and at the same time use adjustment methods that suit one's own characteristics to transform the destructiveness of stress into a driving force for action - this is the optimal solution verified by decades of research in clinical psychology and nearly a thousand cases in my 12 years of front-line consulting career.

Lin Xiao, the 32-year-old operator of a major Internet company we received last week, is the most typical example: holding three 618 core projects in his hands, he was also squeezing in time to prepare for the intermediate economist exam. When he came, his nails were bitten and there were gaps. He said that he had tried some stress management methods that could be found online. Bian: After sitting for 10 minutes in mindfulness meditation, my mind was filled with to-do items. The more I followed the four quadrants of time management, the more I felt like I couldn’t finish my work. I even signed up for a weekend singing bowl healing class, but when I listened to the sound of the singing bowl, I almost broke down and cried. I felt, “Everyone else is working, so why can’t I?”

In fact, it's not her problem, it's that she hasn't found a way to adapt to herself. The current mainstream pressure adjustment ideas are divided into several schools. There is no right or wrong, only suitable or inappropriate. Most consultants from the cognitive behavioral school (CBT) will first help you dismantle "irrational beliefs": For example, Lin Xiao previously defaulted that "the project must achieve full marks, but if there is any data that does not meet the standard, it means that I am not capable." "I must pass the economist exam in one attempt, otherwise there will be no hope of promotion this year."—— These absolute beliefs that turn "possible" into "must" are the core valves that amplify small pressures into emotional floods. As long as these beliefs are loosened, for example, "must get perfect scores" with "maintain core indicators, and the error tolerance rate for other items is reduced to 20%", the stress can be reduced instantly.

Of course, there are some scholars who don’t buy this account. Researchers in the positive psychology camp believe that focusing on stressors and breaking beliefs can easily trap people in negative emotions. It is better to proactively find a “flow offset zone”: that is, find a small thing that you don’t need to use your brain at all and can be fully immersed in just doing it. Whether it is building Lego, playing with cats, or even squatting downstairs in the community to count ants. Taking 20 minutes a day to completely abandon the to-do list and sink in is equivalent to forcibly plugging in a charging cable for the overloaded brain. Lin Xiao later tried this method and played Gundam for 20 minutes every day when he got home from get off work. He never had to stare at the computer for half an hour without being able to type a word.

There is also a more realistic school of physiological psychology, which directly brings the problem back to the physical level and does not talk about your thoughts at all: when you are stressed, you feel that your chest is tight, your brain can't turn, and you can't even eat. The essence is that the stress hormone cortisol in your body has soared, and your physiology has collapsed first. No matter how much you persuade yourself mentally to "work hard," it's useless. For this genre, the best way to adjust is to lower cortisol first: do aerobics for 30 minutes three times a week, sleep for 7 hours, and rely less on iced Americano and milk tea. I have a visitor who is a surgeon. He can't find time to go to the gym after 8 hours at the operating station. Later, he developed the habit of doing jumping jacks for 10 minutes in the locker room between operations. After three months of practice, most of the migraines he often suffered before were cured.

But don’t think that these methods are omnipotent. I once had a customer who was a To B salesperson. He tried mindfulness, exercise, and dismantling of beliefs to no avail. In the end, he went to Muay Thai twice a week and yelled out all the customers’ weird requests into a punching bag before he regained his temper. You see, someone else's remedy may be your poison. There is no need to force yourself to meet the standard answer of "emotional stability." As long as you don't harm yourself or others, even if you are stressed, you can buy a few packs of paid instant noodles and crush them, or find a place where no one is and cry for half an hour. These are all perfectly fine ways to adjust.

Many people still have a big misunderstanding about psychological adjustment: they think that since I have made adjustments, I should not have negative emotions. If I collapse once, I have failed to adjust. Last month, a class teacher from a key middle school came to me and said that he kept an emotional diary every day. Last week, he still couldn't help but get angry at a naughty student. He went home and felt guilty all night, feeling that he was "mentally too fragile." In fact, it is completely unnecessary. Negative emotions are a normal outlet for stress. Just like a kettle boiling and steaming, if you have to block the spout, you will be the only one who explodes in the end. As long as you can control your emotions within a range that does not hurt others or yourself most of the time, it is a good thing to have an occasional collapse, which means that your emotional regulation system is still working normally and has not reached the point of numbness.

I have been doing consulting for so many years, and I always have a fidget spinner that costs a few dollars stuffed in my bag. When the consulting schedule is full on a day, or I have to take on urgent crisis cases, I just find a corner in the corridor and walk around for two minutes. It is much more effective than drinking two glasses of iced Americano. In fact, pressure management has never been a high-level knowledge, and you don't need to spend a lot of money to sign up for courses and buy tools. Finding the "pressure relief valve" that suits you best is better than anything else. After all, we don’t live to eliminate all stress, but to learn to get along well with stress, right?