The symptoms of psychological stress are divided into several stages

At present, the mainstream clinical psychology community generally divides the symptoms of psychological stress into three stages, and many front-line psychological service practitioners will separate the earlier warning stages to form a four-stage division method. There is no absolute right or wrong between the two divisions, but they are applicable to different scenarios.

This three-stage division first came from the "general adaptation syndrome" model proposed by psychologist Selly, and is currently the most recognized division in the academic community. Last month, I contacted an Internet company operations manager who had gone through the first three stages. She took on a big Double 11 project at the time, and she was like a chicken in the two weeks after receiving the notification. She worked overtime until 11 or 12 o'clock every day, and was able to clearly report the progress data of the entire team at the morning meeting the next day. Even the menstrual migraine that she had suffered every week before had not happened very much. When I asked her if she was tired, she smiled and said, "It's okay, I'm in great shape recently." Don't tell me, many people enjoy this high-efficiency state at this time and don't think about stress overload at all. In fact, this is the first stage of the stress response - the alert response period. It is a stress mechanism that is automatically activated after the body receives a stress signal. Adrenaline and cortisol levels rise rapidly, mobilizing all reserve energy to cope with challenges, and even perform beyond the usual level.

If the stress source is not relieved, this high-load state cannot be maintained forever, and the body will automatically switch to the resistance stage. During the warm-up period for Double 11, the supervisor started to complain to me, saying that he couldn't sleep lately. He had to turn over in bed for more than an hour before he could fall asleep. He woke up early in the morning and still felt heavy-headed even after drinking two glasses of iced Americano. At this stage, the body is already consuming deep energy reserves and is only relying on compensatory functions to maintain normal operation on the surface. Many people will regard these symptoms as "just get over this busy period" and will not take it seriously. However, in fact, this is a clear distress signal sent by the body. At this stage, if you can appropriately reduce the load and get a few days of sleep, you can usually return to normal within a week or two without leaving any sequelae.

If you keep carrying it on without adjusting, you will enter the most troublesome stage of depletion when your energy reserves are exhausted. After the Double 11 Shopping Festival, the supervisor thought he would be able to recover after taking three consecutive days off, but he collapsed instead. After sleeping at home for three days, he still felt weak and weak. When he went to work, he had made an activity review plan that he had done dozens of times before. After revising it five times, there were still data errors. Even during the department review meeting, he suddenly burst into tears. I couldn't control myself, so I went to the hospital for a full physical examination, but no organic problems were found. In fact, the body's compensatory function completely stopped after the pressure was overloaded. At this stage, many people will have obvious anxiety and depression, or induce psychosomatic diseases such as high blood pressure and chronic gastritis. It may take several months or even longer to recover.

The reason why there are four stages is actually that many front-line colleagues who provide corporate EAP or community psychological services will separate the stages before the alert period that have not triggered obvious physiological reactions, and call them the initial warning period. In fact, at this stage, stressors have just appeared. People may just occasionally wander off from work, can't help but think about unfinished work before going to bed, or are slightly unmotivated by the dramas they loved to watch or the parties they loved to go to. They have not yet experienced any physical discomfort, and it will hardly affect their normal work and life. If they can be aware of it at this stage and adjust their rhythm slightly, such as taking half an hour to take a detour after get off work, or taking half an hour on weekends to put their phones aside and go to the park to sit down, they will basically be able to recover quickly and will not develop into the later stages. When we usually do science popularization, we are more willing to mention the four-stage division, just to advance the node of intervention. After all, the earlier the pressure intervention, the lower the cost and the better the effect.

In fact, whether it is three stages or four stages, the core logic is the same. The development of pressure is like boiling water in a kettle. At first, the temperature of the water slowly rises with no obvious movement, then slowly begins to bubble, and finally it boils completely and is poured out to put out the fire. As long as you don’t wait until the water is poured out before thinking about turning off the fire, in fact most of the pressure will not have a big impact on us.