What are the aspects of psychological stress?

Traceable specific event stimuli, implicit individual cognitive biases, and systemic pressures transmitted by the general environment.

In the past six years of doing psychological counseling, I have encountered too many clients who couldn't figure out the source of their stress. The most typical one was the operation of a large factory last year. They worked on the 618 project for three months and worked overtime until the early morning every day. Even the elderly at home were hospitalized and only took half a day to complete the procedures. KPIs were still stuck at 90% completion. The thread is hanging, which is the most intuitive event-type stress, either short-term sudden shocks such as job loss or the death of a relative, or chronic wear and tear such as a three-hour commute all year round or a bad relationship between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. The triggers are clear, and most of the core conflicts can be resolved, and most of the tension can be eliminated.

But many times the pressure is not so concrete. I just completed a case last month for a girl who graduated from 985. She has been in the system for less than a year. Her colleagues praised her for being a reliable leader and willing to give her a chance. Outsiders seemed to be going smoothly, but she had insomnia every day. She was always afraid of saying something wrong and offending someone, or not writing a material that was perfect enough to hinder the department. She even had to struggle for ten minutes about where to sit in a meeting. This kind of pressure has nothing to do with external stimulation. It is all endogenous pressure generated by the individual's cognitive model. She grew up in an environment of "competing for the top three in everything", and subconsciously magnified all small omissions into evidence of "I am not capable." Even if no one made any demands for her, she first put herself on the shelf that she must be perfect. There has been discussion in the industry before about whether this type of pressure is considered "real pressure". Some people think that it is just a matter of thinking too much and just relax. Others feel that the pain of this kind of self-imposed pressure is no less painful than the pressure from the outside world, and it is even more difficult to relieve - after all, you can't fire or avoid "yourself" as a source of stress, right?

There is another kind of pressure that is so much deeper that many people are not even aware of its existence. When the epidemic was first released two years ago, many visitors said that their work and life were not affected at all, but they just couldn't get excited for some reason. They felt tight in their chests after reading negative news online. They couldn't tell what was wrong but they just felt uncomfortable. This is systemic pressure at the social level, just like the haze floating in the air. You can't see it or touch it. You won't even feel itchy in your nose, but you will feel suffocated when you breathe it every day. Nowadays, the 35-year-old’s dilemma of career anxiety, being unable to roll up, and being unable to lie flat is actually not a problem faced by one person alone. It is a collective pressure transmitted to the individual by the development rhythm of the entire society. Many people will attribute this pressure to their own lack of hard work. In fact, they are completely looking in the wrong direction.

In fact, Lazarus' cognitive evaluation theory in developmental psychology has long said that stress is never a single "external imposition". It is the result of your subconscious evaluation of whether you can handle it after receiving a stimulus. Therefore, when the same thing happens to different people, the pressure they feel is very different. Some people think that naked words are relief, while others think that naked words are like the sky is falling. Essentially, the evaluation of the event and the response expectations are different. Many people come up and shout to reduce stress. In fact, it is more effective to figure out where your stress comes from than drinking ten bowls of chicken soup for the soul.