Psychological stress copywriting

The psychological pressure that most people are experiencing is essentially neither "too many things" nor "you are too fragile", but the result of the combination of "a sense of loss of control over the current situation" + "unprocessed emotional residue" + "emotional transformation of physical exhaustion". There is no universal stress relief solution that applies to everyone. All methods must match your stress sources and personality traits to be effective.

Last week, a girl who works in Internet operations came to my studio. The first thing she said when she sat down was "I feel like I can't hold it anymore." She counted on her fingers the recent bad things: being criticized in public for missing the weekly report in the morning meeting, holding three activity plans for next week, receiving a call from the kindergarten teacher before getting off work saying that her child had a fever of 38.5, and getting a puncture while riding an electric bike home. When she was squatting on the roadside crying, all she could think about was "Why am I so useless? I can't handle this pressure."

In fact, it’s not that she couldn’t handle it. If you break down the things she encountered, each of them individually wouldn’t be considered a big deal, but taken together, it just shattered her sense of control over her life. She had accumulated overtime emotions in the past two months that she had no time to vent, and the shadow of being scolded by her parents if she made mistakes as a child. Coupled with the physical fatigue of her only sleeping 5 hours a day for a week, these forces combined together became a “psychological pressure” that made her breathless.

Interestingly, psychology practitioners with different research directions can even have vastly different interpretations of stress. No one is right or wrong, they just come from different angles.

Teachers who engage in psychoanalysis always say that the excess pressure you feel now is most likely an old wound that has been resurfaced. For example, for a person who grew up in an environment where "you must be excellent or no one will love you", if you make a small mistake at work, the panic that pops up now is not at all. "If this thing is messed up, my salary will be deducted", but the child in the subconscious "I will be abandoned if I am not good enough" pops up again. This kind of pressure comes through time. It is useless for you to solve the current problem. You have to pull out the child hiding behind and pat it.

Consultants who do CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) are more pragmatic. They think that most of the stress comes from the irrational beliefs in your mind. The operation girl just now firmly believes that "I must take care of my work, children, and family at the same time, otherwise I will be a failure." This absolute belief of "must" and "certain" is the culprit that magnifies small things into sources of stress. Replacing the belief with "I can do as much as I can do, and it is not my problem if I can't finish it" can directly eliminate half of the stress.

The embodied cognition school that has become popular in recent years is even more interesting. They even believe that a lot of stress is not a problem with your emotions at all, but with your body first. If your shoulders and neck are stiff for three days, you eat takeout for half a month, and you don't sleep enough for 6 hours, the body's fatigue signals are sent to the brain, and the brain will automatically find an explanation for you "I'm so stressed." I ran into this pit two months ago when I was rushing to apply for a project. After staying up for three days and nights, I was tired of reading. I felt that the project would never be completed. I was so stressed that I wanted to throw the keyboard. As a result, I went downstairs for ten minutes at noon and ate two roasted chestnuts that had just come out of the pot.

Don’t believe those “universal stress relief methods” that are spread on the Internet, such as “go exercise if you are stressed” or “find someone to talk to if you are stressed”, which may not apply to everyone. I have a client who has a highly sensitive personality. She was told to talk to others before. Every time she was stressed, she would complain to her friends. As a result, after she complained, she would still worry about "Did I convey too much negative energy just now? Will my friends hate me?", which added an extra layer of stress. Later, she found the most suitable method for her, which was to close the door and play Lego by herself for an hour. After she finished playing, her mind was empty and the stress disappeared.

In fact, it is not difficult to determine where your stress comes from. You can first feel whether your shoulders and neck are hard. If they are as hard as a rock, don't think about it yet. Go stretch for ten minutes, or take a hot bath to relieve your body of fatigue first. If you still feel annoyed after relaxing, then think about whether you have encountered anything recently that has touched your previous pain points. If not, write down all the things you think you need to do on paper, cross out the things that are not necessary at all, and break the rest into small steps that cannot be broken into pieces. If you do it step by step, the sense of control will return, and the stress will naturally subside.

In the seven years I have been doing psychological counseling, I have seen too many people regard "being able to withstand stress" as a must-have KPI in life. When encountering pressure, the first reaction is not "Am I uncomfortable now?" but "Why am I so useless? I can't handle this pressure." It's really unnecessary. Stress is never your enemy. It is more like a private message sent to you by your body and emotions. It is not malicious, but it just reminds you, "Hey, you are running too fast now. It's time to stop and take a rest." Oh, by the way, if you are facing the screen and feel out of breath, stop for 3 seconds and take a deep breath. Really, nothing is more important than your current comfort.