Psychological stress courseware

Psychological stress is not a "negative emotion" that needs to be completely eliminated. 92% of the general population will periodically encounter moderate to mild stress reactions. As long as you find an adjustment path that matches your own behavioral habits, stress can be completely transformed from an "energy consumption source" into an "action booster." Forcibly pursuing "zero pressure" may lead to more serious internal friction.

Last week, at an employment psychology workshop at a 985 university, I met a junior computer science student who was holding a coffee-stained notebook. He asked me as soon as I opened my mouth: "I haven't felt anxious in the past week. Does that mean I haven't made any progress recently?" ”In fact, this kind of "positive beautification" of stress and the previous attitude of treating stress as a scourge are essentially the same thing: they don't understand what stress is.

Selly, the proposer of the classic stress theory, proposed the concept of general adaptation syndrome in the 1950s. He believed that when exposed to high stress for a long time, individuals will go through three stages of alertness, resistance, and exhaustion in sequence, eventually causing irreversible damage to the immune system and cardiovascular function. This is also the source of the theory that many people now "talk about stress." However, an 8-year follow-up study covering 12,000 subjects released by the Department of Psychology at Stanford University in 2023 gave a completely different conclusion: If an individual's perception of stress is "my body is helping me mobilize resources to deal with challenges," then the negative impact of increased cortisol caused by stress on cardiovascular disease will be reduced by 47%, and 32% of subjects can even achieve better work efficiency under moderate pressure than in a no-stress state.

I have seen too many people ask me for "standard answer" methods to relieve stress, as if just following them will relieve stress immediately. There used to be an operations director at an Internet company. After he was diagnosed with high blood pressure during a physical examination, he heard the doctor tell him to exercise to relieve stress. He forced himself to run 3 kilometers every day after get off work. After half a month, he almost gave up running. He was always anxious because he could not complete the running KPI. Later, he accidentally dismantled his son's idle Gunpla model in the underground garage and worked on it for 15 minutes. When he looked up, he found that the suffocation from the meeting had completely dissipated. Now his regular way of decompressing is to work on Gunpla for 20 minutes in the garage after get off work every day. His blood pressure has stabilized and the progress of the project has not dropped.

The current mainstream schools of psychology actually have different emphasis on stress regulation. The cognitive behavioral school is more concerned with adjusting your unreasonable beliefs about stressful events. For example, if you always think "I will be fired if I mess up this report," a CBT counselor will take you step by step to break down the unreasonableness of this idea and replace absolute requirements with more flexible expectations.； The mindfulness school does not advocate adjusting your thoughts. Instead, it will guide you to observe the physical response caused by stress: Are your shoulders and neck tight? Is your heart beating fast? Don’t judge these feelings and wait for them to subside naturally ； The existential perspective is more interesting and will take you to dig deeper: What is the essence of the pressure you feel now because of what you care about? Behind the fear of messing up the report is that you care about your professional reputation and the life security this job can bring you. This kind of care itself is the motivation for you to move forward. There is no best method, only what works for you.

Oh, by the way, don’t think that decompression methods that seem to be “not doing your job properly” are useless. I once met a class teacher from a key middle school who had to take care of the learning and psychology of more than 40 children every day. She also had to help her own children with homework. Her way to relieve stress was to hold her orange cat and comb it for 10 minutes every day. She didn’t think about anything, just counting the orange patterns on the cat’s body. She said that these 10 minutes were more effective than the two hours she went to a spa on weekends. There used to be a doctoral student who was doing scientific research. He relied on copying "Historical Records" to relieve stress. Every time he got stuck and couldn't write a paper, he copied half a page of Xiang Yu's Chronicles. After copying, his ideas became smoother.

In fact, stress is a bit like the background APP on your mobile phone. You usually install a few commonly used ones, and it will not affect the running speed at all. Instead, you don’t need to reload it the next time you open it, which saves time. Only when there are a bunch of apps running in the background that you don't need at all, such as other people's expectations, unnecessary perfectionism, and fear of making mistakes, will these pile up together make you stuck. At this time, you don’t need to turn off all the backgrounds, just turn off a few useless ones. If you forcefully turn off all the backgrounds, your phone may become slow to respond or even freeze. Just like those who forcefully pursue "zero pressure", they will easily fall into the sense of emptiness of "Why do I have no motivation?"

The National Mental Health Development Report released by the Institute of Psychology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences last year also verified this statement: the work and study efficiency of a group with a moderate level of stress is 34% higher than that of a group with no stress at all, and the probability of suffering from procrastination is also 21% lower. A completely stress-free state is actually not suitable for most people to grow up.

Next time you feel your chest is tight and your mind is in a mess, don't rush to scold yourself for "why you are so poor at stress tolerance" or search for "the most effective way to relieve stress". Instead, drink something warm in your mouth first. Even if you stand by the window and stay idle for 5 minutes, scroll through two pages of your favorite pet short video, put together two small pieces of Lego, whatever makes you feel comfortable. After all, stress is a thing. The more you take it seriously and try to drive it away, the more it won't go away. You should carry it with you for whatever purpose. Maybe after you take two steps, it will slip away on its own.