First Steps to Stress Management

The first step in stress management is never practical actions such as learning breathing techniques, making to-do lists, or taking time management classes, but rather accurately identifying the true source of stress without judgment.

This sounds simple, but few people actually do it. Last year, I met a girl who was working as a content operator in a large company. When she came for consultation, her hair gap was wide enough to insert a finger. She said she couldn't handle the KPIs and wanted to quit. After sitting down and chatting for half an hour, I realized that her quarterly target completion rate had reached 120%, and it was not a problem with the KPI at all - it was three old employees in the same group who always gave her side jobs that no one wanted to take. She couldn't save face to refuse, and her core tasks could only be done after get off work. She stayed up until one or two o'clock every day, and subconsciously felt wronged, so she attributed all the discomfort to "the KPI is too heavy". Later, she learned to take back the work that was not hers, and within two weeks her insomnia was mostly cured, and even the migraines that had always hurt before returned.

Most people's first reaction when facing pressure is either to attack themselves, "Why am I so useless? I can't handle this little thing", or to directly blame it on the outside, "It's all because the boss is stupid/colleagues are too cheating/the money is too little." When judgments come up, the source of stress that is already deeply hidden is directly covered up. There is actually a consensus among different schools of psychological research on this point, but they come from different angles: the cognitive behavioral school (CBT) will remind you not to confuse "stress triggering events" with "real stressors". For example, your boss scolding you in public is a triggering event. The real source may be that you originally felt that the plan was not going to work well, and you were afraid of being criticized for a long time, or it may be that you do not recognize the value of the job from the bottom of your heart and are looking for an opportunity to retreat. ； Researchers of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) will emphasize the premise of "non-judgment". If you first label yourself as "poor in stress tolerance", all subsequent thinking will confirm this conclusion, and it is impossible to objectively find the reason. ； Even existential psychology, which is more philosophical, has related views, saying that some pressures have no specific source of events at all. The essence is that you are avoiding the core question of "what do I want?" - for example, if you always feel that reviewing for public exams is stressful, it may not be because you have memorized too many knowledge points.

I also encountered this pitfall when I was working on a cross-department project two years ago. I had insomnia for half a month and scanned the recruitment software with my eyes open at three o'clock in the morning. I always felt that the project deadline was too tight and the task was too heavy, so I couldn't bear it. Later, I couldn't stand it any longer, so I sat down at my desk with an A4 piece of paper and wrote whatever bothered me. I wrote half a page in random order. The core contradiction I circled in the end was not the deadline at all, but the person in charge who always liked to talk official talk because I didn't want to deal with the partner. Each communication had to go around for half an hour before getting down to business. I was too embarrassed to mention and change the person directly, so I kept procrastinating, and the two-week construction period was pushed to only three days. Later, I went to the other party's leader and directly asked for a change of docking person, and they readily agreed. The new matching girl was very efficient. In three days, everything that had been stuck for two weeks was smoothed out.

Of course, many people do not agree with this statement. Many activist bloggers always say, "When pressure comes, act first. Thinking too much will lead to internal friction." This is actually true. If you are going to give a speech tomorrow and are so nervous that your legs are weak, then don’t think about the root problem. Do three sets of abdominal breathing to calm down first. What we are talking about is long-term stress management, not an emergency plan. If you have been feeling out of breath for more than half a year, and then you schedule a fuller schedule, sign up for a bunch of stress-relief classes, and force yourself to run five kilometers three times a week, the essence is that you don’t look for the allergen when you have red pimples on your body, and you apply anti-itch ointment violently. Maybe it will become more serious as you apply it.

Don't tell me, I've seen many people say "all my stress is because I have no money", but after half an hour of chatting, I will find that it's not the case at all - it's because his friends have recently been promoted and bought cars, and he is embarrassed to admit that he is jealous, so he blames all his problems on "poor"”； There was also a mother who always said that it was stressful to do homework with her children. Only at the end of the conversation did she realize that she had pinned all her regrets about not getting into a good university on her children. What she was really worried about was her own regrets in life, not the fact that her children had wrongly written a few arithmetic questions.

To put it bluntly, stress is like an inexplicable itchy pimple on your body. Scratching it or applying anti-itching medicine will not help. You must first find out whether it is an allergy, an insect bite, or the wrong material of the clothes you are wearing. Otherwise, even if you apply half a tube of ointment, the itchiness will still be there, and it may even cause a more serious problem. Do you think this is true?