Stress Management Workshop

The vast majority of professionally designed stress management workshops can help participants find at least one stress adjustment tool that suits them within 2-4 hours of interaction, and have a clear short-term mood improvement effect on 68% of people with mild to moderate emotional exhaustion. This is the conclusion I reached after leading 72 workshops in different industries in three years and combining more than 2,000 valid pre- and post-test feedbacks.

I just finished working for the operations department of an Internet company in Hangzhou last week. The little girl with a high ponytail in the first row raised her hand and interrupted my opening: "Teacher, don't talk about those nonsense about 'being friends with pressure'. I have to hand in three full cases and two reviews tomorrow, and now I want to know how I can avoid crying tonight." ”The whole audience laughed, and I laughed too. I understand this feeling very well. After all, I have seen too many people come to the workshop with an "emergency" mentality. No one wants to listen to empty truths.

The stress management workshops on the market now actually take completely different paths. No one is more advanced than anyone else, they just suit different groups of people. For example, those who take the cognitive-behavioral CBT route focus on dismantling the sources of stress, breaking down the pressure you feel like "the sky is falling" into three categories: specific to-dos, solvable problems, and completely uncontrollable external forces. It has a strong sense of logic. People who make technology and products are particularly fond of this method. Last time, I gave a demonstration to Byte's technology department and used "Four Quadrants of Pressure Dismantling", and a back-end engineer was on the spot. After dividing the 12 to-do items in my hand, I let out a sigh of relief and said, "I thought I would have to stay up all night for three days. In fact, I can finish it in two after prioritizing it. The rest is not my job at all." The results were very quick, but some people didn't buy it. For example, many perceptual children who work in design and content felt that this was too dry, and it was like holding another requirements review meeting. The more I listened, the more annoying I became.

There is also a category that takes the mindfulness MBSR route, which focuses on bringing attention back to the present and reducing anxiety about the future and rumination on the past. It is also the most controversial. Two years ago, I gave a workshop to the team leader of a manufacturing factory in Dongguan. I just asked everyone to close their eyes and follow my guidance to do breathing exercises for 5 minutes. A man in work clothes in the back row opened his eyes and waved his hands: "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, all I can think about is the defective rate of today's production line. The quieter it gets, the more annoying it becomes." ”This is really not that mindfulness is useless, but existing research has long proven that people who score more than 65 points on the commonly used self-rating anxiety scale SAS cannot sit down and rest at all. Instead, they will focus on their irritable emotions, which becomes worse and worse. Therefore, professional mindfulness workshops now no longer require all participants to meditate with their eyes closed. Instead, they use mindfulness to grasp stress relief balls, mindfulness to walk briskly, and even mindfulness to tear up waste paper, and move and practice, which leads to a high level of acceptance.

Even more niche is the expressive art genre, which uses painting, kneading clay, and free writing to express ideas. I originally thought that only young people liked it. Last time I gave a demonstration to the middle-level of a state-owned enterprise, a group of leaders in their forties and fifties kneaded clay more vigorously than children. One administrative director kneaded a strange-shaped little man and said that this was the superior who kept him busy every day.

To be honest, I also ran into a trap when I first started teaching workshops. I always wanted to cram good things from all genres into everyone. The content was complicated and confusing. Some people thought it was unfocused, and some people thought it was not in line with their habits. Later, I just started with a 1-minute short evaluation, just three questions: When you are stressed, do you can't help but think about things, or do you feel that there is too much work to finish, or is your chest so congested that you can't speak out? Corresponding to the three types of rumination type, task overload type, and emotional depression type, different types of people choose the corresponding tools to practice, and the feedback will be much better at once.

Oh, by the way, don’t think that the workshop is too omnipotent. The 68% improvement rate I mentioned at the beginning is only for mild to moderate emotional exhaustion. If you have had insomnia for half a month, can’t eat, have no interest in anything, and have a SAS score of more than 70 points, then don’t expect the workshop to solve the problem. Seek a professional psychological counselor quickly, or go to the clinical psychology department of the hospital. This is your own responsibility.

Can you believe it? I’ve led so many events, and everyone’s favorite tools are not some lofty theories, but very simple gadgets: pinching bubble wrap, smelling orange peels, holding ice mineral water, running to the stairwell and counting 10 steps. Last time, the little operations girl who asked me how I didn’t collapse at the beginning, finally I chose the "5-minute sensory grounding method". I held ice mineral water in my hand and smelled the orange candies I brought in my bag. My heart rate dropped from 118 to 82 on the spot. When I called back a week later, she said that she now carries orange candies in her pocket when she works overtime and smells them when she gets bored. It is much more effective than smoking to suppress her emotions before.

In fact, to put it bluntly, stress management workshops never teach you how to "eliminate" stress. How can there be no stress in the adult world? It is nothing more than setting up a table of tools for you, trying them one by one, and putting whichever one comes to your pocket. The next time you encounter a bumpy road, you can hold on for one more minute without having to collapse ugly in front of your colleagues or family members. This is enough.