Reasons for high psychological stress

The core essence of high psychological pressure is that there is a clear gap between the resources and ability thresholds that individuals perceive that they can mobilize and the requirements of the current event that they need to deal with. The specific inducements are often the result of the interweaving of multiple factors such as external environmental stimulation, internal cognitive biases, and physiological constraints. There is rarely a single inducement.

When I received a consultation last month, I met a girl who works in operations at a leading Internet company. It has just been 3 years since she graduated from 985. She is responsible for the implementation of 3 projects at the same time. She also has to prepare for the half-year department promotion defense. She sleeps less than 5 hours a day. Last week, she was squatting in the company. She cried for almost 20 minutes in the convenience store downstairs, saying that even drinking an iced American with 3 servings of sugar now feels bitter. At first, she was sure that her ability to withstand stress was too poor. After talking for two hours, she discovered that she had just stepped on several core triggers of stress overload for most people.

Researchers in the behaviorist school have always believed that stress is essentially a direct feedback of external stimuli. This conclusion has long been verified by the white rat stress experiments of the last century: irregular electric shocks are given to a white rat in a cage. As long as the frequency and intensity exceed its tolerance threshold, even if it is left with an escape route, it will give up its struggle and fall into a state of stress. It's even more obvious in reality. You can figure it out for yourself. When you feel out of breath recently, have you just hit a point where you have a mountain of tasks? Nowadays, the entire society is running more than twice as fast as 10 years ago. Rosa’s social acceleration theory mentioned that not only is technology accelerating, but also the pace of society’s life and even people’s self-expectations are also accelerating. If you watch a short video for 10 minutes, you can see 8 annual incomes. With millions of people of the same age, the company's OKRs are rising every quarter. Even when friends gather together to chat, they talk about who has changed jobs and whose children have been admitted to international schools. Such pervasive comparisons and demands cannot be completely shielded by just saying "calm down".

But that’s not to say, I’ve also met many people who, in fact, don’t have that much workload at hand, but are still so anxious that they can’t sleep every day. This involves the core idea of ​​the cognitive behavioral school: stress is never caused by the event itself, but by your interpretation of the event. Let’s take the simplest example. The same leader @you in the group, saying that there is a detail in the plan you submitted last time that needs to be adjusted. Some people’s first reaction is “I won’t be able to judge the results or even be kicked out after this is over.” Some people will just think, “Oh, I just made the changes so I won’t have to step into this pit next time.” The corresponding pressure values ​​​​of the two interpretations are not even a little bit different. Oh, yes, to be fair here, many people on the Internet now accuse stressed people of being "glass-hearted" and "thinking too much". In fact, it is really unnecessary. The formation of cognitive patterns is mostly related to the growth experience. Children who grow up in an environment of "doing well only deserves to be loved" are naturally over-sensitive to negative information and are used to taking the responsibility for all problems on themselves. This kind of thinking inertia is engraved in the subconscious. It really cannot be solved by saying "don't think too much".

Another point that is easily overlooked is that your physiological state will directly affect your stress perception. I had a visitor last year who initially said that he was so anxious that he couldn't concentrate on work. His heart beat faster even when he saw office software. He thought he had a severe anxiety disorder. However, he went to the hospital for a routine physical examination and was diagnosed with hyperthyroidism. He took the appropriate medicine for half a month and his mood stabilized by more than half. To be honest, many people don’t realize that if you stay up all night for a week and sleep less than 6 hours a day, the cortisol level in your body will skyrocket. Even if there is nothing important that day, you will feel inexplicably irritable and have a tight chest. In addition, many people now rely on high-sugar milk tea and strong coffee to stay alive. These things will further increase cortisol secretion, which is equivalent to "fanning the flames" of your own stress.

Oh, by the way, there is another invisible straw that breaks many people’s minds, called “role overload.” Think about it, adults nowadays only have one identity. In the company, they are employees who have to carry out KPIs. When they return home, they have to take care of the children of the elderly, parents who have to help with homework, and lovers who have to take care of their partners' emotions. The demands of several roles are thrown at you at the same time. You don't even have time to take a breath and switch states. Isn't the pressure just piling up? There was a 35-year-old male visitor. His child had a fever and had just been sent to the hospital to be hooked up with water. His boss called him and asked him to go back to the company immediately to change the bidding plan. He sat on a bench in the hospital corridor, holding his mobile phone and not daring to cry, for fear that his mother sitting next to him would see her and worry. The feeling of being out of breath cannot be solved simply by "improving stress resistance".

In fact, when people talk about the reasons for high stress nowadays, they always like to find a single attribution. Either they blame the environment for being too complicated, or they blame themselves for being too useless. In fact, both are quite one-sided. Stress is the result of multiple factors. You don't have to force yourself to bear all the pressure immediately. If you can find the trigger, adjust it slowly. If you can't find the trigger, put down what you are doing and rest for 10 minutes. Drinking a hot cup is better than anything else.