How to solve psychological stress

The core logic for solving psychological stress is not to forcefully carry it out or "de-stress" it, nor to apply the same stress-relief techniques available online. Instead, it is to first determine whether the stress is "reality-matching type" or "cognitive shift type", and then make targeted adjustments. Looking for random methods will only make it more tiring.

Last month, I came into contact with a visitor who worked in an Internet company. She was responsible for the KPIs of three projects at the same time on the eve of Double 11. She slept for up to four hours a day. During that time, she always saw posts about "meditating for 10 minutes to quickly relieve stress." After sitting there for three days, she became even more anxious. She said that she couldn't even calm down for five minutes, so she had poor emotional regulation ability. In fact, her pressure is a typical reality-matching type: the current workload is indeed far beyond the normal load threshold of ordinary people. The first thing to do at this time is not to regulate emotions at all, but to find the leader to split KPIs and hand over half of the non-core work. She came back for a follow-up visit two weeks later, and the stress level dropped by 60%. She did not need to do any emotional counseling, and her entire state relaxed.

Many people may have heard the saying "stress is all imaginary". This is actually only half true and only applies to cognitive bias type stress. I met a junior high school teacher who had just started working for half a year, and her class ranked third in the grade in the mid-term assessment. She had been suffering from insomnia for almost a week, and all she could think about was "If I don't get first place, my ability is poor, and next time my parents will definitely file a collective complaint against me." At this time, it was useless to apply for her to reduce the amount of teaching. The reality was actually far less bad than she thought. It was the absolute understanding in her mind that "you must be top-notch to be qualified" that amplified the pressure several times. Later, we listed three pages of her teaching results for the first half of the semester. She laughed after reading it and said that I had already done so much, so why did I focus on the first competition before.

That’s not to say that meditation, exercise, mindfulness, and other commonly mentioned methods are useless. They’re just used in scoring scenarios. Just like when you have a fever, you give priority to taking antipyretics instead of applying a facial mask to replenish your skin, right? There is no high or low method in itself, it is only useful if it adapts to your pressure type. When I usually meet someone asking me "What is the most effective way to relieve stress?" I never list them directly. Instead, I ask them to recall a time when they were stressed before. When they did something and they completely forgot about their troubles even if it was only ten minutes after doing something, that thing is the most suitable way to relieve stress. There used to be a boy who worked in architectural design and said that the only time he could spare was to squat downstairs and feed stray cats for ten minutes. Later, whenever he got irritated while rushing to catch up on a project, he would go downstairs and hang out for ten minutes, which was much more efficient than staying up for three hours.

In fact, there is really no need to regard stress relief as a KPI that must be completed. A little pressure is not a bad thing, as long as it does not pile up beyond your tolerance threshold. When you really feel that you can't bear it, take two minutes to figure out whether you have too many things at hand or whether you are thinking too much, and just do whatever is comfortable for you.