Stress management training experience and insights

There is no universal standard answer to stress management. "Eliminating stress" itself is a false proposition. The truly effective response is to find the dynamic balance between your own stress tolerance threshold and the current situation - you neither need to blame yourself for "not being able to handle the pressure" nor do you need to force yourself to be an "emotionless iron man".

It’s embarrassing to say that before I went to the training, I thought this was a formalism by HR. I was holding my notebook and preparing to write down unfinished project plans. After all, three projects were on schedule last month. I stayed up all night and collected more than 20 “must-read stress relief methods for professionals.” I tried mindfulness meditation, 478 breathing method, and running three kilometers after get off work. It wasn't until the first day of training that the instructor overturned all my inherent perceptions: the "universal decompression techniques" uploaded on the Internet essentially have clear boundaries of application. If placed in the wrong scenario, it will increase internal friction.

For example, lecturers on cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) make it clear that methods of diverting attention such as deep breathing and mindfulness are only suitable for acute stress - for example, you are about to go on stage to give a speech and are so nervous that you are shaking, or you are notified at short notice to make a report to your boss. At this time, it is really useful to do a few minutes of breathing adjustment. But if you are facing long-term unresolved core stressors, such as performance failure for three consecutive months, or the project on hand being stuck in cross-departmental coordination, the more you force yourself to "shift your focus and relax," the more subconsciously you will remind yourself "I don't even dare to face this problem," and the internal friction will only become more serious. The sales girl in the same group went through this trap last month. She didn't place any orders for three weeks in a row. She followed the online method and ran five kilometers every day after get off work. But halfway through, she thought about the gap in her performance and squatted on the roadside crying even harder. Later, I used the CBT method to "dismantle stressors" and split the vague "I can't place an order" into "I have 8 potential customers, 3 of them have reached the quotation stage, and the remaining 5 follow up once a week." On the day after the separation, I sent a follow-up message to the customer, and a small order was signed this week.

Of course, some lecturers do not agree with the idea of ​​"solve the source of stress first". Teachers who study positive psychology say that not everyone is capable of solving the source of stress immediately: it is precarious to catch up with the company's structural adjustment, or the client is unreasonable and changes their needs back and forth. In this case, if you force yourself to "disassemble the problem to solve the problem", you will instead fall into self-attack of "Why am I so useless that I can't solve even this little thing?" The solution to this kind of "uncontrollable stress" is actually simpler: untie the stress from self-worth and draw your attention back to specific and certain small things. Brother Zhang, who is almost 40 years old in our department, failed to pass the exam last year and was worried about being optimized every day. He drank traditional Chinese medicine for half a year to relieve insomnia. Later, he followed this method and took a detour to pick up his third-grade son after get off work every day. He spent 20 minutes skateboarding with his son in the community. He didn't want to work at all for these 20 minutes, and now his insomnia has been mostly relieved. He said that he always felt that "if you didn't get promoted to a management position, you would be a loser." It was only when he was playing with his children that he realized that his salary was enough, his children were sensible, and he had no serious health problems. There were so many "must-do" things.

I was quite surprised when I took a stress test at the training site. I always thought that I was stressed because my workload was too full, but it turned out that 80% of the stress actually came from "fear that the leader would think I am incompetent." Later, according to the little method taught by the lecturer, every time such an idea came up, I would write it down on a note and find actual evidence to refute it. Only when I listed it last time did I find that what I thought was "the leader was not satisfied with my last report" was actually because he had a cold and a headache that day, and he frowned like everyone else the whole time. After trying this for two weeks, I no longer lie down after get off work and review whether I said the wrong thing or did the wrong thing that day.

Last week, when the project was launched, the whole team stayed up until two in the morning. Before, I would have been so irritated that I would drop the mouse. That day, I followed my own method. When it was one o'clock, I sneaked downstairs to the 24-hour convenience store to buy an iced Coke. I stood on the roadside and blew in the night breeze for five minutes. I looked at the guys running on the roadside and the stalls selling late-night snacks. When I came back, I was able to fix the bug safely. I didn't feel aggrieved as I did before.

Now I have deleted all the "10 Universal Stress Relief Tips" from my favorites, and I am no longer obsessed with the "completely stress-free" state - after all, in the workplace, how can there be no stress? It doesn’t matter if you have an occasional collapse. There is no need to scold yourself for being fragile. When acute stress comes, take a deep breath for two minutes to slow down. If there is a clear solution to the stress, break it into small pieces and chew it slowly. If you really can’t solve the bad things, go to pick up the dog at home and run downstairs for a few laps. Pressure is an interesting thing. The more you treat it as an enemy and insist on defeating it, the more it competes with you. Once you learn to walk side by side with it, it becomes less scary.