Open class on workplace mental health and stress relief

There is no universal stress-relieving formula that applies to everyone. You don’t need to force yourself to be a "worker who is always emotionally stable." Rather than forcing yourself to be "mindful" or copying other people's schedules, the most effective solution is to first find your own stress trigger points and choose a method that suits your personality and job attributes.

When I was doing internal training at an Internet company last week, I met a girl who was doing content operations. She hid in the tea room and cried. She said that when she watched a funny short video, she would reflexively think, "Can this be the topic?" She just fell asleep at two o'clock in the morning. The leader sent me a WeChat to change the plan. After I got up and made the changes, I opened my eyes until dawn and said that I felt that I was about to "run out of fuel." In fact, this is not pretentious, it is a typical symptom of early emotional exhaustion in the early stages of job burnout. Survey data from the Institute of Psychology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2023 shows that 62.4% of people in the workplace are in this state, an increase of 13 percentage points from 2021. It is not that you can't handle it alone.

There are actually two directions of debate in academic circles about stress response. One is the "problem-oriented response" advocated by cognitive behavioral therapy. To put it bluntly, it treats whatever it hurts: if your pressure comes from having to hold ineffective meetings every day, then ask your leader to set meeting rules and not attend unless necessary; if your pressure comes from demands that change every day, then write a clear demand confirmation document, and leave traces aligned every time, so as to reduce trouble at the root. This method is suitable for people who have a strong sense of logic and are not afraid of communication. It has quick results. However, some people say that it is too "rigid" and is useless when encountering unreasonable leaders. The other school is the "emotion-oriented coping" that is more supported by positive psychology, which means putting things aside and letting your emotions go first. Don’t listen to what is said online about “let go of your emotions first and solve the problem first.” There is clear data from clinical psychology: when the level of the human body’s stress hormone cortisol exceeds the threshold, the decision-making ability will drop by 32%, and the logical thinking ability will not even be half of usual. If you insist on changing the plan at this time, you will only make more mistakes and work two more hours of overtime.

The useful solutions I have seen are really weird and completely unorganized: do To C's sales buddy, after get off work every day, he closes the car door in the parking lot and yells for 3 minutes. After yelling, he drives home. He says that it is more effective than meditation and will not bring bad emotions to his family. My colleagues who work on algorithms always have a small box of Lego micro particles in the desk drawer. Putting together small ornaments for 10 minutes, you don’t have to use your brain, you can completely relax, and your mind will be clear after finishing it; there is also a eldest sister who has been an administrator for ten years. She spends 5 minutes every day during lunch break to wipe the keyboard and organize the files on the desktop. She said that looking at the neat table, she felt that the reimbursement, team building, and approval processes that had been a mess just now could be clarified one by one.

It’s quite counter-intuitive. I’ve always told people to “separate work and life” until last month when I met a big brother in To B business. He said that he couldn’t separate at all, and he didn’t want to make a hard score. Instead, he regarded the good tea he drank with clients, the cultural and creative products he saved from business trips, and even the discounts he got through bargaining with clients as part of the fun of life. Now he rarely feels tired from work. You see, there is no standard answer. Your comfort is more important than anything else.

When I was rushing for the quarterly report a while ago, I tried the popular "478 Breathing Technique" on the Internet and the "Five-Minute Mindfulness", but they were of no use to me. The more I counted my breaths, the more annoyed I became. My mind was filled with thoughts about three data that were not aligned. Later, I found myself squatting by the corridor window watching the stray cats fighting downstairs. After watching it for three to five minutes, I suddenly relaxed. Really, someone else’s antidote might be your poison. You don’t have to force yourself to follow the “efficient stress relief list” made by Internet celebrity bloggers.

In today’s class, I didn’t give you a list of must-do things like 1, 2, 3, and 4. After all, when you are so tired from get off work that you don’t even want to change your slippers, you won’t have the energy to follow the list. Just remember the two most practical points: first, if you can't sleep well for more than two weeks in a row, are bored at work, and can't be motivated about anything, don't bear it, go to the hospital's psychological department for a screening first. Burnout is not "thinking too much", it is a state that really needs intervention; second, don't be too harsh on yourself. It is not wrong to occasionally catch a fish at work, curse a few words when the pressure is too high, or simply take a day off to lie at home for a day. Your feelings are always more important than the persona of a "professional elite".

Oh, by the way, one last little bonus for everyone. The check-in area at the door has small decompression toolkits for different positions that we have compiled. Those who work in operations have shorthand notebooks for inspiration for choosing topics, those who work in technology have debug decompression tools, and those in sales have throat candy. You can just grab it when you go out. That’s all for today’s class. If you have any questions, feel free to stop by and chat.