Where does psychological pressure come from?

The core source of psychological stress is not single. At present, academic circles and front-line practitioners have basically reached a consensus. It is the result of the interaction of external environmental stimulation, individual cognitive models, and basic physiological characteristics. In the past, there were two poles of controversy between "stress comes entirely from external oppression" and "stress is purely due to personal overthinking." Now they have been integrated under a multi-factor framework.

The easiest thing to perceive is the direct stimulus from the external environment. A visitor from an Internet operation position I met a while ago fell into this category. The department had just been optimized and downsized, and all the big promotion projects shared by three people were placed on him alone. He had to connect with five cross-department partners every day. The red dots of DingTalk messages never disappeared from morning to night. I didn’t get off work until 1 a.m. for three weeks. Such apparent task overloads, role conflicts, and sudden changes are the sources of stress that everyone can associate with me immediately. The early behaviorism school once completely equated stress with the product of negative external stimuli. For a long time, everyone has defaulted that "stress means too heavy a burden from the outside world."

But putting all the pressure on the outside world cannot explain many real-life situations. For example, another newcomer who took on a project with him felt that this was a rare opportunity to perform. He worked vigorously every day without feeling overwhelmed at all. This is why the cognitive behavioral school later proposed that "the core of stress is the individual's evaluation of the event" - your interpretation of the event is the key to determining the level of stress. A class teacher from a key middle school came to me for guidance. Her class ranked second in grade for two consecutive semesters. Leaders and colleagues thought she taught very well, but she was so anxious that she lost her hair every day. She said, "As long as I don't get first place, it means I haven't done my job well." After a detailed discussion, I found out that her parents had asked her to compete for first place in everything since she was a child. This "absolute requirement" engraved in her cognition will automatically add weight to all events. Even if the outside world does not put pressure on you at all, you will shoulder the burden first.

In addition to these two types of stress that are often discussed, there is another type of stress source that is often ignored, which is your physiological state. Last year, a girl who worked in graphic design came to me and said that she always felt that she was being optimized by the company. Even though the leader had just rated her quarterly excellence, she was still restless and always felt that something was going wrong. When I listened to her description, I found that her hands were shaking badly. I suggested that she check her thyroid function first. The result was that it was hyperthyroidism. Later, after the endocrinology department stabilized the indicators, her inexplicable anxiety disappeared by 80%. In fact, your physiological state is like the "foundation" of your emotions. When you suffer from long-term insomnia, chronic illness, or hormone fluctuations, your stress threshold will drop significantly. Small things that you don't usually care about can become straws that crush you. I often tell my clients that the generation of stress is like starting a fire in the wild. The external event is the firewood piled on the ground, your cognitive model is the lighter, and the physiological state is the current air humidity. Only when these three conditions are met will it ignite. If any one of them is missing, even if there is a flame, it will not ignite.

There are also some pressures that you can’t even find specific triggering events. For example, many people have stable jobs and harmonious families, but they often feel tired. When they see their peers showing off their school district apartments and their children’s certificates, or when they go home and are asked by relatives about when they will get married, they become inexplicably irritated and panicked. This is the implicit pressure brought about by the “standard life path” defaulted by the entire society and culture. It has no clear pressure, but it wraps you like air. You are not even aware of its existence, and you will only think, “Why am I so tired for no reason?” I have been a front-line psychological counselor for nearly 6 years, and I have seen too many people who cannot find the source of their stress, either blaming themselves for being too fragile or blaming the environment for being too harsh. In fact, there is really no need to attribute stress to a certain cause. Only by slowly figuring out which part of the problem is the problem can we prescribe the right medicine to relax.