Psychological stress and emotional aspects

It is never that you have "too many emotions" or "too fragile". The essence is that the connection between you and your own emotions has gone awry - either you suppress your emotions for a long time and form a barrier lake, or you over-indulge in your emotions and fall into a cycle of internal friction. There is no universal "universal solution". The people who are suitable for different adjustment plans vary greatly, and only the one that suits you is useful.

I just picked up a 26-year-old Internet operation visitor last week. There were two unopened packs of mood-stabilizing gummies stuffed in the side pockets of my backpack. I sat down and started to cry on my jeans within three sentences. My first apology was, "I'm sorry I wasted your time. I'm not usually so emotional." You see, this is the most typical emotional connection bias: she has regarded "generating negative emotions" itself as a mistake that needs to be corrected.

Most of the most common adjustment ideas on the market now come from the cognitive behavioral school (CBT). The core logic is to unbundle "events" and "emotions attached to the events." For example, if you are sad because your partner forgot the anniversary, don't rush to attribute it to "he doesn't love me." Instead, first list the objective facts: He has worked overtime until the early morning for three consecutive weeks in the past week, and he even forgot to eat cake on his birthday last week. This method is particularly useful for people who have strong logical thinking and are used to making rational decisions. I have met several programmers who practiced using the "Emotional Breakdown Chart" for two weeks, and their internal friction was reduced by at least half. But it may not work if you change someone else. For example, if you ask someone who is used to suppressing their emotions to rationalize it first when he is sad, it is equivalent to suppressing the emotion that has just emerged. As time goes by, it will turn into a nameless fire, and you don't know when it will explode.

There is another type of thinking that is very popular now, which comes from the humanistic school. The core is "permission": allowing yourself to be sad, allowing yourself to be angry, and even allowing yourself to waste time doing nothing. I once had a 35-year-old financial client who ran half-marathons to vent his stress for more than ten years. He had never cried in front of others. At the end of last year, he endured the annual review for seven consecutive days. When he finally shed tears in front of the report, his first reaction was to slap himself and scold himself for being useless. Later, he practiced according to a humanistic approach, giving himself 10 minutes of "unruly time" every time he got emotional. He didn't need to adjust or reflect. He could just curse a few words if he wanted to, and just cry for a while if he wanted to cry. On the contrary, he felt a lot more relaxed. But this method is not friendly to everyone. I have seen girls who are easily trapped in emotions. After giving themselves the permission to "allow sadness", they lay in bed for three days in a row thinking about the previous emotional trauma, and did not go to class, but delayed the business.

My most profound feeling in the past six years of consulting is that there is really no need to apply any rigid method. In many cases, "wild ways" are the most effective. I used to have a design visitor who would go to pieces of more than 1,000 pieces of Lego every time he had to rewrite a draft with a client or had an argument with his parents. When he was doing it, his mind was completely empty, and he only had to think about "finding parts and pressing them in." After a whole night of building, his mood had already calmed down and there was no internal friction. What kind of genre do you think this is? Behavioral activation? Mindfulness? It doesn't really count, but it works for him.

Don’t think that emotional stress is your own problem. The National Mental Health Report issued by the Institute of Psychology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2023 clearly states: Among young people aged 18-35, 58.9% of the sources of psychological stress are related to emotions - including conflicts in intimate relationships, family relationships, and even "pleasant internal friction" in social interactions. This is a hurdle that most people will encounter. It is really not that you are too fragile.

Harmful, don’t believe those nonsense on the Internet about “3 steps to bid farewell to emotional internal friction” and “10 minutes to regulate all negative emotions”. I have seen too many people follow these instructions and fail to do so. Instead, they have an extra layer of pressure like “I can’t even control my emotions well”. This is purely secondary damage.

To put it bluntly, the most useless way to deal with emotional psychological pressure is to "force yourself to get better quickly." If you are really feeling uncomfortable, go buy a glass of iced sparkling water and squat on the roadside to drink it for ten minutes, go to a pet shop and pet a cat for half an hour, or even find a place where no one is around to curse a few words. As long as you don't hurt yourself or affect others, there is no shame in any method. After all, emotions, the more you treat them as your enemy, the more they will fight against you. If you treat them as a passing guest, bring them a cup of tea, they will sit there for a while and then go away.