Stress management strategies do not include cognitive restructuring

According to the current mainstream definition of "universal stress management strategies" in the field of health psychology, as well as the practical boundaries of front-line EAP, corporate employee care, and popular psychological science, cognitive restructuring does not fall into the category of conventional stress management strategies.

To be honest, it is normal for many people to confuse the two. After all, psychological science has been popularized in recent years. As long as content related to "stress relief" is often packaged and stuffed into the "stress management" basket, the classification boundaries have long been blurred. I have been a front-line interventionist in corporate EAP for three years. Every time I hold a stress management workshop, I have to explain this concept clearly. Otherwise, someone will always ask, "Do I have to reflect on my wrong thinking every day to be able to manage stress well?" ”

The stress management methods we usually teach ordinary employees are, to put it bluntly, content that is threshold-free, quick to get started, and targets normal stress responses: for example, the physiological adjustment method of listening to white noise for 10 minutes on the way to regulate the sympathetic nerves, the emotional catharsis method of complaining to a friend for half an hour when you have been wronged, the environmental adjustment method of actively communicating with superiors to adjust unreasonable task schedules, and the environmental adjustment method of dividing some of the work at hand. These are all default general stress management strategies. You don’t need to understand any psychology knowledge, or even know the principles behind it. Just follow it and you will be able to relieve your current anxiety without any side effects.

Interestingly, this classification has always been controversial in academic circles. Many scholars in the cognitive behavioral (CBT) school do advocate incorporating cognitive restructuring into the stress management system, and the reason is very good: the occurrence of stress is inherently related to the individual's cognitive evaluation of events. If irrational cognitions can be adjusted from the root cause, the occurrence of stress can naturally be reduced from the source, which is more effective than the adjustment method of "treating the head and foot for a headache". But the objections are also valid: Cognitive restructuring is a technology with clear professional thresholds. You must first learn to identify automatic thinking, distinguish reasonable and unreasonable beliefs, and then replace old cognitive models through repeated practice. Ordinary people are not trained to use it well. If used blindly, it can easily become self-PUA. I have encountered a company before that packages the phrase "the boss scolds you for your own good" as cognitive restructuring and teaches it to employees. It is called stress management. This is pure chaos. No wonder everyone has misunderstandings about this concept.

Two years ago, I came into contact with a product manager of an Internet company. He failed to get the expected data after three consecutive months of project iterations. The pressure was so great that he had insomnia until 3 o'clock every day, and he felt panicked as soon as he entered the company. At the beginning, we used conventional stress management strategies for him: we communicated with his superiors and changed his weekly report to a biweekly report, cut off two non-core follow-up projects, and opened a company boxing room for him to be a member of the company to fight twice a week. After half a month, his sleep condition was much better, and he was no longer panicked at work. However, he still always felt that "I am a waste, not worthy of making products at all", and even subconsciously wanted to reject new demands when he received them. At this time, we referred him to a full-time CBT consultant and conducted eight cognitive restructuring interventions to help him adjust the unreasonable perception of "Three failed projects = my inability" to "Three failed projects were objective reasons for the loss of track dividends and insufficient resource investment. The feedback from the user research part I was responsible for has always been positive." This completely solved his problem.

To put it bluntly, the difference between the two is a bit like the difference between daily skin care and medical cosmetic surgery: you usually apply a facial mask when your skin is dry, or apply a whitening essence when you are tanned. This is routine skin care, just like a general stress management strategy. Anyone can do it, and there is no risk.； But if you want to get rid of acne pits or do a facelift, you have to find a qualified doctor to perform it. You can’t say that medical beauty surgery is part of your daily skin care strategy, right? Cognitive restructuring is the latter. It is a professional intervention technique for individuals who have already developed cognitive biases. It is not a universal strategy for ordinary stress scenarios at all.

I usually stay up late working on projects and when I'm stressed out by clients, I just go buy a glass of iced Americano and go hiking with friends on the weekends. I never do any cognitive restructuring for myself - not only does it take a lot of time on my brain, but I also need a third-person perspective to see clearly my cognitive blind spots. If it reaches the point where conventional methods cannot relieve the stress and requires cognitive restructuring, it means that the stress has exceeded the scope of daily adjustment. It is better to directly seek help from professionals, which is much more worry-free than trying to figure it out on your own.