Behavior in a stressful situation

Work that requires complete dedication, household chores and caring for family, communication with friends and family, visiting beauty salons and fitness centers in order to maintain beauty and health. And most of us try to do all this in 24 hours a day. As a result, we experience stress.

It is very important to recognize stress in time. It is important to know yourself and be able to determine when your level is beyond your limits, because you can get used to stress and make it part of you. It can become normal and you won't even notice how harmful it can affect you. Stress will not only make you feel like life is meaningless, but it will also increase your risk of various diseases.

Characteristics of Type B Personality

• non-aggressive;

• not feeling the passage of time;

• not prone to competition;

• relaxed and unhurried;

• calm.

In many cases, stress symptoms are a direct result of Type A behavior. Until we are aware of our own Type A traits, recognizing stress symptoms and their relationship to sources of stress will be very difficult.

If you are a Type A personality, you need to reconsider your views, habits and priorities without waiting for a serious illness.

A traumatic situation for one is a mere trifle for another. But no one, no matter how alert and energetic they may feel after a stressful situation, can engage in too many Type A behaviors and stay healthy for long. Type A people suffer from many more stress symptoms and get sick much more frequently than Type B people.

Type B and AB behavior is correct because it allows us to achieve goals, be active, work productively and do everything that Type A people do, but without hostile aggressiveness, impatience and with better results. Anyone can learn to achieve what they want while maintaining composure and the ability to relax. By changing your Type A behavior patterns and forcing yourself to acquire more Type B character traits, you will become less sick and your life will become more joyful and stress-free.

Changing Type A behavior.

We develop behavior A or As a result of upbringing, environment, and sometimes genetic code. Therefore, it is not possible to change behavioral stereotypes instantly; it requires time, effort and a sincere desire for change. But when we engage in the process of assimilation of type B traits, it gradually becomes easier, as the brain learns to treat stressful situations differently.

The key to changing Type A behavior is to break some ingrained stress habits. This is achieved through special exercises that force us to acquire new habits while we get rid of old ones.

Many people have Type A behavioral traits, not because they were born with them, but because these patterns have been repeated so often that they have become an unnatural part of the personality, essentially bad habits. By practicing Type B behavior, we gradually force ourselves to shed some of the worst and most obvious Type A traits and gain the ability to withstand a stressful situation, knowing that we can use new habits and therefore manage stress and prevent its symptoms.

What is stress

Stress is a completely normal response of the body to overwork or threat. At the same time, the body tries to resist in every possible way, as a result of which we suffer. When this protection works normally, it helps a person to be cheerful, energetic, concentrated and on a pedestal. But stress often has a detrimental effect on our mental and physical health.

Photo on Unsplash

Stress is a long-term, continuous, depressing emotional tension. When growing multitasking does not allow you to relax for a minute. When you constantly need to look for solutions, here and now. When everything seems global and urgent.

The A-type personality can be described as follows:

— I never rest on my laurels.

— I have a strong temperament, which I try to hide (I pay for it with headaches, high blood pressure or a cold).

— I am very demanding of myself and therefore do not tolerate critical statements addressed to me.

— I don’t like talking on the phone, every call is another problem that I have to solve.

- I'm always dissatisfied with myself.

“I’m dissatisfied with others, but I try to hide it.”

— I’m not sure that I can control my feelings towards my family, so I consider work my world.

“I’m not sure that women like me, so I consider work my world.”

“I feel like I work better under pressure, so I take on a lot of things.

— I always stay after work to finish what I have in mind. “I believe that it is this kind of attitude to work that will be safer for me.”

— I prefer to fight openly only in sports. At work, I hide the fact that I observe the successes of my colleagues and try to get around them.

- I hate waiting.

Men of this type often admit that they feel lonely, like children who believe that they are ugly and no one loves them. Life becomes hell for them - an attempt to hide their insecurities from others. Through work they try to acquire the desired image: to be attractive, relaxed and easy to communicate. With the help of prestige, money and power, they try to win the love of women, colleagues, and family. Unfortunately, this method of solving the problem does not give the desired result, since success does not bring satisfaction. A more appropriate solution would be to try to get used to the idea that the people around you, including your parents, also have shortcomings that you need to take into account.

If parents at some point neglected the upbringing of their child, this was not at all because they did not love him or considered him bad or ugly. Parents may be sick, upset, angry. There are many reasons, including objective ones, why parents are simply unable to devote all their free time to their child. There is no need to be so offended by them. Try to put yourself in their shoes. Such mistakes cannot be corrected, but they must be forgotten. A man with an A-type character must take into account the mistakes of his upbringing so as not to repeat them when raising his children.

Relieving stress: advice from a psychologist

In order to relieve stress, you need to be able to recognize, accept and deal with its causes:

Try to react less to minor irritants.
Look at the problem as a challenge, a way to become better, more experienced.
Accept the things you cannot control.
Surround yourself with people with a positive attitude who look at the glass and claim it is half full.
Breathe more in the fresh air, do yoga, read a motivational book.
Go in for sports, then you will not have time for bad thoughts, plus improve your memory and health.
Get enough sleep, listen to rhythmic music and spend time with loved ones.
Give yourself a hobby.

Characteristics of men with type B character

B-type Men with a B-type character take less risks because:

They worry less about their failures: their ideas about themselves are more realistic and not as optimistic as those of A-type representatives.

They do not dwell on past glories or future achievements; they are more interested in what they are today rather than yesterday or tomorrow.

They are more patient and restrained - if they have entrusted the work to subordinates, they do not interfere in their affairs. This may be because B-type men don't take competition as seriously and are probably not as touchy-feely as A-type men.

They are less demanding of themselves because they are more self-confident and self-reliant.

They are less likely to stay late at work because they think more often about what they can do than about what they must do.

They are not too keen on games, dancing, it is difficult to make them laugh, since they base their behavior without chasing external effects.

They worry less about the impression they make on others. Their mood is not so rigidly dependent on whether they were praised or not.

Type B is in no hurry and does not finish the sentence for the interlocutor. Type B does not grind his teeth, does not reconsider his own actions and intentions if rival friends have already achieved success. Type B does not start to have a heartbeat if he gets stuck in a traffic jam.

Although B-type men's goals are more realistic and less exaggerated than the goals that A-type men set for themselves, the behavior of B-type men is also often based on the need for hard work and the desire to achieve success.

In the character of the B-type, it is not motivation that is absent at all, but a feeling of lack of time, hostility and carelessness. This trait keeps them energized for reading, music, and entertainment. Type B is freer and may even live longer!

Of course, the two character types “A” and “B” are so clearly separated only in the test described above. These are the extreme polar points.

But the more B-type traits you have, the lower your risk of developing cardiovascular disease. How can you ensure that B-type traits predominate in your character? It's good if your parents taught you this. If not, you can do it yourself and right now.

Parents who accept their children as they are, recognizing both their strengths and weaknesses, cultivate a B-type character in their children. Type B fathers tend to take the time to notice and celebrate their sons' small victories, listen to their complaints, and help resolve difficult issues.

In turn, sons learn to treat the people around them with more care and attention. If you have not inherited a model of such an approach to life, then the time has come to take up your own re-education. Do not expect that you will change yourself tomorrow, the process of self-education is quite long, but it needs to be started, since your A-character is dangerous to your health and well-being.

Here's where you can start:

Learn to respect yourself. Prioritize your physical and mental health. Stop treating yourself like a convict who must “die but complete the task.” Do not abuse self-punishment, and even more so, stop self-criticism and self-torture. By blaming only yourself for all your failures, you mistakenly assume that you can do anything. This is not true, your self-image is overly inflated. If you treat yourself more carefully and caringly, your A-character will begin to change. If you don't love yourself, then why should the people around you love you?

Know yourself. Almost all of us have an idea of who they should be, some of us have an idea of what they would like to be, and very few people clearly know what abilities - physical, mental and mental - they actually possess. Starting today, start making a list that describes your character. During the day, observe your reactions and emotions, analyze the reasons that caused them. For example, if the first point in your characteristics is such a trait as the ability to compete, try to realize in what situations you wanted to start proving your competitiveness. In the evening, as you review your day, it would be a good idea to think about how often you react in this way and where it was necessary and where it was not. Having done this analysis several times, you will, firstly, be able to control your body’s reactions: replace one negative reaction with another - positive or neutral; and secondly, you will be able to avoid those situations that cause stress or its symptoms. If you only scold yourself, it will not help you maintain your health and achieve positive changes in your character. The only true path here is self-knowledge.

Be aware of your emotions. Men with an A-type character believe that they increase their performance by doing several things at once. But in fact, they perform work that does not exceed in volume and does not exceed in quality that which is performed by men with a B-type character. This is explained by the fact that when completing a task, A-type men experience emotions such as impatience, irritation and anger as a side effect. These three emotions - impatience, irritation and anger - can be minimized if Type A men understand the real reasons for their success:

• ability to create creatively;
• ability to perform the assigned task;
• organization;
• ability to be a leader;
• ability to see perspectives.

Let yourself play. Instead of sitting on the couch after a hard day, reading the newspaper or doing crossword puzzles, play with your children. You will not be angry with them for making noise and noise, because you will be making noise with them. One weekend, call your friends and play preference or lote with them - the games can be very different. Don’t wait for someone to give you the opportunity to experience positive emotions—organize them yourself. Remember that relaxation and recuperation are not synonymous. Help yourself.

Focus your attention on concentration rather than self-involvement. Typically, men with an A-type character constantly record their successes and how they look in the eyes of other people. Instead of looking to others, A-types can extract positive emotions and achieve desired success based on their own motivations. This means that self-focus will benefit you more than self-involvement. Figuratively speaking, stop trying to be a “plug in every barrel”, and don’t let the opinions of strangers bother you at all - “you can’t put a scarf on every mouth.” Believe me, you are such a unique and inimitable phenomenon that if you are so interested in someone’s opinions, then it is better to listen to your own opinions of others than to waste the invaluable time of your life listening to and “processing” other people’s opinions about you. Men with a B-type character believe that only the future will show which decision was right and which was wrong. They usually see prospects better because they assess their strengths more realistically.

Only practice will help you. Many psychotherapists say that awareness is a necessary but not sufficient condition for changing habits. New rules of behavior must be learned, just as new rules of play in sports or cards are learned. And in order to use them in life, practice is necessary. In one American clinic, 1012 type A men who had suffered a heart attack were observed for three years. Each of them was advised to monitor not only diet and physical activity, but also try to modify their character. It turned out that among those who followed all three pieces of advice, repeated heart attacks occurred three times less often than among those who paid attention only to diet and exercise. Very eloquent statistics!

The most stressful life events, table

There are quite a few definitions of stress, but we will take the one that is most understandable to a wide range of readers. So, stress (from the English stress - load, tension; a state of increased tension) is a state of excessively strong and prolonged psychological stress that occurs in a person when his nervous system receives emotional overload. Stress disorganizes a person’s activity and disrupts the normal course of his behavior1.

What is the cause of stress (emotional tension) from the point of view of modern scientific psychological thought? What causes people stress? According to many researchers (fortunately, not all, and why fortunately - read on), the cause of stress is the so-called stress factors, or stressors, that is, events and situations.

A huge number of classifications of stress factors have been created, which even provide an assessment of the intensity of stress. I will give only one of them. This scale was created by psychiatrists Thomas Holmes and Richard Ray based on a survey of more than 400 men and women of different ages, with different education, marital status and from different cultures. They were asked to rate their level of stress when each of these events occurred.

Life Event	Stress intensity
Death of a marriage partner	100
Divorce	75
Separation from marriage partner	65
Imprisonment	63
Death of a close family member	63
Injury or illness	53
Marriage	50
Dismissal from work	47
Reunion with Marriage Partner	45
Retirement	45
Health problems in a family member	44
Pregnancy	40
Sexual problems	39
The arrival of a new family member	39
Adapting to changes at work	39
Change in financial status	38
Death of a close friend	37
Transfer to another job	36
Termination of the right to repurchase mortgaged property	30
Changing responsibilities at work	29
A son or daughter leaving home	29
Difficulties with household members	29
Outstanding Personal Achievement	28
The wife went to work or quit her job	26
Entering or graduating from school	26
Changing living conditions	25
Reconsidering personal habits	24
Difficulties with the boss	23
Changing of the living place	20
Transfer to another school	20
Change of entertainment	19
Changes in religious life	19
Changes in public life	18
Changing your sleep routine	16
Changes in eating habits	15
Vacation, holidays	13
Christmas	12
Minor violations of the law	11

The following rules should help you modify your character:

Don't multitask. Whether you are reading, eating lunch, or talking on the phone, concentrate your attention on one specific activity.
Take your time. Walk, talk and eat more slowly. Your gait should be smooth and calm - you will have time to do everything!
Read books that entertain you. They should not be related to your work. Pay attention to the style of presentation as much as the content. If a word is not familiar to you, look it up in the dictionary.
Drive on roads where fast driving is prohibited, and do not press the pedal with furious energy.
Sometimes you forget your watch at home. After all, why do you keep looking at your watch?
Record half of all business conversations on your answering machine. Record evening conversations for your wife. Play out these situations for yourself. Notice those moments when you take your time, listen carefully to a question, and answer briefly but clearly. Are you trying to speed up the conversation by finishing the other person's sentences? If you find yourself talking like an A-type man, try imagining the same conversation for a B-type character.
Try taking the longest route home to learn how to wait without getting nervous or pushing the time. Look, is it really so difficult to make this time enjoyable for you? Think about the lives of people close to you, try to remember something pleasant or planned.
Look in the mirror at least twice a day to notice signs of tension, agitation, or fatigue. Learn to recognize these expressions in order to control your facial expressions without looking in the mirror.
Smile and laugh more often! Think about something funny. Don't wait for the smile to come to you on its own. 1
Think more often about the eternal. About birth, about life, about space and even about death, regardless of your inclinations - religious, philosophical or pragmatic.

Exercises to relieve stress

These exercises help relieve muscle tension and improve your emotional state. Thanks to this, they promote restful and sound sleep. And good sleep is the key to good morning well-being, good health and beauty.

Exercise 1 . Sit on the floor with your legs wide apart. Look at your left foot. Place the palm of your right hand on your left side. Taking a deep breath, raise your left hand, exhaling, move it to the right. Repeat the exercise with your right hand.
Exercise 2 . Bend one leg under you. Exhaling, bend towards the extended leg, trying to reach its foot as much as possible. Repeat the exercise, changing legs.
Exercise 3 . Lying on your back, pull your legs bent at the knees to your chest, clasping them with both hands. To better stretch and relax your muscles, gently rock back and forth.
Exercise 4 . Lying on your back, cross your left leg bent at the knee over your right and press it to the floor with your right hand. Repeat the exercise, changing legs.