In the occurrence of psychosomatic diseases, psychological stress plays a very important role, so let's give you a concept, that is, psychological stress. Psychological stress refers to substances that are harmful to the outside world. After our subjective evaluation, we know that such a stimulus, such a bad event, or an objective thing will pose a threat to ourselves and may threaten our survival and status. Then a series of physiological, psychological and behavioral reactions at this time are called psychological stress, which is caused by stressors. Why do we enter a state of stress? Because we met a stressor.
Lazarus, an American psychologist, once made some simple classifications about the stressors encountered by human beings. Generally speaking, according to lazarus's classification, the stressors facing human beings may be divided into three categories: the first category, catastrophic events, the second category, personal stressors, and the third category, background stressors.
Catastrophic events are those events with relatively strong stimulus intensity, serious mental trauma to people and wide influence range, such as volcanoes, earthquakes, wars, such as the 9. 1 1 event, and so on. This kind of thing has a wide range of influence, great stimulation intensity and a large number of people involved, and the parties will inevitably have psychological trauma or suffer psychological trauma.
Second, personal stressors have a great influence on people's psychological activities, but compared with catastrophic events, it involves a narrower scope and affects fewer people. For example, dropping out of school, unemployment, lovelorn and other things constitute personal stressors.
The third background stressor, such as noise, congestion, air pollution, etc. The intensity of stimulation is not strong, but it lasts for a long time, which may of course include disharmony in interpersonal relationships. For example, I don't like a colleague in our unit, and he doesn't like me either, but I can't adjust and he can't leave. We have to work together for a long time, which also constitutes the background stressor.
So do all stressors acting on human body lead to psychological stress reaction? There are other factors at work here. What causes the same stressor to act on us, and different individuals react differently? There are probably five reasons.
The first is personality. This person is extroverted and introverted. This person likes lively scenes or being alone, quiet or moving. If a person is extroverted and sociable, if his exam results are not ideal and he is lovelorn, he will find a good friend, a teacher, a classmate and his family and get emotional support. Then it may help him get through the traumatic mentality more smoothly. If a person is introverted and usually reticent, when he encounters any setbacks, his inner experience is very strong and there may be strong inner pressure. Moreover, he is not good at expressing, and it is possible that such pressure will last for a long time. Therefore, personality characteristics affect a person's cognitive evaluation and indirectly affect a person's response to stressors.
The second is personal experience and experience. For example, he failed in the previous exam, then studied hard, and then his exam results came up. He has had such an experience that failing an exam will not have a particularly strong impact on him, so there will be no strong stress reaction.
The predictability and controllability of the third stressor, why do many Americans feel insecure after 9. 1 1 As soon as they got to work, they sat in the building and kept looking out the window, because they thought that the 9. 1 1 incident was the people who were working in the building at that time, and there was no way to predict, control or predict it.
Fourth, how to explain the stressors, that is, I said earlier that people see three stressors, catastrophic events, personal stressors and background stressors, and one of them acts on us. When we encounter such stressors, how do we explain such stress stimuli or negative events, which also affects the intensity of our stress response.
Fifth, does the social support system have good friends and family who care about themselves? If people have such a social support system, their cognitive evaluation of stressors is relatively better than those who lack support. Then, under stress, psychological reaction and its emotional changes are often some negative emotions, such as anxiety, fear, depression, anger and so on. And cognitive response. It has a disastrous cognitive evaluation, that is, this time it is finished, and this time it will be in a very unfavorable position. In this case, this unfavorable situation is irreversible, so some judgments belong to such a judgment of cognitive catastrophe. In the state of strong stress response, people tend to overemphasize the potential consequences of negative events, or tend to exaggerate their consequences. When we are in an unfavorable situation, then we will have bad emotions, and bad emotions will have a certain impact on our understanding and evaluation of a thing, and this impact is often negative.
The third aspect is defensive response, which is divided into two levels. A defensive response is the level of consciousness. For example, when the news that we failed in the exam came, friends of the opposite sex broke up with themselves, resulting in lovelorn love. In this case, we may say nothing, nothing, I will deal with it, and I will go through it again. When we say these words in public, we actually consciously want to prevent nervousness.
However, subconsciously, sometimes we say nothing, and it will pass right away, but it will not pass right away. Maybe we feel the pain inside. Subconsciously, there is such a mechanism inside people's psychological activities. Subconsciously, we use a mechanism to defend against adverse reactions and then relieve our pain.
For example, he failed the college entrance examination. He can explain that it is better not to go to college. If he is admitted to the university, he will have to study hard for several years. If he can't get into college, I won't go to school, I'll find a job, and my parents won't say anything. On the surface, he gave himself this action, found a reasonable reason, and then relieved his inner pain. This is a subconscious defense mechanism.
For example, when his girlfriend broke up with him, he said, "Well, I was not satisfied with her. Sometimes I do psychological counseling, and sometimes I receive some visitors. They talked about their emotional frustration, but when they chatted, they told me that I didn't like him very much, so I was not satisfied with him. He has a few questions or something. Actually, I've already thought about it, so I'd better break up with him. So if what he said is true,
Of course, there is a question that everyone may be interested in, that is, whether this is a good mental state, whether this way can alleviate pain, and whether it is helpful to mental health. Our view is that if we use a small amount of subconscious psychological defense mechanisms, such as sour grapes, such as rationalization or Ah Q spirit, it will help us alleviate our pain in some occasions and time conditions.
However, if a person uses psychological defense mechanism extensively for a long time, just like Ah Q, he is beaten in the mouth and says that his child is indecent now, and his son beats Lao Zi, then you can say that you have once in your life, and you can laugh at yourself and relieve the pain and troubles at that time. Today, people hit you in the mouth, and you say this son is indecent. Tomorrow, people hit you in the mouth and you say this grandson is indecent. After a long time, you will be isolated from reality, which is not conducive to your adaptation to real life, especially to your survival and development. Therefore, if a person uses the psychological defense mechanism for a long time, it is actually a state of neurosis.
The neurotic state means that a person can't adapt to his real life at all, so in the stress reaction, there will be psychological reactions, and psychological changes will produce a series of physiological changes. Then the psychological reaction will affect the body and cause changes in the physiological functions of the body, because all the physiological functions of our human body are under the control of the cerebral cortex and nerve centers at all levels. Therefore, the so-called cerebral cortex is the main place where our psychology occurs. Therefore, if there are bad emotions, bad emotional reactions and related activities in the cerebral cortex, then this state will destroy the normal regulatory function of the cerebral cortex and make those physiological functions of our body appear disorder. These physiological reactions mainly appear in autonomic nervous system, endocrine system and immune system. If the autonomic nervous system is dysfunctional, cardiovascular system reaction or digestive system reaction will occur.
Because the autonomic nervous system is composed of two opposing nervous systems, one is sympathetic nerve and the other is parasympathetic nerve, and the opposition is that there is a relationship between them, so if this regulation is abnormal, there may be excessive excitement of sympathetic nerve or parasympathetic nerve in the autonomic nervous system, and excessive excitement of sympathetic nervous system will often damage the function of cardiovascular system. Therefore, we will look at some people with coronary heart disease, often those who are impatient, demanding, pursuing perfection and being competitive, so some people are in a state of tension and their physiological reactions tend to be sympathetic.
Then, the reaction of the digestive system may be the kind of person whose parasympathetic nerve is excessively excited when the cerebral cortex is out of order. Because the parasympathetic nerve mainly dominates the gastrointestinal digestive system, there are some physiological functions. Under normal circumstances, if we don't eat, the digestive juice in our gastrointestinal tract will be less secreted, while under tension, when the parasympathetic nerve is excessively excited, the digestive juice in the gastrointestinal tract will increase. The result of parasympathetic nerve excitation is an increase in digestive juice secretion. At this time, our stomach doesn't have enough food to absorb and digest, so our stomach wall and intestines will digest, and then gastrointestinal ulcers will appear.
So sometimes when the cerebral cortex is in a state of tension, when this regulatory function is weakened, it is mainly sympathetic nerve excitement or parasympathetic nerve excitement. This is sometimes related to the activity type characteristics of a person's nervous system and some people's personality characteristics. Generally speaking, extroverts are prone to excessive excitement of sympathetic nerves under tension, while introverts are prone to excessive excitement of parasympathetic nerves, so the following
Then the second largest system is the neuroendocrine system, which is in a state of tension and stress, and its endocrine activities are unbalanced, such as diabetes and hyperthyroidism. It is a typical psychosomatic disease of endocrine system, that is, under the action of stressors and adverse psychosocial factors, their endocrine activities are out of balance, which makes them suffer from hyperthyroidism, diabetes, and of course other diseases.
The third system is the immune system. Creatures under stress for a long time, or we human beings, have not only nervous system reactions, endocrine reactions, but also immune system reactions. The human immune system consists of two parts, one is humoral immunity and the other is cellular immunity. If a person's humoral immune function declines, then for external pathogenic microorganisms, external pathogenic substances invade our body. That resistance will drop. If a person's cellular immune function declines, then this person can't find and kill some mutant or malignant cells in his body in time, which will lead to the occurrence of tumors. So how should we deal with such diverse life events and stressors? How to maintain our physical and mental health by dealing with these stressors reasonably and appropriately?
Well, generally speaking, there are five ways to deal with stress.
The first is to avoid or stay away from stressors, the second is to use psychological defense mechanism properly and reasonably, the third is to re-evaluate events or situations, the fourth is to seek support, and the fifth is to exercise properly. Then let's briefly explain, for example, to avoid and stay away from stressors. Sometimes stressful events and some bad stimuli in life can't be changed because of our subjective efforts. In this case, our main task is not to change the events that make us feel dissatisfied and angry, but to avoid being stimulated by such events as much as possible, so that our bodies can avoid the stress state.
The second is the psychological defense mechanism we talked about earlier, that is, we may use some psychological defense mechanisms on the conscious or unconscious level. Then, of course, at the level of consciousness, we can control our bad psychological reactions within a reasonable range through proper self-evaluation and assessment of the situation. At the same time, we can also use some subconscious psychological defense mechanisms at certain times and under certain circumstances to minimize adverse psychological reactions.
The third is to re-evaluate the event or situation. Sometimes, when we encounter an unfavorable life event, or are influenced by a negative or traumatic event, we may fall into a cognitive misunderstanding for a long time, and feel that I am unlucky and that this is all bad. However, we ancient people in China actually had very dialectical views and methods to look at things. For example, a blessing in disguise is a blessing in disguise. This is a reassessment of the situation. In addition, sometimes we need to look at the problem from another angle. When we face an unfortunate life event or a bad situation, we look at the problem in a cognitive way, which may lead to negative comments. When we look at the problem from another angle or another angle, our psychological tension and bad mood may be alleviated. Because everything has multiple meanings, it is very important to re-evaluate events or situations.
The fourth is to seek support, that is, when we encounter unpleasant and unpleasant things, we should seek appropriate help, such as looking for relatives, friends, or seeking the help of psychologists. In this way, seeking some professional or emotional support will help us reduce tension and weaken bad emotional reactions.
Fifth, proper exercise, which is especially advocated by our professional workers in medical psychology, is that when we are in a bad psychological state or in a bad mood, we should not sit there brooding and bemoaning, but actually go out for a walk, or play ball games, run, and then exercise properly. This kind of exercise itself has a certain amount of exercise and a certain intensity, which can vent our redundant energy. We also need energy when we are worried or angry. If we vent these extra energy through exercise, we don't have enough strength to get angry. This may be a popular explanation, but there is a physiological significance behind it.
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