Stressed?
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If you thought that when you are under stress your automaton is to look for what will calm you down, think again.
A new study from the University of Pennsylvania shows that stressed people prefer to talk to other stressed people and exacerbate the tension together, unless they are people with a high level of self-control or feelings of conscience.
The study examines how tension spreads among communities and social networks, and what are the human qualities that can moderate such an effect.
This contagious nature is simply a matter of survival, presumably to foster community support and cooperation in stressful situations, but it is unhealthy over time and we should learn to moderate it.
Our tendency to think that if we are stressed, our automaton will be to look for what or who will calm us down.
But the current study presents a completely different picture.
It shows that consciously or not, if we feel pressure, we tend to turn to those who are in a similar situation.
And this despite the fact that interacting with them further aggravates the feelings of tension we experience.
find the least stressed people
In this study, the researchers followed 315 people over many months and saw that not everyone is equally sensitive to this social stress effect.
It is evident that the effect was substantially increased in conditions and situations of agreement between the person's social contacts.
On the other hand, people who were found to have a low level of neuroticism, combined with a high level of conscientiousness, awareness and orientation of internal control, these qualities helped them prevent the transfer of stress, and they even sought to seek more positive social support and circles that encourage a healthy coping with stress.
Knowing how to manage our stress in social and community interactions can be a significant component to our quality of life, especially during this time.
So in order to moderate the tension and not "infect" more people with harmful stress or be "infected" by them, it is important that we know how to choose better with whom we share our concerns and how we do not "surrender" to a destructive process that amplifies our negative feelings and weakens us.
Stress at different levels is common everywhere and in every aspect of our lives.
Over the years and the accumulated knowledge about the harmful effect of stress on mental, physical and social well-being, both on the individual and on the institutions to which they belong, stress has become a significant, talked about and important issue.
Along with it, many techniques were born to deal with and release the same pressure.
Conventional wisdom tends to regard stress as arising from people's inherent intrapersonal psychological response to situations where demands are high, while the resources that can be used to cope with these situations are low.
However, this intrapersonal perspective of stress development has been challenged in recent decades.
Increasing evidence suggests that interpersonal processes play a critical role in the spread of stress in communities.
Choose to share your stress on social networks?
You are in danger of being empowered/ShutterStock
The terrible recipe for intensifying your stress
The findings in the study provide important insights for those who want to plan a positive network intervention to reduce stress levels in the population and promote health outcomes in communities.
For example, it is important to bring awareness to the understanding that people who are looking for many friends online and want to openly express their stressful feelings, this will come back to them with a reverberation and in more difficult levels, which may make them even more vulnerable.
The tendency to reach out to others who are similar to us in terms of the level of stress, can lead to and strengthen the separation between people who are under high stress and low stress throughout the network.
The research findings regarding the role of social influence on our stress level shed light on potential strategies that may help disrupt this cycle.
For example, a community intervention could be set up that would encourage people who are experiencing stress to deliberately avoid interacting with others who are similarly stressed.
That is, to connect them to other people, or to recommend activities (such as breathing and sports) that will help them relax.
In addition, people with low neuroticism, who have the ability to control, awareness and high conscientiousness, can be encouraged to be guides for those who experience a lot of stress.
It is also important to create a group of mentors who will support the instructors themselves, in order to reduce the potential negative impact of interacting with high-stress colleagues.
In conclusion, the research emphasizes to us that when we experience stress, we don't necessarily choose the actions that calm us down or that make us feel good.
Therefore, it is important to be aware of this, and to plan in advance moves that will help us relax.
Dr. Shirley Hershko is a psychotherapist, a senior expert in the field of attention, diagnoses and treats
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