mental health poster

90% of your recent procrastination, inexplicable tears, and resistance to seeing people are not "bad personality", "overthinking" or "hypocritical". They are just normal psychological fluctuations. There is no need to bear it hard, and there is no need to be embarrassed to ask for help.

I was on duty at the psychological center last week, and I met a freshman who stood at the door for ten minutes with his schoolbag in hand. The first thing he said when he came in was "Teacher, am I hopeless?" He said that he had not wanted to go to class in the past half month, and he delayed writing his homework until half an hour before the deadline. His roommates laughed at him for being lazy, and he himself felt that he was too useless. In fact, after taking the scale, I knew that after three weeks of clubbing, military training, and placement tests at the beginning of the school year, the pressure had reached a threshold. It was a very common burnout during the adaptation period, and it was not even mild anxiety.

This misunderstanding is actually too common. Survey data from the Chinese Mental Health Association in 2023 shows that 86.2% of people aged 14-35 have experienced depression and reduced mobility that lasted for more than a week. Only less than 7% of them are psychological disorders that require clinical intervention. The rest are essentially the same thing as colds in the change of seasons or sore legs after running for a long time. Just take a break and adjust, and they are not labeled as "psychologically ill" at all.

I have talked with counselors from different directions before about how to deal with this kind of daily emotional problems, and the opinions are actually quite different. Psychoanalytic counselors will say that many sudden feelings of resistance are actually the awakening of old memories. For example, if you are irritable as soon as you sit in a meeting, maybe it is because you were always forced to perform in public by your parents when you were a child. Spend more than ten minutes trying to figure out when this feeling first occurred. Many people talked about it and it became clear. ； If you don’t like to talk about old scores, the 3-minute emotion recording form commonly used by cognitive behavioral orientation is very useful. You don’t need to make a complicated template. Just write down three contents: what emotion you are feeling now, what happened just now, and what I want to do most right now. After filling it out, you will find that most of the time your irritability points to a very small trigger point - maybe a work message you just received, or your deskmate knocked your pen. ； Consultants with a humanistic orientation are more casual. If you sit there chatting for two hours, they may not give you any advice, but just listen quietly. Many people feel relaxed after leaving the house. They don’t know why, but it just works.

Don't tell me, there really is no "standard answer". I met a boy who studied computer science before. He loved to use forms. He spent three minutes filling it out every day and his procrastination problem was solved within a week. ； There is also a girl who studies Chinese. She gets a headache when she sees the forms. She comes to chat for forty minutes every week. After three times, she happily tells us that she can finally go to the library and sit all afternoon.

Oh, by the way, don’t be fooled by those PUAs on the Internet who say “emotional stability is the most advanced accomplishment for adults.” Our industry has had arguments about this before. One group says that emotional stability is the core sign of mental health, while the other group says that deliberately suppressing emotions is the culprit. In fact, what is the absolute right or wrong? If you just want to curse or squat on the side of the road and cry, then just curse and cry. After crying, wipe your face and do whatever you want. This is much healthier than trying to smile with your lips stretched out. Last week, I stood in front of the store and pouted for three minutes because the milk tea I bought contained less pearls. This is not called psychological frailty, but a reaction that normal people should have.

There’s really no need to think about “adjusting your emotions” too complicated. We’ve seen too many easy tricks: A girl working in operations who feels stressed goes downstairs and squats for half an hour watching square dancing. It’s said to be more effective than an hour of meditation.； A high school senior student wrote down all the words he wanted to scold on a piece of paper before taking a mock exam, and then tore them up after writing. His anxiety was reduced by half. ； There is also a programmer who pinches bubble wrap for ten minutes every day when he comes home from get off work. As long as you don't harm yourself or others, feel free to feel comfortable.

By the way, we have posted a bunch of sticky notes and pens in the blank space next to this poster. If you have something you want to complain about but are too embarrassed to tell others, you can just write it down and paste it up. If you don’t want to leave your name, just finish writing and throw it in the trash can next to it. If you really feel overwhelmed, follow the arrow at the bottom of the poster, turn left and the third room is the door of the psychological center. There are people there from 8:00 to 20:00 on weekdays. No reservation is required. You can get candy first when you enter. You can talk about whatever you want, even if you just come to use the air conditioning and do homework, we will never chase you.