Each of us has our own way of dealing with stress, but sometimes we have to deal with friends, coworkers, or family members that are under a great deal of pressure. There are two personality types that are common and that tend to have easily recognizable patterns of behavior. Learning about these patterns can help you better deal with people who are stressed out and affecting you by increasing your own tension levels.
The extreme-anger type is characterized by lashing out at people around them for small things that normally would not be a problem, or turning talking points into shouting points. When dealing with the extreme-anger type, you have to remember that what they are freaking out about is not the problem, just an opportunity to vent.
Instead of focusing on what your angry comrade seems to be upset about, you have to side-step that conversation and move on to the root problem that is bothering them. By helping the extreme-anger type open up about their problems, you get a better look at them as a person and have the opportunity to tell them how their problems appear to a person who is not enraged. Hopefully, you can help them to move on and deal with their problems directly instead of making life difficult for everyone else.
Another pattern many people fall into when they are stressed is the sky-is-falling mentality. This is in many ways the opposite of the extreme anger type. The sky-is-falling person knows what is bothering them and is usually willing to share the laundry list of current stress factors in their life. Instead of lashing out at people around them, they feel sorry for themselves, and loath the infinite number of things that are keeping them from enjoying life.
Other than solving their problems, there is usually not much you can do for the sky-is-falling type. Trying to console them can be somewhat effective, depending on just how bleak they feel their situation is, but most likely their mood will not improve considerably until they have made decent progress on solving or eliminating their stress factors.
Remember that everyone has patterns of behavior when feeling stressed out, and that there are more than just the two patterns discussed in this article. Recognizing your own behavior when the tension rises is just as important as learning about the patterns of others, and trying to change our behavior to help others better deal with us is just as important as figuring out the behavior of people around us.
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