How Do You Deal With Stressed Out People?

Everyone has been in a situation where things are going great for you, but a friend, loved one, or coworker is under a great deal of stress. Dealing with stress in people can place a great deal of stress on you and other people around them.

When people get extremely stressed, there are a few behavior patterns that people tend to assume, depending on their personality type and the problems at hand. The two stress-induced personality types that are probably the most well known can be called the extreme-anger and sky-is-falling types.

Extreme Anger Types

Extreme anger personality types will try to subconsciously find ways to vent, which eases the pressure of the stress they’re dealing with. Shouting matches and lashing out are common behavior patterns, but it’s important to remember that whatever the person is angry about isn’t usually the root problem.

Try to not become involved in a downward cycle by shouting back or becoming defensive, but rather try to get the person to talk about what’s really bothering them. You’ll also be able to get a closer look at the real person inside and maybe give them some objective perspective as to how their behavior appears to and affects others.

Hopefully, instead of making life miserable for everyone, the extreme anger individual can deal with their problem and move on.

Sky Is Falling Chicken Little Types

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.