Health News and Information

When people ignore the warnings of stage one and stage two stress breakdown and keep going under the stressful circumstances, breakdown is inevitable. Everyone has a breaking point. When people break down under stress, the reasons for persisting in the stressful circumstances can be divided into two.

1. The stress breakdown victim has chosen to ignore the warnings of breakdown.

2. The stress-breakdown victim has been unable to escape from the excessive stress and responsibility.

The first question in the great coping debate concerns itself with the personality of the coping person. What are the characteristics of the coping personality, and is there anything that can be done to alter this person’s attitudes towards an approach to life less likely to cause stress breakdown? In my experience, coping people have some personality characteristics in common.

• They have high standards which they expect from themselves and others.

•   They tend to have low self-esteem and often feel they need to earn the approval of others.

•   They tend to use a method of relating to other people where they tend to put the needs of other people ahead of their own needs.

•   While they put other people’s needs ahead of their own, they resent having to do this, but they tend to feel guilty about the resentment they feel.

The factors which contribute towards the development of the coping personality are multiple and complex. Firstly, coping is much prized by our society. From infancy we are tempted, cajoled, blackmailed and forced into competition with others. Our society awards us badges, qualifications and rewards for excellence, for winning. However, winners are always losers. Before a winner is a winner, he has failed to win top place, and after he loses top place, he is a loser.

Thus, our society teaches its children to value competition and ambition to succeed, and in doing so teaches them fear of failure and the possibility of being less popular if we’re unable to win a place in the race of life.

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