Men's Health Analysis: Methods for Managing Nervousness and Emotional Stress

How to Deal with Nervousness

A young man in Beijing, troubled by nervousness, wrote to 《Popular Health》 magazine asking how to regulate his emotions. Here is the advice given by Comrade Xiao Hua. This article is helpful to those in similar situations, and its summary is as follows:

We deeply sympathize with your suffering. Your condition is treatable. The psychological illness you are currently experiencing is a depressive reaction. Its root cause lies in personality flaws such as nervousness, suspicion, anxiety, low self-esteem, self-blame, lack of self-confidence, and maladaptive behavior. Therefore, even minor setbacks can trigger negative, pessimistic, or even suicidal thoughts. Treatment for this psychological illness should focus on the following three aspects:

① When experiencing depression, you can take antidepressants such as amitriptyline, imipramine, or doxepin under the guidance of a doctor, three times a day, 1-3 tablets each time. Start with a small dose and gradually increase it. Only one type of medication should be used. Mild side effects such as drowsiness and dry mouth may occur after taking the medication; these sensations will disappear after you get used to them. A course of treatment should last at least one month. If a depressive episode recurs later, it can be used again. This type of medication is not only effective for your depressive symptoms, but can also relieve symptoms such as headache, palpitations, and poor sleep. However, to cure this illness, you should never rely solely on medication; you must also combine it with the following two efforts:

② You must correctly recognize your personality flaws and strive to improve them through subjective effort. You must recognize that everyone has different abilities, and in your work, doing your best is enough for a good young person. You shouldn't be overly demanding of yourself, nor should you be excessively competitive or do things beyond your capabilities to maintain your self-esteem. For you personally, lowering your expectations of yourself and leaving room for flexibility is very important. This will prevent you from becoming too tense and allow you to do more work healthily. In short, doing what you can, not being afraid of making mistakes, correcting mistakes and dealing with them calmly, and not being constantly anxious, walking on thin ice, overly cautious, or nervous are key to overcoming your personality flaws.

③ You must cultivate an open mind and actively make more friends. Friendship and support can greatly help correct your character flaws and overcome difficulties encountered in your environment. Encouragement from close friends will also improve your self-esteem and help you understand yourself correctly. They will help you recognize your strengths, eliminate unnecessary feelings of inferiority, and thus build self-confidence. If you can successfully do these things, you will discover the beauty of life, experience true inner joy, and no longer be trapped in past troubles.

What is Tension Headache?

Tension headache, also known as muscle contraction headache, is one of the most common types of chronic headache. Its pathophysiological basis is the prolonged contraction of the muscles in the head and neck. The causes of this contraction are mostly psychological factors. These headaches are often related to interpersonal conflicts, frustrations, shame, guilt, jealousy, dwelling on problems, or deep-seated fears. It has also been found that many patients with these headaches have sexual dysfunction. Furthermore, research indicates that patients with this condition often have strong, stubborn, withdrawn, and cautious personality traits. The characteristic feature of this type of headache is persistent dull pain in the frontal, occipital, and neck regions. Patients often describe a feeling of tightness or pressure in the head. In some patients, even after the underlying cause of the headache has been eliminated, excessive worry about the disease keeps the tension in place, resulting in a prolonged course of illness. Patients often claim that their headaches have never subsided in many years. The mechanism of pain is generally believed to involve muscle contraction itself, which can cause pain, and this ischemia can also lead to pain. Furthermore, excitement and tension can cause spasms in certain arteries in the head, including those supplying the brain parenchyma. However, because the blood vessels cannot maintain contraction for long, they eventually dilate due to smooth muscle fatigue, resulting in a headache.

In fact, almost all pain is psychophysiological, and the psychological characteristics of chronic pain are particularly prominent. Therefore, for the treatment of tension headaches caused by psychological factors, patients should be helped to relieve negative emotions and anxieties about the prognosis, thus alleviating the tension and reducing or eliminating the headache.

Negative Emotions Age You Faster

Sleep deprivation doesn't necessarily ruin a person's appearance, but negative emotions can make one look haggard.

For a long time, people have believed that insomnia causes a haggard appearance, dry skin, and increased wrinkles, affecting one's appearance. However, what truly affects a person's appearance is the quality of their emotions. Negative emotions include anger, hatred, sadness, anxiety, panic, fear, resentment, pain, disarray, dissatisfaction, jealousy, and greed. These emotions disrupt psychological balance: causing weakness, abnormal posture, paleness, changes in heart rate and breathing frequency, and sometimes muscle tremors and sweating. This often leads to excessive tension in the facial nerves and muscles. Prolonged and intermittent negative emotions cause facial muscles to alternate between excessive tension and relaxation, ultimately causing the facial muscles to become stretched and wrinkles to appear.

People with disrupted sleep rhythms and irregular sleep patterns often appear tense and anxious during the day, experiencing negative emotions, which leads to a haggard appearance and increased wrinkles. If one can regulate their emotions and remain unaffected by insomnia, not only will their appearance not be damaged, but their insomnia will also improve. Every insomniac can try it.