How do you handle stressful situations?
- Anger
- Calmly working out a solution
- Complaining to anyone who will listen
- Moping alone
Ah, a more detailed answer. Ah, journaling on OKCupid… I suppose I’ll have to copy this over to lessthanthis.com, where I ‘normally’ do my journalling. Anyway, moving on…
I suppose it depends on how stressful the situation is for me; most of the time I’m able to calmly work out a solution to potentially stressful situations before they really get bad. Sometimes I’m not so lucky; usually when the source of stress is a human being, and moreso when it is a human being I care deeply about (and/or love). In those situations where, despite my best efforts, I am unable to work things out calmly, I take all three of the other options… not at once, not usually even serially, it just depends on the situation.
Like with a recent situation with an ex that became quite stressful and which she insisted remain secret: I respected her wishes and did not speak to anyone about it who didn’t already know, cutting off the ‘Complaining’ option in this case. I still cannot discuss the circumstances (I have yet to determine the statute of limitations on this secret), but getting angry couldn’t have solved or changed anything about the situation, so I didn’t really bother with that, either. Mostly I just kept quiet after offering what I could to try to calmly work the situation out, moping alone.
But when my new car started giving me problems three days off the lot and the dealership tried not to talk to me at all and then only to tell me the problems wouldn’t be covered – without even looking at the car – I was already stressed out when I had walked into the dealership, and after trying to work it out calmly, resorted to anger. My anger got the guy to at least look at the car and give me the time of day (actually, his name and phone number, so I could register an official complaint with his corporate masters later), though he still refused to help me. Luckily, even though I had already got angry, when I spoke for the nth time that day to corporate I was able to remain calm and explain (complain about) the situation again (to someone in a call center with no chance of controlling the guy at the dealership, but who at least listened and did something instead of listening and telling me to go to the dealership) and get the help I needed.
So… All of these. Depends on the situation, depends on the stressor.