Notes on the Management of Tension

This article provides notes on the management of tension.

Tension is one’s physical, mental and chemical response to things that are frightening, confusing or irritating.

In managing tension a person is confronted with two problems:

(a) To meet the requirements of tension.

(b) To protect the self from psychological damage and disorganization.

When a person feels competent to handle a tension provoking situation, his behaviour tends to be task oriented i.e. dealing with the requirements of adjustive demands. But when feeling of adequacy is seriously threatened by the tension, his reactions tend to be defence oriented i.e. protecting the self from hurt.

Coping has been defined broadly as any effort towards tension management or the things that people do to avoid being harassed by strain of life. One’s cognitive and behavioural efforts constantly keep on changing so as to manage specific external or internal demands. The word manage includes minimizing, avoiding, tolerating and accepting the tension.

Any tension provoking situation can be faced by either task oriented reaction patterns or defence oriented reaction patterns. Task-oriented reaction patterns are aimed at meeting the demands of the tension provoking situations whereas defence oriented reaction patterns may involve making changes in one’s self or one’s surroundings or both depending on the situation only.

Task-oriented reactions are based on objective appraisal of the situation. They are rational, constructive and consciously directed. Inaccurate information, faulty value and poor judgment can lead to mal-adaptive reaction.

Listed below are Ego-defence mechanisms which function to relieve tension and to protect the self from hurt and devaluation. These reactions protect individuals from internal and external threats.

(a) Denial of reality:

Protection of self from unpleasant reality by refusal to perceive or face it.

(b) Fantasy:

Gratifying frustrated desires by imaginary achievements.

(c) Repression:

Preventing painful or dangerous thoughts from entering consciousness.

(d) Rationalization:

Attempting to prove that one’s behaviour is “rational” and justifiable and thus worthy of self and social approval.

(e) Projection:

Placing blame for difficulties upon others or attributing one’s own unethical desires to others.

(f) Reaction formation:

Preventing dangerous desires from being expressed by exaggerating opposed attitudes and similar type of behaviour, using them as “barriers”.

(g) Displacement:

Discharging pent-up feelings usually of hostility, on objects less dangerous than those which initially aroused the emotions.

(h) Emotional insulation:

Reducing ego involvement and withdrawing into passivity to protect self from hurt.

(i) Intellectualization (isolation):

Cutting off affective charge from hurtful situations or separating incompatible attitudes by logic-tight compartments.

(j) Undoing:

Counteracting immoral desires or acts.

(k) Regression:

Retreating to earlier developmental level involving less mature responses and usually of a lower level of aspiration.

(l) Introjection:

Incorporating external values and standards into ego structure so that individual is not at the mercy of external threats.

(m) Compensation:

Covering up weakness by emphasizing desirable trait or making up for frustration in one area by over-gratification in another.

(n) Acting out:

Reducing the anxiety aroused by forbidden or dangerous desires by permitting their expression. Tension produces multidimensional complexities and its solution lies no more within the domain of psychological techniques only. Rather, there is need to look into the mence of tension by philosophical approach, physical approach and medical curative approach also.

Time management concept tells us to have a time and place for everything and do everything in its time and place. This technique helps in getting optimum results and one finds more time for leisure as compared to those who are always hurrying. When one races with time and that too all the time, the racer ends up in the constant state of tension.

It has been rightly said that being rushed is not a virtue but it is sign of bad management. Life would be simple indeed if one’s biological and psychological needs were automatically gratified, but instead these turn out to be environmental and personal obstacles which place adjustive demands (stress) on the individual. Hence the demand is for proper planning and systematic and steady execution.

Proper time management helps not only in avoiding tension but also in developing an orderly mind that functions effectively and efficiently without confusion. Discipline has a vital role to play in reducing tension in day to day life. Discipline is orderly doing of things and by this process, the doer gets a lot of satisfaction in the long run.

Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister has rightly emphasised that the greatest of all indiscipline’s is emotional indiscipline which upsets an individual the most. There is a growing conviction that the ways people manage tension affect their psychological, physical and social well-being.

One can, by adopting correct managing strategy and therapy regarding the problem of tension, enjoy good health which is nothing but an orderly, unified and progressive functioning of the individual’s physiology and psychology.