Stress is anything that results from emotional or physical tension. Whenever we carry out any work against our desire, tension grapples us, which gives rise to stress.
ESTJs love to organize stuff around them and maintain order. When they come across people who go against their norm, ESTJs come under stress.
We will learn more about ESTJ stress triggers and how they cope with stress in this writing piece.
Factors leading to stress in ESTJ personalities
An individual’s personality type has a major role to play in how he reacts to stress. The same thing is applicable for ESTJ, one of the Myers Briggs personality types. There are three different stages.
When there is very little stress, you find it quite easy to use the most appropriate behavioral patterns for tackling the situation. It often happens that you might have learned those behaviors back in school.
As stress increases gradually, learned behavior gives way to natural style. Therefore, the ESTJ would behave more as per their personality type when they come under greater stress.
For instance, during a crisis, you could take orders, decide what you should do, tell others what to do, and implement tried and tested methods for finding solutions to short-term issues.
You could also take hasty decisions too soon without making any consideration about their impact on people, start criticizing others for their actions and completely ignore their feelings.
Stress triggers differ from one person to another, based on your Myers Briggs personality type. Let us now check out the factors or the stress triggers that irritate this well-organized personality type.
1. Disorganization and chaos
ESTJ personality type people become frustrated when they see people not conducting themselves in an organized manner. They exhibit a similar level of frustration when certain situations of life do not pan out systematically. Lack of structure causes stress and hampers their flow of work.
Under these situations, ESTJs will try and stamp their authority for transforming situations and people’s approaches toward work. They will make sure that things happen as per the needs of their personality type.
2. Inconsistency in relationships
When it comes to relationships, ESTJs always look for consistency. They struggle when others fail to maintain the same and behave haphazardly. For these individuals, consistency is the key to building trust in relationships.
Hence, ESTJs do not like those who are flaky and do not keep their word. Trusting those people becomes an issue for them. Thus, things become extremely difficult for them to handle stress.
3. Vulnerable situations
All those individuals with the ESTJ personality type cannot feel empathetic or express emotions when they have to confront emotionally vulnerable situations. They always tend to ignore their emotions. Due to this reason, it negatively impacts how they process crucial scenarios.
Understanding others’ emotions and appropriately reacting to them is something that does not come easily for ESTJs. When life puts them under all those situations, which require a patient hearing the problem, analyzing it from the emotional side, and accordingly offering appropriate solutions, ESTJs start to feel stressed out.
4. Facing disappointments from others
ESTJs usually have high expectations from those people, who they feel carry the tremendous potential to do something big in life. Still, things do not always go as per plan. Therefore, when those high potential individuals fail to meet the expectations of an ESTJ, they get stressed thinking about their next plan of action.
Ideally, an ESTJ should look at a person’s situation in an empathetic manner. It would allow these personality types people to help them out and perform their jobs better. Lowering the level of expectations from others can also come of great help.
5. Unwanted changes in the environment
ESTJs live in the present moment and they hate changes taking place without prior intimation. It tends to easily irritate these people and all their plans go haywire. This becomes an overwhelming situation for them to handle. They cannot come to terms with the change too soon and start dealing with stress.
If these individuals get sufficient time to adjust to the changing circumstances, then ESTJ people can easily adapt themselves to even unexpected changes extremely well. They manage to mold their behavioral patterns as per the needs of the situation.
6. Working on your own
This is another factor that leads to stress in an ESTJ personality type person. They hate working alone, with no one assisting them in any manner. There is a lack of confidence within them that makes them think they will not manage to pull something through by themselves.
They mustn’t disregard their potential. ESTJs should recognize their strong points and back their instincts to get through any situation with flying colors. They must realize that they have the requisite skill and talent to decode any problem and resolve it on time.
7. Lengthy periods of work
ESTJs hate working for long hours at a stretch without any interruption. Under these situations, somehow, they feel as if their concentration level is wavering, and need some time off to get rejuvenated.
If they cannot take a break for some reason, like an urgent meeting or a call, they suffer from frustration and that results in stress.
8. Provide an overview without details
Ideally, when someone needs to give an overview to a person or a team, he or she should carry out some details regarding the project. Still, some people can handle this tricky situation in an office and convey messages to the team in the right spirit.
Unfortunately, it is not the case with ESTJs. They need to have all the details in front of them for communicating and instructing the team members about what they need to do. When the details are not present with them, it happens to be a cause for their stress.
9. Concentrate on possibilities
ESTJs prefer to have surety in their lives. They do not want to leave anything to chance. Hence, whenever certain situations carry some ideas, contemplating over which may or may not give favorable results, ESTJs will prefer to stay away from them.
These circumstances will make them suffer from stress and tension. They will hate to think of possibilities in their lives. It is because possibilities carry some chance of things not turning out in your favor.
10. Confront a lot of complex situations
Simplicity is the forte of an ESTJ. This personality type individual always prefers avoiding complex situations in their lives, as they result in stress. It is especially true when they come in huge numbers, needing ESTJs to think out of the box promptly to find the right solutions.
ESTJs should understand the fact that life will always come up with different kinds of situations from time to time. Some will be quite easy to handle, while others will be complicated, but keeping a cool head on your shoulders and a thorough analysis of the situations can help them deal with those situations easily.
Ways to cope with stress in ESTJ personalities
Several ways can help people of ESTJ personality type cope with stressful situations in their daily lives.
They are as follows –
1. Go shopping
The no-nonsense personality of an ESTJ will feel at ease if they do some productive work, like driving over to a place and getting hold of a new jacket. You can even think of getting a pair of new snickers.
Once they are through with shopping, they might go over to the coffee shop to grab some snacks and a cup of coffee. For an extrovert like an ESTJ, these activities will help them get rid of stress.
2. Avoid attacking the problem causing stress
When an ESTJ suffers from stress, they mustn’t directly attack the problem causing them stress. Rather they should concentrate on getting rid of those issues that are somehow associated with the main problem.
We know that ESTJs love to have details under their belt. So, only giving them an overview to convey information to their teammates is not sufficient.
Under this situation, rather than losing sleep on the overview, try and get in touch with your supervisor for clarification on the issue and find an appropriate solution.
3. Break up the larger assignments into smaller pieces
It can be quite difficult for an ESTJ to handle larger assignments and find an appropriate way out of those situations.
Their organized approach to any work might turn out to be quite time-consuming, but they can easily cope with stress if they can divide the larger assignment into smaller tasks.
Once they take care of the smaller tasks, which do not consume much of their time, the bigger projects will automatically take care of themselves. Moreover, they will be able to carry out their duties with far more interest and enthusiasm.
4. Lend them your ear
ESTJs often come under stress with the thought of carrying out duties and responsibilities by themselves. This problem takes care of itself when they find that someone is willing to listen to their problems.
If you are someone who is interested in talking to an ESTJ person and resolving their issues, encourage them to clearly express what they have on their mind. When they manage to share their thoughts and ideas with others, it would automatically help them calm down.
5. Try to validate their feelings
All those individuals who are ready to listen to the feelings of ESTJs, need to assure them that their feelings are valid. They have every right to feel the way they have been doing all this while.
This validation will allow them to pursue their emotions without any hindrance. They will have the confidence to know whatever they think and do is right for tackling any situation.
6. Enroll in a book club
ESTJs always like to be among smart and like-minded people. They love having a close-knit group of friends. Now, the time has come for you to expand your network and enroll in a book club. There you can get to meet new people with varied personalities.
It can help you exchange ideas with them and know about their tastes and preferences. You can unwind, relax and have fun with those individuals, hence making your stress go for a toss.
7. Catch up with friends for a drink
Hanging out with friends is something that an ESTJ loves to do the most and hence, this activity happens to be on the top of their list of priorities.
You love to spend time discussing a whole lot of things with them, right from political discussions, heated debates, and getting into arguments while analyzing a recent football match.
Even if you do not always turn out to be the life of the party but you love holding your group of friends together. You are always willing to catch up with them for a drink. It helps to release your stress and tension in no time.
8. Indulge in meditation and exercise
ESTJs are always on the go. Hence, they tend to consider meditation as nothing but a waste of time. The truth is something different from their thoughts. Meditation can allow ESTJ to get rid of their stress and let them start to feel relaxed.
This happens because meditation helps to bring clarity to the thoughts of an ESTJ and that automatically reduces their level of stress. As they are naturally energetic individuals, hence, a mix of meditation and exercise can be a great way to stay calm.
9. Undertake some household chores
An ideal way to manage and get rid of stress for an ESTJ is by carrying out some household activities. Cleaning up the drawing room, organizing your bookshelf, or rearranging your formal and informal wear can make you feel good.
It happens because there is a different feeling altogether when you concentrate on making your house look neat and clean. All these activities should come naturally to ESTJs as they are an organized lot. They love keeping everything in proper order.
10. Avoid responding emotionally
ESTJ personality type people should look to avoid giving away emotional reactions under stress. The reason behind this suggestion is that these individuals always tend to showcase extreme emotions.
They will become very quiet at one point, shy away from showing that they are tense and at the very next moment, they will showcase their agitation toward something that has caused their stress and start criticizing the same.
To Sum Up
We have had a comprehensive discussion regarding the triggers that lead to stress among ESTJs. The article has also looked into ways to effectively manage their stress.
Others need to make ESTJs feel important, have organized people around, and not leave anything to chance in their lives.
