” Your brain shuts down when you’re stressed or upset.” My mom and dad would beat that trope into the ground from the time I was small until they died. I’m neuro-divergent and spent years in remedial classes, so that didn’t help.
My parents had a point. They took it too far. This raises another question: If they knew I had an issue, why did they continue to stress me out? Then, they wondered why it took so long to understand instructions.
It’s a matter of degree. If I’m a little stressed or excited, I’m hyper-alert and focused. But a new job or any new situation will stress me to the breaking point.
It wasn’t uncommon for me to start a new job, only for the supervisor to fire me before the week was over if he gave me that long.
My Learning Disabilities made things worse. The examples above describe a Psychological principle. That principle is the Yerkes-Dodson Law. With stress and performance, there’s an upside-down U.
On the left side at the bottom is low-stress. As a person moves up the left side, the stress increases. A little stress boosts performance. I look back at my security guard jobs, for example.
If I was being trained on a job and expected to learn it all in one shift. The job would overwhelm me, and I wouldn’t learn anything at all. After a few days, the gossip would get back to me about ” How slow you are.”
I understood why I was having trouble. My brain can’t process information fast enough, and too much stress makes things worse. I would struggle to learn a job.
My supervisors and coworkers would lose patience with me, and out the door, I went on the other side. I would find the rare job and supervisor who gave me a chance. I would work at that job for years, and my supervisor would rehire me in a heartbeat.
I was listening to a podcast where the discussion was about Learning. The host mentioned ” The Yerkes-Dodson Law.” The Law posits that there’s a sweet spot between stress and performance.
Too much stress, and if you’re like me, your brain would freeze, and you wouldn’t learn anything at all. You wouldn’t do the job right, and soon, you would be looking for another job.
On the other side, where there’s no stress at all, you would lose interest, and your supervisor would let you go. I don’t recall that happening to me. Either I hid my bad attitude, or my charming personality caused my employer to let things slide.
I have been on jobs when I was a security guard, where I did high-stress work for hours at a time. My work at those stressful posts was excellent.
I worked on other posts that a potted plant would have done as well or better. I did better at the stressful jobs up to a point. It was a matter of coping with stress and pressure.
I know from personal experience and observation that stress affects performance. I see it when I’m watching sporting events. The athletes channel stress, and the bigger the game, the better they perform. This year’s Super Bowl is proving the exception to the rule.
Employers would do well to learn psychology. At least enough to understand the learning styles of their employees. I could have been an excellent employee for a lot of companies if they knew how to work with my neurodivergence.
A lot of employers misunderstood my learning style and didn’t give me a chance. It’s their loss.
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