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Let’s talk about stress. Research shows that stress levels are on the rise. Penn State researchers, for example, report that stress levels for people in all age groups are significantly higher than they were in the ‘90s. This begs the question, “How do I effectively manage stress.” Well, people attempt to manage their stress in all sorts of ways. Today, I’m going to rate stress management techniques and explain why they are or are not effective.

To make this discussion manageable, I’m going to loosely group stress management tactics before I rate each group’s effectiveness. Some of the strategies can be placed in multiple categories, but I’ll simplify by listing them only once. Here they are, listed from least effective to most effective.

Avoidance 

This involves pretending you’re not feeling stressed. It’s a suppression of emotions in the hope that ignoring them will make them go away. Some people convince themselves that admitting to feelings of anxiety, worry, fatigue, etc. amounts to being weak and ineffective. But, we all experience feelings, and we all sometimes have strong or even overwhelming feelings. That doesn’t make us weak. It makes us human.

Ignoring feelings is problematic, because they don’t necessarily go away when you deny their existence. In fact, over time, they can build up and cause even more distress. Furthermore, even when we refuse to acknowledge them, feelings can cause tension in the body and in the mind that can manifest in harmful ways, such as lashing out at other people.

Overall, avoidance is the least effective strategy.

Masking

Masking involves medicating your stress reaction, typically with alcohol, drugs, or nicotine (which is a drug that can provide temporary feelings of pleasure and improved concentration). Medicating doesn’t deal directly with feelings, so it doesn’t reduce or eliminate the stress. Instead, it temporarily induces relaxation, euphoria, or other mental states that feel better than the stressful feelings. There are two problems with this. First, the effects of medication are temporary, so the feelings are likely to return. Second, medicating can have adverse effects such as addiction and poor physical health. It’s true that some drugs are less harmful than others, but even they only provide a temporary reprieve.

Overall, medicating is only temporarily effective and isn’t a good choice, because of potentially serious negative consequences.

Distracting Yourself

Distraction might be the single most commonly used form of stress management. It involves doing something else, typically something we experience as pleasant, in an effort to take our attention away from the stress. So many activities can be used as distractions: Surfing Youtube, social media or the web in general; watching TV; playing video games; listening to music; partying, shopping; gambling; eating; working, and a host of other things.

There is an upside and a downside to these kinds of activities. Pleasant activities are necessary. They generate happiness and help bring balance to our lives. But, when we habitually use pleasant activities as our primary method for coping with stress, we cross over to the downside.

Distraction provides only temporary relief, and some distracting activities such as emotional eating and gambling can have harmful consequences. In fact, any activity you habitually turn to for stress relief can get out of control. Someone who spends excessive amounts of time watching TV or gaming, for example, can suffer if these distractions prevent them from completing other necessary activities of daily living such as socializing, eating, or bathing.

Overall,