TV as stress relief?
TV is so great. What’s not to love? Engaging storytelling, beautiful people, compelling music, tears or laughter or nail-biting. Whatever mood I’m in, I can change it in 30-45 minutes. I can step away from my life and live someone else’s life for a bit.
Television is a great hobby. And it can even relieve some stress.
But what happens when reducing stress from one thing causes stress in another part of your life? What happens when relaxing by watching tv (or TikToks, or social media, or playing video games) starts to cause problems?
Disengagement coping strategies are ways of taking mind off of stressors. You disengage from the thing causing stress and spend time elsewhere. Often that time gets spent on hobbies. Hobbies are pastimes for pleasure or relaxation. They are how we spend our leisure time.
Trouble arises, however, when we overspend our leisure time on our hobbies and don’t spend enough time on things like household chores, engaging with valuable relationships, contributing to parenting, and other effortful endeavors. It’s much easier to “check out” and mindlessly watch entertainment than to exert effort to take care of yourself and your house, family, relationships, etc. When we spend too much time on our hobbies, like tv, it puts burdens on others in your life, straining relationships and costing you money and time in the long run.
I was interviewed for an article for Fatherly a few years ago on How Streaming Too Much Television Can Sabotage Your Relationship. There’s so much to this article... from brain chemistry to time management to sexy shows. Here’s an excerpt (including a few of my quotes):
Watching TV is a more active experience than we are prone to believe. According to Longwood University Biopsychology and Neuroscience professor Catherine Franssen, while our bodies are at rest as we watch TV our brains are frantically firing off chemicals.
“It’s a really great trick they do to keep us watching,” Franssen said. “It’s essentially activating our stress response, our fight or flight. By the end of the show, we’re engrossed in the story and the characters. “
When we binge watch episodic television, our brains are on a rollercoaster looping through stress and alleviation from stress. When a TV episode ends on a cliffhanger and our brains release the stress hormones cortisol and norepinephrine in response. Even though if we’re watching TV late at night, we feel wired and compelled to watch another show.
Franssen said that while we characterize stress as unpleasant, it’s also a crucial part of excitement and fun. “Stress, in moderation, is what we live for,” she said. “Think of a roller coaster ride. It’s fun because it stresses us out a little bit for a short period of time.”
As TV excites our brain with stress, it warms it with something close to love. Because we like and empathize with characters in shows, our brain is swimming in oxytocin, a hormone associated with affection, bonding, and passion. And the pleasure of watching the show activates our brains’ reward circuit by releasing feel-good chemicals dopamine and serotonin.
With so much going on in for us internally, interruptions from the outside world can be jarring. “Shows can pull us away from a relationship,” Franssen said. When your partner is locked into a show you can feel frustrated that they’re not engaging with you. And they’re getting a feeling of accomplishment and reward from the show, so there’s less incentive to perform the real world work that makes us feel the same satisfaction. Half-listening to a spouse’s concerns — or ignoring them altogether — is a major marital issue.
“My wife and I had a blow-out argument a few weeks ago because she said that I was watching too much television instead of listening intently to her,” says Nick Holcomb, a 33-year-old father of one. Holcomb says that he uses TV to destress after a long day in the office (he’s a financial analyst) but he did realize that he was watching it instead of having actual discussions with his wife.
So how do we solve this issue? The key is to put together a whole stress management toolkit. One form of stress relief may help, but cause other challenges, as we’ve talked about with the tv example. A diverse toolkit that includes a wide variety of active coping strategies can help you regularly manage stress. And a good approach to time management will help make sure you have enough time for all of the important things in your life, from your favorite shows to your favorite people. Reach out for help developing your stress management toolkit! Catherine@FranssenStrategies.com.
