What helps you to relax during those stressful times?

Good food!

Get outside, run or walk, get fresh air, feel the weather on my face. 45 minutes of that and I can handle just about anything.

A few things readjust my focus. Reading (a real book!), walking the dogs, playing a video game, talking to my mom, etc ..

Booze

For me, it’s gardening. For my partner, it’s decorating her home and looking at decorating magazines (she missed her calling).

Hot baths, a walk or reading 19th century novels.

Frankly, video games. It may not be the healthiest coping mechanism, but I find that anything that can absorb me so fully that I’m not thinking about anything else is the best way to get through acute stress, and video games are some of the only things that can absorb me like that.

(Also, hi!)

A nice cold shower will refresh you and open your mind and… if anything else failed, masturbation lol.

Weed. Food. Good TV/movies/books.

Escapist things, books movies, being away from sources of info (outside with dog, stuff like that). I’ll do better come spring and summer when I can garden and be by the water.
@KNOWITALL: by “real books” you mean instead of newspapers and magazines and social media?

V-O-D-K-A plain and simple.

@canidmajor Yes, and I like books with real pages, as opposed to e-books. The smell of pages and ink, the bookmarks, etc…

Lately it’s been killing zombies in my derby buggy.

@KNOWITALL: Ah, there we differ. For me, a real book is the words. If I want paper, I go to the recycle bin.

I worked hard and sacrificed a lot to not really get stressed out. I live super cheap and never have to worry about money. No kids, no wife, no car. Really, 90% of our stress is money. Lack of, how to acquire and so on. I skipped that step.

But I am on cruise control. My mom gets stupid a few times a month and I need a cigarette but that is about it. Generally my days are a few hours of easy work and staring out the window hoping for the ground to dry so I can run up to the high school and shoot hoops.

I like to be with nature..it relaxes you tremendously.

Firing housestaff for no other reason than my own personal amusement, also…tossing boiled sweeties from my bedroom window onto the soft heads of clueless passers by can be very therapeutic particularly when it makes that satisfying crack sound on impact.

meditation….........and gin & tonic.

Tequila when it is really bad.

Stomping on Cheetos.