Why “down time” doesn’t work for you…
Saturday, December 17, 2023. Happy birthday to my son, Dan!
A new study suggests that humans who leave work and return home stressed are often unable to unwind by watching TV, or playing video games to in an effort to chill out. It seems for stressed-out humans, down time can be a downer.
But as if that wasn’t bad enough, humans with the highest degree of stress also experience another complication; a compelling sense of shame, feeling like a loser for zoning out on binge-watching Netflix, or playing Call of Duty to de-stress in the first place.
Ironically, research shows that it is the humans who are the most exhausted after work who have the most to gain from flopping down in front of the Idiot Box.
What am I saying? Research has consistently found that relatively mindless activities, like consuming media, can help people restore their mental energies. However, for these consistently stressed-out German and Swiss humans, this does not seem to be their experience, because their stress and self-reproach get in the way.
How the study was conducted
The findings come from surveys of around 500 humans living in both Switzerland, and Germany.
They were asked how much work they had done the previous day, how tired they felt as a rule, and how much video-gaming or TV they consume.
They were also asked about their feelings of guilt, procrastination and whether they felt their downtime had been effective in re-energising them.
Dr Leonard Reinecke, the study’s lead author, said:
“We are beginning to better understand that media use can have beneficial effects for people’s well-being through media-induced recovery.
Our present study is an important step towards a deeper understanding of this.
It demonstrates that in real life the relationship between media use and well-being is complicated and that the use of media may conflict with other, less pleasurable but more important duties and goals in everyday life.”
Self-reproach seems to be the aggravating factor…
One suggestion for better stress management from this study is to perhaps to inhibit “trying” as a stress reducing mindset. Go easy on yourself and luxuriate in the squandering of leisure time.
You don’t need to learn anything new. You don’t need to critique how you spend much-needed downtime. Sometimes being a slacker is good for the soul. Learn to burn time sometimes to keep your soul warm.
Final thoughts about media-induced stress recovery…
Feeling guilty about how you chill when you are exhausted means that you end up failing to chill in the first place. Self-indulgence is more effective in de-stressing than a self-critique.
I’m confident that these findings are also confirming the value of cinematherapy, although in a somewhat oblique fashion.
Kick back. Get lost in a fictional world.
Binge watching something new.
Let your mind and imagination become totally absorbed with the problems of fictional characters. Happily let your work-awareness slip the surly bonds of mundane reality.
Be well, stay kind, and Godspeed.
RESEARCH:
Leonard Reinecke, Tilo Hartmann, Allison Eden, The Guilty Couch Potato: The Role of Ego Depletion in Reducing Recovery Through Media Use, Journal of Communication, Volume 64, Issue 4, August 2014, Pages 569–589, https://doi.org/10.1111/jcom.12107
