In the past several years, I’ve become a big proponent of watching TV—without a phone nearby—as a strategy for coping with stress.
You may be rolling your eyes as you’re reading this (I mean, did you really need someone with a Ph.D. in psychology to tell you to watch TV?). But hear me out.
Overwhelmed as most of us are these days, we may tell ourselves that doing something like watching TV is a frivolity. We feel guilty because we could be doing a million other things, especially now. And when we have a free minute we go straight to our phones, which continue to feed us terrible news and show us the supposedly perfect lives of people who aren’t us.
Sitting down and actually watching TV (or immersing ourselves in any type of art) without the distraction of a phone benefits us for a number of reasons. It is a stress reliever, of course, allowing us to return to work or parenting refreshed and ready. And it can also make us think. I’m not joking when I say that the table-tossing antics of the Housewives informed my ideas about emotion regulation. TV watching can also provide a fun family activity, as when my sons, husband and I get together every week to watch The Traitors.
Perhaps most importantly, TV, or any other form of art, can present us with a vision of a brighter future, which we desperately need in these fraught times. During the early months of COVID, for example, I struggled as a therapist. Therapy is inherently hopeful, based on the premise that positive, enduring change is possible. But I wondered how could I instill hope in my patients when the world was falling apart.
I found my answer in a sitcom, Parks and Recreation, and specifically in its main character, Amy Poehler’s Leslie Knope. Leslie helped me on a number of fronts. For starters, she provided a welcome distraction from the awful news cycle that was causing me tremendous stress, and from my work and parenting which at times threatened to overwhelm me. I could turn to her and her cronies in Pawnee and, at least temporarily, get the mental break I needed, allowing me to return to the stressor du jour recharged and refreshed.
Leslie also inspired me to respond to my own feelings of hopelessness with action, and to recommend that my patients do the same. Leslie and her government friends used their platform to help people, and attempted to respond to perceived injustices with corrective action. Much of what I preached to my inconsolable patients (and myself) amounted to Leslie’s philosophy that if things are scary and terrible, you must commit yourself, even in very small ways, to making things better.
Finally, Leslie gave me hope. Yes, I knew she was fictional. But I also knew that there were many real people out there like her, who actually cared about their fellow citizens and created positive change in their communities. Knowing that there were others who were trying to make things better gave me hope that maybe, someday, things might actually improve. I endeavored to share this sense of hope with my patients.
I’ve now re-watched Parks & Rec several times, most recently with my teenage son (and yes, I insist that he put his phone down when we watch). This show continues to be a stress reliever for me, and I continue to encourage my patients to seek out similar balms, whether in the form of TV shows, movies, books, music, theater, visual art, or podcasts (and speaking of Amy Poehler–her podcast Good Hang is a real source of joy and hope for me right now).
I hope, of course, that things quiet down a bit in our world, and that life eventually becomes less stressful for all of us. But in the meantime, when, to quote Leslie Knope, “Everything hurts and I’m dying,” I will turn to her and other fictional friends—for stress relief, for family bonding time, for creative inspiration, and perhaps most importantly, for hope. I recommend you do the same.
Thoughts? Questions? Contact me here!
