Let’s get straight to the point, negative ways to cope with stress exist…but if you use some of them please show some selflove and stop!
If you try to lessen the stress in your lives with the bad ways, you get into more trouble. You risk forming bad habits and even get addicted, which makes matters worse.
Self-injury
Self-injury or self – harm is a negative way of decreasing deep stress or releasing emotional pain.
Biting nails, peeling off your skin, cutting your nails with your teeth or fingers, are all lower forms of self-injury and should be avoided.
You may think of them as benign signs of anxiety or nervousness, but they are not specially if they become addictive or lead to some more severe forms of self-destructive behaviour.
Those inappropriate behaviours are so bad that you may get addicted and end up being caught in a vicious cycle which do much more harm than stress alone.
Trichotillomania
Trichotillomania is a disorder in which people tend to have a compulsive urge to pull out their own hair mostly due to stress or depression.
It can get so bad and out of control that person could suddenly become bald not even being fully conscious of what he is doing in the stressful times.
People pluck out their eyebrows or even eyelashes, and sometimes even hair from their arms. This is their sub-conscious way to reduce stress that eventually can turn itself into a serious disorder.
Compulsive shopping
Nothing that is compulsive is good, so neither is a shopping.
Everything is good until it is done in moderation. But things do turn bad if you do them in excess and too often.
In the case of compulsive shopping people in an effort to try to find the way to reduce stress, begin to compulsively buy things for themselves to feel better.
They go on a shopping spree as much as they can and even spend their money on things that they don’t need. Soon enough it can turn itself into an addiction and people may even proceed on taking loans for shopping purpose, often causing financial stress in the long run.
With each purchase for those people there’s an increase in the dopamine levels and when its levels drop, those people are desperately trying to repeat the experience and to maintain “happy mood”.
Whenever you feel you’re under stress, be alert and mindful and don’t let these ways become your regular ways to reduce stress because they may ruin your life for good!