Stress relief, management, or avoidance?

When I find myself in a stressful situation, or when I feel stressed without being able to pinpoint the cause, I walk away from it and do something I enjoy instead. I curl up in bed with a book or two, cook myself something nice and spicy, or spend a few hours playing games or reading blogs - which is how I found out about this contest. Taking a break lets my brain digest the problem in the background, and hopefully figure out away around the stress, or at least a strategy for coping with whatever caused it. And maybe by the time I'm ready to deal with whatever the problem was, it'll have solved itself! Sounds like I'm a completely irresponsible wastrel, right? Just doing the things I enjoy, and letting everything else wait until later. There's probably a lot of truth in that, but it works for me, and that's what's important.

What doesn't work is forcing myself to do something I don't want to before I'm ready for it. That just makes me hate the task or situation even more, and despise myself for not being strong enough to say no. "But," I can hear someone say, "don't you feel good when you have done whatever it was you didn't want to do? You should pat yourself on the back and grab a doughnut for reward!" No, I don't feel good. I feel angry. Disgusted. Tired of a world that says you should and of myself who fell for it. I definitely don't feel like rewarding myself.

There are of course stressful things one can't simply walk away from - wailing babies, trains that run late, crappy jobs to pay the rent and sports discussions during coffee break - and I haven't found a good way to deal with that. Yet. It helps me a little to keep repeating "it'll be over in 5 minutes, an hour, by 9pm..." but that's more of an internal distraction from it, than a solution.