Are anti-stress toys useful?

This question was submitted by our reader. You too can you ask your question to Lifehacker - if it is interesting, we will definitely answer.

Anton Kostin

Psychiatrist, psychotherapist, narcologist and head of psychiatry at the Lahta Clinic.

More and more different devices are on sale, which are called anti-stress devices. Do they really help fight stress? We'll find out now. But first you need to understand the definitions.

Emotional stress is the body's response to an adverse situation, such as violence or a threat to life, when which activates the autonomic nervous system and triggers endocrine processes (release of adrenaline and other hormones). And in times of real psychological stress, anti-stress toys will clearly be useless.

But in an unscientific sense, the word "stress" is often used as a synonym for unpleasant feelings and emotions: anxiety, fear, or irritation. And it often happens that these states are not caused by an event that happened (you did not pass the exam), but by thinking about this situation. For example, when there is a whole month before the exam, and you cannot find a place for yourself due to anxiety.

In this case, we can say that the above emotions are caused by thoughts, which are called automatic. And it's very difficult for us to stop them. Moreover, most of our experiences are not associated with real situations, but with our perception of what is happening, the expectation of trouble, threats.

It is logical that if there are fewer such thoughts, then the intensity of unpleasant emotions will decrease. And there are a number of practices for switching attention from automatic thoughts to something that is in the real world.

This could be a bike ride, listening to an opera, or watching a movie. And including the game with pop-it and simple-dimples. Why not.

But we cannot talk about the scientifically proven benefits of such toys: I have not yet met research on this topic.