It was one of those days when life felt like a substandard film where the writers stuff every possible plot twist, just for the sake of it. I was severely sleep deprived, had the nightmare of a workday, accidentally ordered food at the wrong address, broke into a gut-wrenching fight with a close friend, my car broke down in the middle of a suspiciously empty road, and to top all of that, I got my period. Stranger Things, beat that!<\/p>\n
Now, what would any sane person do? Probably rant, sleep, stress-eat their favourite meal, go out for a few cocktails, or maybe even hit the curb. I, for one, opened YouTube, headed straight to the kitchen, and started making Marwari Kadhi at 2 in the morning! Well, in my defence, that was the only thing holding me together, pulling me out of an ugly nervous breakdown. And let me clarify, I have always hated the idea of cooking \u2013 why wouldn\u2019t I, though; patriarchy makes it seem like a designed chore rather than a life skill. So, making kadhi didn\u2019t exactly stem from my \u201cfeminine love for cooking\u201d.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
After these impromptu Marwari Kadhi-making sessions became frequent, I realised that it had become my go-to stress response. Every time the universe played a prank on me, the Marwari aunty, dolled up in a traditional attire, would come to my rescue via my phone screen, giving instructions in a dialect I still don\u2019t fully understand.<\/p>\n
But I can\u2019t be alone in this, right? Drawing on my journalistic instinct, I started digging deeper. Turns out, many Gen Zs have similarly oddly specific stress responses. Phew!<\/p>\n
![\"stress\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/popcorn-7025892_1920.jpg\")
Many people turn to their comfort web series or tv shows in stress and have all teh dialogues ready on their finger tips!
\nGen Z\u2019s quirky, oddly-specific stress responses<\/p>\n
For Sulekha, Shah Rukh Khan\u2019s Chaiyya Chaiyya is the ultimate saviour. \u201cI dance on Chaiyya Chaiyya with full volume. There\u2019s no fixed time, it can be kabhi bhi,\u201d shares Delhi<\/a> University\u2019s PhD scholar, who says she does not care about Farah Khan\u2019s carefully planned hooksteps<\/strong><\/a>, and would start dancing on the tune whenever stress hits, despite what the clock says.<\/p>\n \u201cI dance like a mad person in freestyle\u201d.<\/p>\n To be fair, Chaiyya Chaiyya indeed has that therapeutic power. Haven\u2019t we all turned to it at some point or another?<\/p>\n Others might not have such predictable rituals. For Mahesh Krishna, another scholar from IIT Roorkee, an oddly specific game wrapped in nostalgia comes to the rescue. \u201cI have the Indian bus simulator game. I put on 80s and 90s Hindi songs and just drive the bus.\u201d We get you, Krishna. Nothing can beat the good old days. Krishna has travelled a lot in buses, and the game brings back those memories, making him feel safe and guarded.<\/p>\n Story continues below this ad<\/p>\n Gen Z hasn\u2019t skipped on stress eating as a coping mechanism. However, Shantanu Jha\u2019s version adds the quirkiness to the picture. Besides, lashing out at people for no reason and watching reruns of Schitt\u2019s Creek for the nth time, the banking professional makes a very specific food order \u2013 guilty of increasing revenue for Zomato<\/a> and Swiggy<\/a> with his countless odd-hour deliveries.<\/p>\n \u201cChaat me golgappe ya aloo tikki, and for momos it\u2019s always chicken fried<\/strong><\/a> with naga chilli chutney from Prasuma,\u201d Jha asserts, while revealing that no other food combo would help him.<\/p>\n For Tanmay Shrimali, an MTech student at MNNIT Prayagraj, comfort comes in the form of wildlife documentaries around \u201csnakes and birds\u201d. On being asked why, Shrimali says that it probably has a connection with his childhood, when he\u2019d watch National Geographic, Animal Planet, and Discovery the whole day. \u201cI got relieved only from that\u201d.<\/p>\n Gen Z doesn\u2019t need to stay connected all the time The constantly daunting, overwhelming experience of the internet and social media does not do much for Gen Z\u2019s stress levels, with many admitting that it is the first thing they throw out the window.<\/p>\n Story continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cI just hop on a bus or any public transport, without any destination in mind, and go out without my phone,\u201d admits Subhranil Sengupta, a PR professional based in Bangalore<\/a>, who says he carries cash at this time to avoid having to use his phone for UPI or digital payments<\/a>. <\/strong>He says it helps him disconnect with the clutter of the world, \u201csoak in everything,\u201d and get a new perspective.<\/p>\n A similar technique works for Krishna. \u201cI log out of my email, uninstall WhatsApp, rent a scooty from Dehradun, and drive up to Landour,\u201d the scholar reveals while admitting that he has done this countless times.<\/p>\n For Richa Nagam, the response is more rooted in her head. \u201cI imagine being in a simulation and tell myself that it is important for the plot that this (stress inducing) situation goes on and if there\u2019s no solution, the masters (simulation operators) will soon change the frequency.\u201d The media professional further confesses that she tries to stress \u201caesthetically and dramatically\u201d with new makeup, new dresses, and heels. \u201cIt somehow gives me the time before I freak out completely and delays the process of a complete breakdown, and sometimes it just goes away.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet another stress fighter comes in Monica Geller style for 24-year-old Simran, who\u2019d start cleaning and organising her house in a very \u201cPinteresty fashion\u201d. \u201cWhile everything else is not in my hands, at least I have control over this,\u201d asserts the cinematographer.<\/p>\n Story continues below this ad<\/p>\n Well, not exactly. As per psychologist Dhara Ghuntla, our cute little responses function as \u201cself-soothing regulatory mechanisms\u201d that downshift the nervous system from sympathetic (stress) activation to parasympathetic (calming) states.<\/p>\n \u201cSensory predictability \u2014 like the taste of Marwari kadhi \u2013 provides grounding and reduces cognitive load,\u201d she explains to my panicked brain. Ghuntla further notes that such rituals \u201cactivate reward pathways (dopamine) and evoke procedural memory linked with safety, giving immediate emotional containment.\u201d In clinical terms, these are called short-term maladaptive coping strategies.<\/p>\n \u201cMany patients develop highly idiosyncratic rituals: listening to the same 8-second audio loop, driving to railway stations for \u201cpeople noise,\u201d colouring only geometric mandalas, or cleaning one specific corner of the house repeatedly. Others rely on sensory anchors like smelling camphor, biting on ice, or watching ASMR surgical videos. These aren\u2019t pathology by themselves \u2014 the brain discovers what regulates overwhelm most efficiently,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n These rituals are healthy as long as they remain voluntary, flexible, and context-appropriate. \u201cIt becomes concerning when the behaviour shows increasing frequency, rigidity, or functional impairment \u2014 for example, delaying sleep to cook at 2 am daily, overspending on a specific food, or needing a ritual before completing tasks. Loss of behavioural flexibility is one of the earliest red flags,\u201d she says. Similarly, inability to tolerate distress without the ritual, escalation in intensity (needing \u201cmore\u201d for the same relief), or withdrawal-like discomfort when prevented, may indicate dependency.<\/p>\n Story continues below this ad<\/p>\n In short, no there isn\u2019t anything wrong with us \u2013 at least, not yet. So folks, stay weird and defeat stress one oddly specific ritual at a time!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was one of those days when life felt like a substandard film where the writers stuff every…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":629775,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4317],"tags":[194954,194948,194939,194946,194943,194950,19674,194930,105,194952,194955,218,194940,194949,194945,194931,73973,194941,194944,194951,194933,194935,194936,194956,177141,194937,194947,194942,194938,194932,16,15,194934,194953],"class_list":{"0":"post-629774","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-anxiety-coping-rituals","9":"tag-cooking-as-stress-relief","10":"tag-coping-with-stress-gen-z","11":"tag-dancing-to-relieve-stress","12":"tag-digital-detox-gen-z","13":"tag-dopamine-reward-pathways","14":"tag-gen-z-mental-health","15":"tag-gen-z-stress-coping-mechanisms","16":"tag-health","17":"tag-how-people-cope-with-stress","18":"tag-internet-overwhelm-gen-z","19":"tag-mental-health","20":"tag-mental-health-lifestyle-stories","21":"tag-nervous-system-regulation","22":"tag-nostalgia-coping-stress","23":"tag-oddly-specific-stress-responses","24":"tag-parasympathetic-nervous-system","25":"tag-personal-essay-on-stress-and-anxiety","26":"tag-phone-detox-mental-health","27":"tag-psychology-of-stress-coping","28":"tag-quirky-stress-habits","29":"tag-self-soothing-behaviours","30":"tag-self-soothing-rituals","31":"tag-sensory-grounding-techniques","32":"tag-social-media-stress","33":"tag-stress-and-anxiety-coping","34":"tag-stress-cooking-at-night","35":"tag-stress-eating-gen-z","36":"tag-stress-management-habits","37":"tag-stress-rituals","38":"tag-uk","39":"tag-united-kingdom","40":"tag-unusual-coping-mechanisms","41":"tag-why-gen-z-copes-with-stress-differently"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=629774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629774\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/629775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=629774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=629774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=629774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n![\"stress](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/pexels-sarath-m-522590164-16372499.jpg\")
When life gets overwhelming, Gen Z believes in ghosting social media and hit the road . Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani? (photo: pexels)<\/p>\n![\"stress\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/rowan-freeman-clYlmCaQbzY-unsplash.jpg\")
A large portion of Gen Zs turn to stress eating and online food deliveries when things get rough (photo: unsplash)
\nIs there something wrong with us?<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/track_1x1.jpg\"){kind=spacer}
<\/p>\n