Stress

So I used to deal with my stress through:

- Writing
- Working obsessively

I have decided that these are not useful or healthy coping mechanisms for working through stress, as they both lead me to set the stress and problems aside and use the stress-energy on something productive/creative instead of on working through the stress, so at the end of the writing I still have the stress as much as before and am also tired from the hard work, I just also have a poem or essay.

This explains why I haven't been writing much lately (hint: it's not because I'm not stressed).

What other more healthy coping mechanisims do people use or recommend?

I have thought already about exercise but I worry that it, too, will turn into a thing I use to put aside the stress, only to come back to it later.

Is there anything that helps you process the stress and work through it?