We study the way in which equivariant Kazhdan-Lusztig polynomials, equivariant inverse Kazhdan-Lusztig polynomials, and equivariant Z-polynomials of matroids change under the operation of relaxation of a collection of stressed hyperplanes. This allows us to compute these polynomials for arbitrary paving matroids, which we do in a number of examples, including various matroids associated with Steiner systems that admit actions of Mathieu groups.