Happy New Year, everyone! It’s Imane here on the Dóchas blog. While the new year and holiday seasons can bring about lots of excitement, joy and love, they can also come with a storm of chaos that can bring about difficult emotions in the new year. Whether you’re struggling with feeling behind in your life, coming to terms with the conclusion of certain relationships, coping with grief from the passing or estrangement of family members, or struggling with the post-holiday blues, it can be helpful to tap into skills that help you cope with difficult and painful emotions and help you stay afloat during tough times.
Before I teach you some skills to help you tolerate your distress, I want to take a moment to provide an analogy that may help you understand the importance of tolerating painful feelings and finding pockets of peace amidst the chaos.
Coping with Distress
Marsha M. Linehan, one of the pioneers of Dialectical Behavior Therapy, once likened coping with distress to floating in the raging sea.
Most of us have probably seen many movies about being stranded at sea. For example, Dead Calm, The Life of Pi, or even Titanic. What’s common about these movies, would you say? They all portray themes of perseverance, coping with difficult distress situations, and relay the important message of tolerance through difficult circumstances. Imagine if you were on a cruise ship walking about the promenade taking in the beautiful sights on a summer afternoon. Imagine slipping and falling overboard. By the time you land in the water and float back up to the surface, you can imagine that the ship has moved by quickly and is some distance away. Now you have a few options. You can either give up, you could submit to the urge to panic, and swim as quickly as you can towards the ship, hoping that someone will hear your shouts or see you from a distance, or you could focus on preserving your energy and doing a survival float until another ship or boat arrives.
If we look at the examples of the movies I mentioned, panicking never ends well, and giving up means missing out on the opportunity to experience potential adventures and positive experiences awaiting us in the near future. That leaves us only with one choice: to tolerate our distress at the moment and focus on survival. The skills below will show you how to do exactly that and finding pockets of peace amidst the chaos.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy Distress Tolerance skills
Distracting with Wise Mind ACCEPTS:
Activities: Participate in exercise or hobbies, do some cleaning, go to an event, call or visit a friend, play a video game, go for a walk or have tea by your window… the possibilities are endless!
Contributing: Contribute to someone important in your life, volunteer, give a gift, do something thoughtful, etc.
Comparisons: Compare yourself to people coping the same as you or less well than you rather than comparing up.
Emotions: Read an emotional book or story, old letters, go to emotional movies, and listen to emotional music. Focus on picking something that helps create a different emotion from the emotion you are currently feeling.
Pushing Away: Push away the situation at the moment for a little bit. Imagine building an imaginary wall between yourself and the situation. Plan your breakdown by giving yourself a one-hour or 30-minute window where you can allow yourself to feel the difficult emotion and process it. This will give you space to process and help you prevent the crisis and emotion from becoming life-interfering.
Thoughts: Count to 10, count the number of shapes you see in a room, count windows, anything! You can also distract your thoughts by watching TV, reading, or singing a song you enjoy.
Sensations: Hold ice in your hand, squeeze a rubber ball, play with a fidget, stand under a hot or cold shower, or listen to loud music. Self-soothe with vision, hearing, smell, taste, touch, or even movement (kinesthetic sense).
Improve the Moment: Reduce your distress by changing the way you think about yourself or the situation, changing the way your body has responded to events, and helpfully focusing your mind. Improve the moment via:
Imagery: Imagine your calm place, imagine a secret room within yourself, seeing how it is decorated. Go into that room whenever you feel threatened and close the door on anything that can hurt you. Imagine coping well with a difficult situation. Imagine hurtful emotions draining out of you like water out of tape.
Meaning: Find or create meaning, purpose, or value in pain.
Prayer: open your heart to greater wisdom, a supreme being, or your own wise mind. Ask for strength to bear the pain at this moment.
Relaxation: Try listening to relaxing music, taking a warm bath, exercising, doing yoga, or drinking a warm drink. Do whatever you enjoy doing to relax.
One Thing in the Moment: Focus your attention on whatever you are doing right now. Keep yourself in the moment, and practice observing what is around you or what you are doing at that moment. When your mind wanders, bring your attention back to the present moment and practice awareness of your emotions, thoughts, and physical sensations.
Vacation: Give yourself a brief vacation. This could be going for a walk, reading in your favourite chair, or just taking a nap for 20 minutes.
Encouragement: Take a moment to be your own cheerleader. Repeat encouraging statements to yourself over and over again.
Moving Forward
These are just a few skills that can help you cope with a difficult situation. Remember, these skills are only meant to be practiced for a short time so that we can preserve our energy and recharge ourselves. When we stop fighting our pain and learn to accept it, then we allow ourselves to free up our resources so that we can focus on creating positive change and movement in our lives.
If you are struggling to cope with difficult circumstances and emotions in your life, feel free to reach out to me, a DBT clinician here at Dóchas Psychological Services, to learn more about individual adult and adolescent DBT and our Adolescent DBT program.
We completely understand that it can feel overwhelming to cope with difficult emotions, and figuring out how to find peace and calm within chaos is quite a challenge, especially when we try to do it by ourselves. If you would like help with this, then I encourage you to reach out and ask us how we can help. You can reach out to us here by calling us at 780 446 0300 or emailing info@dochaspsychologicalservices.com.
About Dóchas Psychological
Dóchas Psychological Services is a well-established and trusted therapy clinic located in Spruce Grove, Alberta. At Dóchas we value the idea that everyone deserves a safe space. Through connection and education, our team works hard to build a trustworthy relationship with each of our clients. It is our goal to create a community for our clients to feel like they belong.
Disclaimer
Information provided through Dóchas Psychological Services blogs or vlogs is meant for educational purposes only. They are NOT medical or mental health advice. You can read more about our disclaimer here.
