Module 2. Distress Tolerance: (Discussion #6) Pros/Cons
DBTuesday is a series of posts where we explore skills and concepts from dialectical behavior therapy (DBT).
This is one of several posts focusing on distress tolerance, which is the second module of DBT skills training. See this post for general info about DBT and this post for more info about distress tolerance.
What is Pros/Cons
Pros/Cons in the context of DBT involves looking at the pros and cons of tolerating distress vs. acting on crisis urges.
Crisis urges involve a strong desire to do actions that alleviate distress in the short-term but may have negative long-term consequences (e.g. dangerous, addictive, contrary to one’s goals).
Research has shown that for people who are interested in changing a behavior, listing pros and cons can increase commitment to that change and improve the chances of successfully changing.
How to do Pros/Cons
The process for Pros/Cons is:
- Identify what behavior you have an urge to do
- Make a list of the pros and cons of acting on that urge
- Make a list of the pros and cons of resisting that urge
Here are some questions that may be helpful to ask while doing this:
- How effective is the behavior in the short-term?
- How effective is the behavior in the long-term?
- Is the behavior damaging to any of my goals?
Once you have finished doing Pros/Cons, you can use it in the following way:
- Keep a copy of your Pros/Cons list handy for when you have urges
- Think about the positive effects of resisting the urge
- Think about the negative effects of acting on the urge
Reflection
Feel free to share any thoughts you may have about Pros/Cons.
Sources:
https://www.theinsightclinic.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/DT_HANDOUT_5_-_PROS_CONS.pdf
https://dbt.tools/distress_tolerance/pro-con.php
I think this is really good. Well use this for me. Thank you
@alleywood13
Glad it felt helpful!
When thinking of urges as acting or resisting them I may tend to go on my emotions and combing them with the situation. When I am upset I may want to give in and let go, but now in my life I have persons who are gently teaching me to not give in and to keep striving for what I want. This chart is very helpful and will keep it to use for future reference.🤍
@WhiteRoses25
That sounds helpful being able to keep in mind, "Wait, these are my goals and I care about those." And having people who are able to gently nudge on that and remind you of that. 😊
@QuietMagic
Thanks for the idea, sounds really helpful, weighing what might happen and trying to not just act on things right away <3 Yet again, a wonderful post!
@ahhhhelpimalive
Glad to hear it. 😊 Yeah, I especially like the idea of having a list like that ready ahead of time so that I wouldn't have to do heavy lifting mentally while I'm in the grips of an urge.
This one feels actually the most useful among previous techniques of distress tolerance I already saw here. ACCEPTS and IMPROVE feel just like lists without "when", "how", "why" or in "what sequence". TIPP feels useful enough, but I tend to forget. Self-soothing is what I do anyway, thus it is quite good already. So, here I found something useful for real. I tend to be very impulsive and tend to have and act on aforementioned urges, so brakes like these feel like something truly helping.
@windSpirit
Glad that this one feels relevant!
Agree that some of the previous ones are sort of like "here are a dozen possible things to try--pick whatever suits you", so it's kind of general and unstructured. Plus you mentioned that you already have a pretty good set of self-soothing practices, so makes sense that there wouldn't be as much value added.
In contrast, this one is sort of working directly with impulses in a cognitive way, and the pros/cons process is tailored to a specific urge you're considering.