Mindfulness and DBT: Skill Distress Tolerance
Distress Tolerance skills are used to help us cope and survive during a crisis, and helps us tolerate short term or long term pain (physical or emotional). Tolerating distress includes a mindfulness of breath and mindful awareness of situations and ourselves. Radical Acceptance.
All of us have crisis in our lives to some degree. Sometimes these crises are big, like a divorce, a death, trauma related things and our mental health. Sometimes these crises are small, like traffic, a long line at check out, or not knowing what to wear that day. Mindfulness DBT distress tolerance skills help you get to a more manageable emotional place for crisis survival.
A key ingredient of distress tolerance is the concept of radical acceptance. This refers to experiencing the situation and accepting the reality of it when it is something that you cannot change. By practicing radical acceptance without being judgmental or trying to fight reality, You will be less vulnerable to intense and prolonged negative feelings.
Mindfulness DBT distress tolerance acronym ACCEPTS is a group of skills to help you tolerate a negative emotion until you are able to address and eventually resolve the situation.ACCEPTS stands for Activities, Contributing, Comparisons, Emotions, Push away, Thoughts, and Sensation. These techniques are designed to keep your emotions manageable until you can resolve the problem.
ACTIVITIES Engage in an activity, and this can be just about any healthy activity. Read a book, make strawberry jam, go for a walk, call your friend, wash the dishes. Anything that keeps you busy and keeps your mind off the negative emotion will help.
CONTRIBUTING Do something kind for another person. Giving service can help you relieve emotional distress in a couple ways. An act of service is also an activity that, as mentioned above, will help get your mind off of the problem at hand. Additionally, we feel good about ourselves when we help someone else, and that in itself can help you deal with stress. Help cook dinner, mow the neighbor's lawn, or bake cookies for a friend or relative. Each of these contributing ideas will distract you from your current situation.
COMPARISONS Put your life in perspective. Is there a time when you've faced more difficult challenges than you're facing today? Maybe not—maybe this is the most intense situation and most intense emotion you've ever experienced. If that's the case, is there another person who has suffered more than you? Are you in your safe home, while in another part of the world someone else is searching for food and shelter after a natural disaster? The goal of this exercise is not to add more distress and emotional pain to your current situation. Instead, use this skill to add a different perspective to what youre experiencing right now.
EMOTIONS You have the power to invoke the opposite emotion of your current distressed feeling. If you are feeling anxious, practice meditation for 15 minutes. If you're feeling depressed, go ahead and Google Image search "adorable puppies". (If you're in need of a real laugh, search "ugly puppies".) Adding a dose of the opposite emotion helps reduce the intensity of the negative emotion.
PUSH AWAY When you cant deal with something just yet, its okay to push the problem out of your mind temporarily. You can push away by distracting yourself with other activities, thoughts, or mindfulness. You can even set a time to come back to the issue. You know that it will be addressed, and you can relax in the interim.
THOUGHTS Replace negative, anxious thoughts with activities that busy your mind, such as saying the alphabet backwards or doing a Sudoku puzzle. These distractions can help you avoid self-destructive behavior until you're able to achieve emotion regulation.
SENSATION Use your five senses to self-soothe during times of distress. A self-soothing behavior could be taking a warm bath with a lavender bath bomb and relaxing music, eating a comforting snack, or watching your favorite show. Anything that appeals to your senses can help you cope with the present situation.
1. I know this is alot to take in, and we are not going to move fast on this. What are your thoughts so far on what you read?
2. How do you think Mindfulness DBT Skills can help you in your daily life?
3. What are some things about this skill you like to know more about?
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