- Often times when we feel intense negative emotion our drive will be to pull towards, so we can do something / say something / solve something to “release” the emotion
- Blood actually starts flowing differently in our brains when we are in high distress – it flows away from the parts of our brain that are best at problem solving, and thinking through consequences, pros, cons, priorities, and values.
- This means despite that intense desire to lean it, in those moments we actually want to lean away.
- Part of coping well is knowing where that line is in ourselves, when we need to step away rather than step towards. Sometimes we can’t problem solve right away, we just have to get through.
- When we are feeling our negative feelings very intensely (like an 8 or a 9 out of 10) we need a different set of strategies. In those times we need to work on distracting, calming, soothing, and diverting attention
- Distress tolerance skills teach us to try and shift our attention away instead of trying to manage the problem at hand
- For these skills to work we *really* need to shift our attention completely and allow ourselves to be completely engaged in something else. This helps the brain “reset”. Sometimes this means we have to shift our attention again and again until our brains cooperate.
- Learn more about why we need distress tolerance skills in today’s post. Specific skills to follow another day.
One of the big gripes I hear about distress tolerance skills – skills and techniques that help you get through the moment (like focusing on your breathing, going for a walk, watching a show) – is that we’re not problem solving. These types of skills don’t actually make the situation better or address the problem at hand. They just divert your attention from whatever the problem is.
All of that is true. Those types of coping mechanisms don’t make the situation better or solve the issue at hand.
That is not their purpose.
Distress tolerance skills help YOU feel better so YOU can (eventually) effectively tackle the situation at hand. They help YOU come back “online” so that you can problem solve, think clearly about solutions, consequences, pros, cons, priorities, and values. They help YOU be in the mindset to tackle a concern with all of your facilities – which we have less access to when we are in a panic, or when we are overwhelmed with emotion.
Think about it. Have you ever quickly addressed what felt like a pressing issue at the time only to reflect later (in a less intense state of mind) to realize you could’ve handled it better? When our emotions are running high (and I mean we’re feeling them at an 8 or a 9 on a scale of 1-10) our brains don’t work the same as they do when we are calmer.*
Often, when we feel strong emotions we feel them with urgency and we believe we need to act NOW. But usually that desire to act NOW is more about making the feeling “go away” than it is a response to any true urgency from the situation at hand.
When we use distress tolerance skills we are not trying to change how we feel or the situation we are in. Instead, we are changing where we focus our attention. This gives us a break from a very intense situation so we can return to it later with our full attention and our facilities intact.
The key with distress tolerance skills is to let things settle and then return to the problem or situation at hand when the external circumstances permit and when your internal state of mind is more balanced. If we don’t return to the problem at hand we’re engaging in avoidance, and that creates a whole host of other issues in our life.
Notes:
* Blood flows differently in our brains when we are experiencing intense negative emotion. This is our brain’s way of trying to protect us when we experience a signal of “alarm” from our emotions, so that our bodies can be ready to handle what our emotions are telling us is a major issue. Your frontal lobe (a section of your brain just behind your forehead) has many functions, but one of them is to help you process the signals from your emotional world and weave those with logical decision making and discerning judgment. As Bessel Van Der Kolk describes in his book, “The Body Keeps the Score”, our frontal lobes have less blood flowing to them when we are in intense emotional states, “As long as you are not too upset, your frontal lobes can restore your balance…Neuroimaging Studies of human beings in highly emotional states reveal that intense fear, sadness, and anger, all increase the activation of subcortical brain regions involved in emotions and significantly reduce the activity in various areas in the frontal lobe” (Pages 62-63) (The Subcortical regions of the brain he refers to are the areas of the brain under the frontal lobe). Full citation for the book: Van, . K. B. A. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma.
- Unsure how to identify if your brain may not be “online”? See post dated May 11th called The Window of Tolerance. This post covers what it can feel like when we’re in a place where we want to consider using distress tolerance skills.
- Sometimes it can take practice, trial, and error to come to recognize when we’re “not really here”. It will get easier with time.
- Much of what I pull from in this post regarding classification of “what” a distress tolerance skill is comes from Marsha Linehan’s Skills Training Manual for Treating Borderline Personality Disorder. Full Citation: Linehan, M. (1993). Skills training manual for treating borderline personality disorder. New York: Guilford Press.