- We can’t control what happens to us. What happens to us includes events, but it also includes our thoughts and our feelings
- Many of us experience inner anguish because we have trouble accepting that what we think and feel is not actually within our control.
- We feel what we feel, we think what we think and the best way to insulate ourselves from tough times is work to build coping skills that help us live in harmony with our inability to have the inner world we believe (or have been told) we “should” have.
- We can use meditation and mindfulness based skills to help us detach from the intensity of our thoughts and feelings. While we can’t control what happens, these skills help us increase our control over what we pay attention to.
- We can use emotion regulation skills that help us to “turn down the dial” on emotions when they are intense, but not at their most powerful.
- When emotions are their most intense we can use distress tolerance skills to help us get through a situation without responding to them in a way that will create a problem for us further down the road.
- This account will help you learn skills in all three of these categories, and work to help you build awareness of when it makes sense to use which kind of skill.
- These skills help us manage pain when it arises in a way that won’t create further suffering for us, and will help protect our relationships and get us through with as little suffering as possible.
- No one manages their thoughts and feelings ideally 100% of the time. That is not possible. We are all human. The goal is to help you have the skills so that you know what to do, aren’t so lost in those moments, and can get through them with as little suffering as possible.
One of the things we therapists know, and we work to help our clients accept, is that coping is about learning and accepting what we can and can’t control. We can’t completely control what happens to us, our thoughts and our feelings.
Many of us have luck for sometime pushing thoughts and feelings down or away. We also can organize our lives in such a way that we can have some control over what happens in it, though that’s more often possible when we have more resources. Regardless, at best we only have some control, and we don’t have the level of control many of us wish we did.
I want to be clear: pushing feelings or thoughts down or away isn’t bad. It’s a skill. A skill that works some of the time. However, if we only rely on that particular skill for coping with our internal world we are not equipped for very difficult times, or for when a tidal wave of thoughts or feelings comes in. Further, we lose our ability to learn from our feelings if we rely too heavily on pushing them away.
So, we all need to have a broad array of coping skills. Think of them like tools in a tool belt, different skills for different scenarios.
Instead of trying to control what happens to us, our thoughts, or our feeling we can work to increase our ability to control what we pay attention to and to detach from the intensity of what we may be feeling or thinking. This can be done through meditation and mindfulness based work.
Sometimes we need to learn how to lower intense feelings, that’s called emotion regulation. We use emotion regulation skills when we feel emotions on a level where they “need some wrangling” (i.e. they aren’t dissipating on their own), but not when they are at their most powerful.
When our feelings are really intense, and emotion regulation skills don’t work we can learn to ride them out, let them peter off, distract, or soothe ourselves through distress tolerance skills. With these skills we are working on introducing new and different focal points to divert our attention for a period of time. We are not solving or changing, we are getting through and in doing so helping our brains “reset” so we can tackle the issue when our feelings are not as intense.
Notes:
- This post outlines three of the fours modules in Dialectical Behavior Therapy’s skill’s training program. For more information Full Citation: Linehan, M. (1993). Skills training manual for treating borderline personality disorder. New York: Guilford Press.
- Pushing thoughts and feelings down or away, as mentioned in the post, is a distress tolerance skill. It is a powerful tool to use when our emotions are too overwhelming for us to face, or when the scenario we are in requires we move forward rather than address our experience. For more on why we need distress tolerance skills see the argument for distress tolerance. As with ANY distress tolerance skill we want to return to the topic at hand once we are available to face it (i.e. the scenario allows it, and our internal world feels more balanced).
- We use emotion regulation skills when we are still in our window of tolerance, but nearing the edges of it, or perhaps just outside of it. For information on what our window of tolerance is and what it feels like to be outside of it, see “window of tolerance”.
- Another reason it is difficult to control our thoughts and feelings is outlined in the post “your brain as an association machine“.
- Post covering how we can learn from our emotions is called “emotions as traffic signals” .
- Unsure if your emotion is dissipating on its own, or if you need to intervene to help? See Emotions are brief.
- One thing that feels important to acknowledge: While these skills can help us manage pain they are not the be all end all and it’s not as though these replace the need for therapy or support from others at times. These skills do not turn us into a one person “cope with anything and everything” machine. These skills help us manage pain when it arises in a way that won’t create further suffering for us, and will help protect our relationships and get us through with as little suffering as possible.