Slow down and breathe. Life presents us with tough situations. But how we learn to get through them can make a difference. When things become too heavy, learning distress tolerance skills can help you stay calm and cope with those challenging periods without becoming overwhelmed or escalating the situation. These skills teach you to accept your feelings, manage your emotions, and get through challenges step by step.
What Are Distress Tolerance Skills?
Distress tolerance skills are simple tools that help you survive emotional pain and stressful situations without acting on impulse or making choices you might regret later. Instead of immediately trying to fix the problem or pushing down your feelings, these skills focus on accepting the moment and managing emotions in a healthy way. It is like weathering a storm, you wait it out and keep yourself safe until the storm passes.
The core idea is to tolerate emotions and stressful moments rather than fighting them. These skills come from Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), a proven method that helps people handle difficult feelings and crises.
Key Distress Tolerance Techniques
Here are some of the main techniques that you can practice anytime:
Distraction: Shift your attention away from the emotional pain by focusing on something else. You can watch a funny show, work on a hobby, or even solve puzzles like Sudoku. This helps prevent spiraling negative thoughts and gives your mind a break.
Self-soothing: Calm yourself through your five senses. Listen to your favorite music, take a warm bath with soothing scents, enjoy a comforting snack, or touch something soft. Using your senses to comfort yourself can quickly ease distress.
Mindfulness and Grounding: Focus on the present moment by paying attention to your breathing or noticing details around you. For example, look around and name five things you see, four you feel, three you hear, two you smell, and one you taste. This brings you back to the here and now, reducing worry about past and future stress.
ACCEPTS Method: A helpful acronym that offers multiple strategies to handle distress
- Activities (engage in hobbies),
- Contributing (help others),
- Comparisons (think about times you felt worse),
- Emotions (create different happy emotions),
- Push away (mentally block painful thoughts),
- Thoughts (distract your mind), Sensation (self-soothe using senses).
TIPP Method: This is good for intense moments when emotions feel like they are taking over. It stands for:
- Temperature (change your body temperature, like a cold splash on your face),
- Intense exercise (quick physical activity),
- Paced breathing (slow, deep breaths), and
- Paired muscle relaxation (tighten then relax muscles).
By practicing these tools, you build your ability to manage emotional crises safely and constructively until you can handle the situation more fully.
How to Practice Distress Tolerance Every Day
You don’t need special equipment or training to start building these skills. Here are some easy ways to practice daily:
- When stress hits, take three to five deep, slow breaths. Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth slowly.
- Notice your feelings without judging. Say to yourself, “It’s okay to feel this way,” to practice acceptance.
- If your mind races with worries, use grounding exercises like the five-senses technique to bring your attention back.
- Keep a list of distraction activities handycall a friend, watch a comforting show, or do some quick cleaning.
- Use self-soothing strategies regularly, such as lighting a scented candle or enjoying a favorite treat.
With time, these skills become second nature and help you avoid harmful reactions like snapping at others, panicking, or withdrawing.
Why Are Distress Tolerance Skills Important?
Hard times do not fade away just because we want. When a moment is tough, surviving it may be the best premise to start with. These skills stop you from acting in a way that would hurt yourself or those around you. They allow you the opportunity to settle down and get your emotions in check.
Slow Down, Breathe, and Take It One Step at a Time
Remember, you don’t have to face every challenge at once. Sometimes just making it through the moment is a win. Practice the distress tolerance skills mentioned here, and they will become your trusted tools for hard days. By slowing down and breathing through tough moments, you take control instead of letting emotions control you.
You have the power to get through any storm, one breath and one small step at a time. Keep practicing, and you’ll find more peace and strength even when life feels tough.
