wholesome Ways of Coping With Emotions
Emotional distress is a part of life and serves a principal function in terms of alerting us to problems that need to be resolved. Everybody therefore needs to be able to sense and tolerate a positive whole of distress. Trying to avoid unpleasant thoughts and feelings can in effect lead to an increase in the sense of them, the more you try to avoid an sense the more it seems to pursue you. This more than likely has an evolutionary purpose because as long as the distress is avoided the source of the pain remains unresolved.
Experiencing distress and working to decide the question behind it is the only way of reducing pain in the long-term. However, sometimes when you are in the middle of an extremely distressing experience, you can in effect get swept away by it. You can feel so overwhelmed that the only option seems to be to block out the distress using eating or self-harming behavior; bodily distress/experience being more tangible thus more easy to tolerate than emotional distress/experience.
This however prevents you from identifying the source of the distress and being able to take steps to tackle it. You opt for immediate and brief respite at the charge of longer-term question resolution and relief. With time this becomes your knee-jerk reaction to distress, other options become impossible to see and as with any sense that is avoided, the more you avoid distress the more unruly and astonishing it becomes.
Distress, if allowed to will dissipate with time. A beneficial way of mental about distress is as a wave that has to be ridden. Distress tolerance is a set of skills that enables you to ride the wave, to survive unpleasant emotional experiences without making them worse. Like impulsive, self harming behaviors (e.g. Bingeing and vomiting, self harm, alcohol and drug abuse) they can be used to modulate negative thoughts and feelings. however unlike such behaviors they will not trigger further distress. Although the techniques described here are intended to serve a similar function to that of impulsive behaviors, initially at least they will not be as effective. They will need to be personalized and practiced regularly in order to maximize their effectiveness as distress tolerance techniques.
These skills will help you to gain control over your feelings, stay safe and step back. Once you can step back from your distress, you can see other options.
There are three separate types of distress tolerance skills, convention each so that you can observe what works best for you and so organize your own individualized and alternatives to current harmful behaviours.
Cognitive Techniques
Thoughts are prominent in determining our feelings. Strategies which address their role in distress will therefore be extremely prominent in assisting you to sense and feel in control of their emotional pain.
Thought stopping
Thought stopping is a very uncomplicated strategy derived from the anxiety management literature. With convention it can be an excellent and immediate way of pushing a negative notion out of the mind space. However, its impact is brief and thus needs to be followed up by other strategies that aim to occupy the mind space for a longer period of time.
Exercise:
- Place an elastic band on your wrist. As you observation your distress levels rising snap the elastic band and dream the word Stop in red capital letters flying into your minds eye pushing all other thoughts and feelings out. Repeat this rehearsal each time your distress levels rise.
Refocusing attention
We only have a positive whole of mind space and so one way to modulate our emotions is to temporarily push out the negative thoughts that are triggering distress and fill it with neutral/positive thoughts so that there is no longer any space for the negative emotion. Refocusing concentration involves deliberately directing your concentration away from the negative notion and towards a neutral mental performance which will occupy the mind space thus pushing the notion that is causing the distress temporarily out of awareness. There are a whole of separate mental activities that can be engaged in to achieve this aim:
1. A detailed description of the surrounding
Focus your concentration on your surrounding environment. For the next 5 minutes wholly fill your mind space with this task. If you observation your mind wandering from this task, as it inevitably will, make a note of where your mind has wandered and then gradually refocus your concentration on your surroundings. Look to your right. Now gradually scan your environment naming (in your head) as many object as you can. Now look right ahead of you and focus on the first object that falls in to your line of vision, focus on this object to the exclusion of all else. Recapitulate this object as if it is the first time you have every seen it. What colour is it? How big is it? What shape is it? What is its texture like? Now, if you see any written words in your environment focus on these words to the exclusion of all else. Read each letter backwards as if you where looking these letters for the first time.
2. Names
Think of the names of as many cities as you can.Now think of all the girls names you can think of starting with A. Now all the boys names you can think of. Now name as many objects starting with C as you can".
3. Numbers
Take the whole 100; subtract 7 and observation the new number; subtract 7 again and observation the new number; subtract 7 and observation the new number. Continue with this rehearsal until your distress diminishes
Grounding phrase
This is a phrase that reminds you that you can survive the current distress, that it will pass as all feelings inevitably do. You are trying to access a kind, nurturing and reassuring voice. This is by definition difficult, if not impossible to do at times when negative, often excessively principal thoughts are triggering distress. So it is prominent that this voice is accessed exterior of these times (e.g. While the group) and recorded on a flashcard. You can then carry your grounding phrase around with you and read it whenever negative thoughts cause you to feel distressed. If you struggle to access this nurturing voice think about what you would say to person you in effect care about if they were distressed or how you would speak to a small child.
Sensory Techniques
These skills focus on managing distress straight through self-nurturing and kindness.
Triggering opposite emotions
First identify the type of emotions that is causing the distress. Labeling the emotions transforms it from an astonishing sense into a tangible target for intervention. Once the emotions has been identified work out what the opposite emotion and agree an performance that will trigger this opposite emotion. Animated in this performance will trigger the opposite emotions, counteracting the distressing one. Faultless the lists below to help you to use this strategy:
Distress Emotion - Opposite Emotions - Opposite Emotion Triggering Activity
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Soothing the senses
One way to sacrifice emotional distress is to learn to comfort ourselves straight through soothing each of the five senses; vision, hearing, smell, taste and touch.
Vision:
Focus on nature: take a scenic walk, focus on the vibrant colors of plants/flowers around you, watch fish swimming in a tank/pond, watch birds flying etc.
Focus on art: watch a ballet/dance performance. Go to a museum with beautiful art
Light a candle and watch the flame
Decorate a room with all of your best/favorite things
Hearing:
Listen to music
Sing/hum to music
Pay concentration to the sounds of nature (water, birds, rainfall, leaves rustling)
Talk to others
Smell:
Burn incense
Spray your favorite perfume
Boil cinnamon
Make fresh coffee
Bake a cake
Smell flowers
Taste:
(N.B. This can be a difficult sensation for patients to use initially and so can be excluded until eating has become less emotion driven)
Have a soothing drink
Stuck a peppermint
Chew gum
Treat yourself to food you wouldn't regularly spend money on
Touch
Have a bath
Put clean sheets on your bed
Put a big warm jumper/silky blouse on
Put on body lotion
Wash your hair with nice smelling products
Have a massage
Introducing any new skill/technique can be difficult, however, self soothing maybe be particularly difficult as you may believe that you do not deserve to be nurtured or to have you needs met. It is prominent therefore to anticipate the negative thoughts and feelings of guilt/shame that you may sense when practicing these techniques and remember that in the longer term they will help you to decide your problems and move transmit from them.
Developing a soothing image.
This involves developing a situation in imagery that you can use to soothe and distract yourself from the actual situation when it becomes distressing. It is prominent that this image is created and practiced regularly when you are not in urgency so that you are able to access it in effect when they in effect need it.
Exercise:
Close your eyes and become aware of your breathing, breathing in and out of your mouth. Imagining breathing in calmness and free time and breathing out distress and tension.
Bring to mind your favorite place and dream yourself there. Look around you and take in all of the details of your favorite place, reminding yourself why it is your favorite place. Now think about your favorite time of the year and incorporate this into your image. Focus on the aspect that define this time of the year, the weather, sounds, smells, things your might see. Now adjust your image so that it is your favorite time of the day and become aware of the aspects that define this time of day and the reasons that you enjoy it so much. Now include in your image your favorite person or persons. Focus on that person, your feelings for them and why you have chosen to include them in your image. Now justify the image in any other ways that will help you to feel calm and soothed, for example you could introduce your favorite music in to the image, or your favorite pass time. Stay in this image for the next few minutes just enjoying the soothing, reassuring nature of your created environment, Animated the calmness and satisfaction that your surroundings originate in you.
An further technique that may be beneficial for those when you feel so overwhelmed by your distress that you are unable to access your grounding image despite frequent convention is to originate a 'bridging' image. This creates a link from the distressing situation to the grounding image. Examples of such images include: floating away from the distress and towards the grounding image in a boat; taking a glass elevator; an escalator; or being lead towards the grounding image by a good friend.
Physiological techniques
The aim here is to sacrifice distress by interfering with its physiological component straight through refocusing the senses. This differs from previous strategies because here, instead of introducing stimuli that will trigger a separate emotion, you distract yourself from the pain of your internal world by refocusing your concentration on your external world. You will be in effect physically grounding yourself in your current environment.
Physical grounding
Exercise:
Close your eyes and become aware of your breathing. Focus on your breath as it moves in and out at your nostril. observation how the air feels as you breath in and then out, observation it's temperature, how it smells. Now refocus your concentration on what you can hear. Listen very thought about to the sounds around you, observation the gaps between sounds, how they blend together. Their volume, pitch, how they ultimately fade away. Now observation your feet on the ground. They are in effect grounded, associated to the floor. Wiggle your toes inside your shoes. Dig your heels gradually into the floor to ground yourself even more. Now become aware of your chair, observation how it is supporting your body, touch it with your hands and observation how it feels. What sort of material is it made, is it warm or cold. Now open your eyes and find an object that is near to you. Pick it up and observe it as if this is the first time you have come over this kind of object. What is it make of, how does it feel, is it warm, cold, rough or smooth. What color is it? Put the object down. Now clench your fists; observation the tension in your hands. Now release your fists. Now press your palms together, with elbows to the side; press as tightly as you can. Focus all your concentration on your palms. Now let go. Finally, roll your head in a circle a few times.
A Grounding position
Our thoughts and feelings work on our bodies. For example when we feel sad or fearful it is reflected in our posture, we may stooped or in some other way make our bodies smaller, subconsciously trying to withdraw from our environment. The direction of work on also flows the other way, so it is inherent for the position of our bodies to work on our thoughts and feelings. For example standing up straight, pushing our shoulders back and raising our chins can make us feel stronger and more confident. A grounding position is a bodily position in which you feel safe and/or strong. Some habitancy find that curling up is comforting, while others might adopt a more upright stance.
Discover what works for you and then convention it regularly so that you can move in effect into it whenever they need to.
A Grounding object
A grounding object is a conveyable object that can be held While distress as a way of refocusing the senses in the here and now. To maximize the objects effectiveness as a distraction the object must be explored in a similar way to the object focused on in the bodily grounding protocol, as if you were coming over it for the first time. It is also prominent that the object carries some positive meaning for you to assist you in disconnecting from your distress. This, as with most of the other technique will only be efficient if personalized and then practiced.
Sensory Distraction
This skill involves unusual, absorbing, but safe sensory stimuli to distract awareness away from painful emotions (similar to notion stopping in its short term nature). E.g. Keeping ice cubes, crushing egg shells, punching pillows, kneading dough.
