Distress Tolerance is used when someone is stuck in catastrophic thinking and/or is unable to self soothe.
Distress tolerance means that my client is gaining the ability to perceive a moment, an environment or a feeling, as it is, without demanding that it be different; essentially tolerating feelings of distress. For those with Complex PTSD, knowing these feelings will pass and that life contains duality, there will always be both the good and bad in our experiences, can be difficult to accept but it is a skill that can be mastered.
Part of distress tolerance is understanding that we have a window of tolerance, (rooted in our own very unique nervous system), that we are always operating from as a part of our day to day existence is key…..knowing that upon awakening we may have large ranges of ability to tolerate upset or overwhelm….. or we may not. We may awaken with Cortisol kicking and anxiety anchoring our day and that means our window of tolerance will be less than; we will have greater difficulty on those days and knowing that, is half the battle. The call to action on these days would be to utilize Dialectical Behavioral Therapy skills, (balancing emotional acceptance with behavioral change), depending on needs, as well as cultivating compassion for ourselves by giving us permission to rest, to recover and to practice these skills. With emotions, the most important thing we can do is accept them, (which is essentially toleration), and if we don’t accept them, what do you think we are doing…..we are rejecting them. And if we are rejecting our feelings, what do you think we are doing….we are rejecting ourselves.
Rejection of self puts you in the same cage that you are trying to get out of and hell to the no, I want you to fly.
Here is a simplified doorway into understanding Dialectal Behavioral Therapy:
