Overwhelming Emotions and Distress Tolerance
We all have emotions. They are normal, healthy, and play a vital role in our survival. They feel good sometimes. They feel bad sometimes. They inform the lens through which we see the world. While knowing the role emotions play in our lives is helpful, it doesn’t necessarily make emotions easy to deal with, especially if you deal with overwhelming emotions.
Overwhelming emotions refer to emotional experiences felt at full blast. Normal, healthy emotions, like anger or fear, can be so powerful, a person may lose touch with the ground, and they can sweep a person away, according to McKay, Wood, and Brantly (2007). They stated “…when that happens, it makes you—understandably—afraid to feel things because you don’t want to get swept away by your emotions. The trouble is, the more you try to suppress or put a lid on your emotions, the more overwhelming they can get.” (1)
Causes: What We Know
In their workbook, The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook, McKay, Wood, and Brantly acknowledge that much of the research surrounding causes of overwhelming emotions point towards biological factors, but that they are greatly affected by adverse life events such as trauma, abuse, or neglect. (1) A publicized statistic by SAMHSA disclosed in 2011 that 60% of adults reported experiencing abuse, with a prediction that up to 26% of all children in the US will witness or experience a traumatic event before they are 4 years old. (2)
Prolonged traumatic experiences disrupt normal development when the stress response system is continually activated. Impairments and delays in social and emotional developments result, often manifesting as emotional dysregulation, in some form (for example, overwhelming emotions). (2)
Coping trends
For those who experience overwhelming emotions, emotional pain is intense and can often be felt physically. They may believe it will never end and may not know how to cope. Understandably. It’s hard to think clearly when experiencing intense pain.
It’s no surprise that the following types of coping strategies are commonly used by people with overwhelming emotions (note: these strategies deepen emotional pain and cause more suffering):
Spend excessive time ruminating past (or worrying about possible future) pains/ mistakes/ problems
Self-isolation to avoid projected fears
Numb out with alcohol/drugs/other risky behavior (unprotected sex, frequent sex with strangers, cutting, hitting, picking, hair pulling, etc)
Get excessively angry at others or try to control them
Avoidance (...of dealing with the causes of your problems, ...of pleasant activities such as exercise or social outings, etc), fueled by a belief that you do not “deserve” to feel better.
Use food to punish/control yourself (too much/little, throwing food up)
High-risk activities or self-harm (reckless driving, mixing drugs, suicide attempts)
Resigned to living a miserable and unfulfilling life (1)
Distress Tolerance Tool : Radical Acceptance
The work book details one helpful strategy to deal with painful events in a healthy way : Radical Acceptance. In a nutshell, this is accepting without judging. (1)
A first reaction to painful events might be anger (blind rage), being overly critical of others, or overly critical of yourself. The more angry or critical one becomes, the worse the situation gets, and the less able one is to think of solutions. It’s easy to get stuck with those big emotions and then, create your own suffering. Radical acceptance would look like accepting that the painful event occurred and accepting that you must deal with it now. “It means looking at yourself and the situation as it really is.” (1)
Instead of getting lost in being overly critical of self and others, or believing the painful event should have never happened, try to refocus attention on what you have control over now. This is not to be confused with condoning. This is not a sweeping of things under a preverbal rug. It is accepting that our anger, judgment, or blame can never change what has happened already. (1)
Getting Started
It is easier said than done to challenge old ways of thinking. Try creating a scripted sentence that reminds you to try radical acceptance when having an overwhelming emotion. Here are some options offered in the workbook. These may inspire you to create one of your own.
“What’s done is done.”
“I can only control myself.”
“This is the way it has to be.”
“I don’t have control over the past.”
“The present moment is manageable, even if I don’t like what is going on.”
“Fighting the past only blinds me to my present.” (1)
Application
The workbook suggests that to apply radical acceptance you may need some practice. Try doing one of these proposed exercises to accept moments that are happening without judging them. They are meant to be small exercises so you can slowly work up to meeting overwhelming emotions with confidence and composure.
“Read a controversial story in the newspaper without being judgmental about what has occurred.”
“The next time you get caught in traffic, wait without being critical.”
“Review a non-upsetting event from your past and use radical acceptance to recall the details without judging it.” (1)
You get the idea. Building tolerance to distressing situations and emotions begins when you evaluate and change your attitude. Acknowledge and accept your present, without criticism or judgment, and reduce the amount of time you spend trying to defeat an invisible foe - the past.
(1) Check out the workbook for more strategies for dealing with overwhelming emotions. Additionally, here are some short videos that offer more tools for navigating overwhelming emotions through radical acceptance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvI0jHDZJlQ&t=144s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwNnG7mIu1E
(1) McKay, Matthew; Wood, Jeffrey C.; Brantley, Jeffrey. The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook: Practical DBT Exercises for Learning Mindfulness, Interpersonal Effectiveness, Emotion Regulation, and Distress Tolerance. New Harbinger Publications. Kindle Edition.
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