Learning these essential skills by understanding the emotions that you feel during a disaster can help you get through most situations that cause heightened stress, undesired behaviors and even uneasy emotions.
photo credit: American Psychological Association (2013)
Typical disasters such as hurricanes, earthquakes, tornados, and wildfires usually happen suddenly and without any warning. However, other crisis situations that happen far too common such as car accidents, family violence, active shooter situations, community violence, and school bullying can cause just as much distress for people that are not always visible, causing much of the same emotional distress as a natural disaster. It is common for people to have emotional reactions to crisis - but even more so. these emotional reactions can be damaging to children and adolescents.
People with low distress tolerance often become overwhelmed by stressful situations and may sometimes turn to unhealthy or even destructive ways of coping with these difficult emotions.
For families experiencing crisis, it can be difficult for some parents to help comfort their children in the healing process. For some people, dealing with the emotional toll that a crisis carries can extend far beyond the crisis event. Understanding crisis responses and learning distress tolerance skills can help families and their children cope effectively with the feelings, thoughts, and behaviors that comes with acute events when they occur again.
WHAT IS DISTRESS TOLERANCE?
Distress tolerance is a person's ability to manage actual or perceived emotional distress. It involves a person's ability to get through an emotional incident without making it worse. People with low distress tolerance often become overwhelmed by stressful situations and may sometimes turn to unhealthy or even destructive ways of coping with these difficult emotions. Let's delve into some ways to manage through distress:
Physical Grounding Techniques
Physical grounding techniques involve the use of physical and mental distractions that take a persons mind off of what is going on in the crisis that is causing elevated emotions and stress. Many Therapists experienced in Trauma-Informed therapy help clients to develop their skill in grounding as a way to help clients cope with crisis situations.
Practicing grounding can help clients draw back from having flashbacks of a stressful and catastrophic event such as experiencing being in the middle of dinner and suddenly being faced with an earthquake or tornado; a terror attack in a major city, or witnessing family violence, as an example. Grounding is also helpful for dealing with unwanted feelings that arise from something as simple as moving on from a breakup of a long-term relationship. Practicing grounding can also help a person challenge maladaptive beliefs about what is real and what is not, such as with anxiety or panic disorders.
You can use grounding techniques to help create space from distressing feelings in nearly any situation, but they’re especially helpful if you’re dealing with:
anxiety
post-traumatic stress disorder
dissociation
self-harm urges
traumatic memories
substance use disorder
These techniques help you to physically ground yourself in order to regain control of whatever is going on in the present (and helps you think/act quickly also):
Deep breathing. You'll take deep breathes, holding your breath for 2-3 seconds before breathing out. Deep breathing helps you to calm down and prevents emotional escalation.
Pick up or touch something close to you and Look Around. This brings you quickly back to the present. In the state of crisis, sometimes we can't always remember what was going on in our environment when all we can think about is the crisis itself. But when you pick up something physical, and start to look around - you're actually making a mental note of what is going on around you. Which leads us to our next technique, self-soothing.
Self-Soothing. Self-Soothing is a way to physically and emotionally regain control of your emotions, which is a part of distress tolerance. What do you hear during the crisis? What do you smell? What do you see at the moment a crisis develops, what is touching you? Varying sensory experiences such as sight, sound, taste, smell, touch, are self-soothing ways to handle negative situations that cause immense emotion.
HOW TO PRACTICE DISTRESS TOLERANCE SKILLS
One way to practice distress tolerance skills is through exposure therapy. With a trusted counselor, determine the best ways to tackle the emotions you felt during the last crisis you experienced. What were you afraid of during that event? Did you have physical symptoms that made interacting with others, post-crisis, difficult? Whatever the outcome, working with a professional to expose yourself to the emotions that followed post-crisis can be critical in how you handle the next stressful event. Practicing mindful movements to help make note of how your body feels through each move is a start. Also, going for a walk in your neighborhood can help you to pay attention more to what you hear in your surroundings. The more you know and experience, the more you will be actively prepared to handle the next crisis.
Let us know how you've managed your emotions during a crisis. Drop a comment below and subscribe to interact with others on the blog!
Comments