Don't Make It Worse: Distress Tolerance Tools (DBT mini-season part 3)

About this episode

James Avramenko discusses Distress Tolerance skills from DBT to manage emotional crises effectively.

This week on a very special episode of Friendless, we're leaving the mindfulness skills behind and stepping into DBT's toolkit for emotional emergencies: the moments when you're at an eight or nine on the chaos scale, logic has stepped out of the building, and your nervous system is running the whole show. The only goal in those moments? Don't make things worse. In this episode, James breaks down two core Distress Tolerance skills: The STOP Skill — your emergency brake for when your thumb is hovering over "send," you can feel those words rising in your throat, and everything in your body is screaming do something. STOP interrupts the impulse-to-action pipeline just long enough to give you back a choice. The TIP Skills — a set of physical interventions (Temperature, Intense exercise, Paced breathing, and Paired muscle relaxation) that work directly on your biology when you're too flooded to think your way through anything. Because sometimes you can't logic your way out of a crisis. You have to use your body. James also shares two personal stories: what happened when he recorded a full 45-minute episode and forgot to hit record, and how he used the STOP skill in real time during a…

Topics covered

• Distress Tolerance
• DBT
• emotional emergencies
• mindfulness
• crisis management

Keywords

• STOP Skill
• TIP Skills
• emotional regulation
• mental health
• guided mental rehearsal

Mentioned in this episode

Products: DBT toolkit, STOP Skill, TIP Skills

Books & works: Friendless

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