The result comes on Monday. It is Sunday, a little after eleven a.m., and there is nothing in the day that needs doing. No calls, no errands, nobody waiting on you. A week ago you would have given anything for a day like this.
Now there are eleven hours between here and sleep and every one of them has to be spent awake.
Some distress tolerance tools offer a crisis skill for exactly this. It helps with changing what the hours themselves feel like while you wait them out. If your arousal is running so high that nothing else can reach you, use the TIPP skills first and then come back to this.
Let’s see what these skills change, how to soothe each of the five senses, why comfort can sometimes not land, and seven ways of improving a day you cannot shorten.
What These Skills Actually Change
Distraction moves your attention off the problem. The skills discussed here leave your attention where it is and changes the conditions you are enduring it in.
They are still crisis skills, which means the same conditions apply. Highly stressful, short-term, and creating pressure to resolve something that cannot be resolved today.
If the concern you’re facing can be worked on right now, the best solution is to slowly start working on it. Nothing here is a substitute for that.
Finally, none of what we will discuss is meant as a long term solution. The intended use is to help you tolerate the distress until you can do something meaningful about it. Like when your charger wire only works at that one special angle. The special angle works for now, but it’s best to replace the wire.
Soothing Your Five Senses
Self-soothing means being kind to each of your five senses.
To soothe your eyes, look at the sky. Light a candle and watch the mesmerising flickering flame. Beautify one corner of your room with posters, paintings, or fairy lights. Walk somewhere peaceful in your vicinity and pay attention to what passes in front of you.
To soothe your ears, listen to the pitterpattering rain, or the singing birds, or the rustling leaves. Hum a pleasing tune. Sing along to that song you like. Or let whatever sounds arrive go in one ear and out the other while consciously noticing this process.
To soothe your nose, open a window and smell the air. Boil cinnamon. Open a packet of coffee and breathe it in. Walk under trees. Get some lavender oil.
To soothe your tongue, make your favourite drink and drink it slowly. Eat something you used to enjoy as a child. Or if neither option is available, eat one thing you can, whatever it is, close your eyes and actually taste it. Notice the texture of the food.
To soothe your skin, take a long warm bath. Put clean sheets on the bed. Wrap yourself in a comforting blanket. Gently massage your scalp and face. Sink into a comfortable chair. Sit with your pet. Hug someone.
You can devise your personal ways of self-soothing based on what works for you and what is currently available. You needn’t spend a lot of money or time, it’s the intent that matters.
Sometimes you run the bath and the bath is just wet. The tea is just tea. You do all of it correctly and nothing arrives. The idea is to create an environment which supports you in your distress.
So, it may not feel ecstatically awesome immediately, and that’s not a failure on your part. It takes baby steps to deal with distress, and the more you do it the better you get.
When Comfort Feels Like the Wrong Answer
If you have just had news that reorganises your life, being handed a warm drink can feel woefully insufficient. But maybe that’s the best that can be done for now.
Being offered comfort can feel like being asked to settle down by ignoring the distress altogether. As though the distress is a problem to be managed rather than the truth of your current feelings. Plenty of people have been handed comfort in exactly that spirit, and having felt it once, they can smell it at a distance.
The distinction worth holding is between being soothed and being quieted. Being quieted is done to you, usually for somebody else’s benefit. Soothing yourself is something you do, on purpose, because the next four hours arrive regardless, and you would rather get through them with self-compassion. Nobody is asking you to feel better about what happened.
And if comfort from outside doesn’t land, there are seven more that work from the inside.
IMPROVE the Moment
Seven ways to improve a moment, remembered with the acronym IMPROVE.
- Imagery — go somewhere pleasant in your head.
- Meaning — look for the purpose in your situation.
- Prayer — hand it over.
- Relaxing actions — let your body loosen its grip.
- One thing in the moment — put all of your attention on what you are doing.
- Vacation — take a timed break.
- Encouragement — talk to yourself.
Start with relaxing actions on the body. Breathe deeply. Change your facial expression. Stretch, or do some yoga. Take a hot bath or sit in hot water. Massage your neck and your scalp. Drink hot milk. All self-soothing techniques apply here too.
Guide your attention to one thing in the moment. Focus your entire attention on just what you are doing. Keep yourself in the moment. Put your mind in the present. Instead of telling yourself to not think about something, try telling yourself to focus on what you’re doing. As your mind wanders, gently ask yourself to come back. Yoga can be a helpful exercise for this.
Imagery and a Brief Vacation
Both of these take you somewhere else for a fixed stretch.
In your head: imagine a room inside yourself and furnish it the way you want it, then close the door on everything that can hurt you. Build a calm world and stay in it a while. Picture the hurt draining out of you the way water leaves a pipe.
In the world: get into bed and pull the covers over your head. Turn your phone off for the day. Take a blanket to a park and stay on it all afternoon. Take an hour off from being a person with responsibilities.
The key word here is “brief”. A vacation has a return date, which is the difference between a helpful change of environment and simply not coming back.
Meaning and Prayer
Meaning is the skill of finding a purpose in a painful situation, holding on to whatever is good in it, and repeating those things to yourself as needed. For example an accident that prompted someone to embody more kindness to the world. Or the seemingly wasted years that turned out to be the training for the work they do now. When meaning is authentic, it is not a consolation but a genuine load-bearing structure, and it can make a situation survivable that otherwise would not be.
This doesn’t mean that whatever happens is for the best. It’s more on the lines of making the best of whatever happens and finding that silver lining.
And some pain has nothing in it. Searching hard for a meaning that is not there can become an injury of its own, laid on top of the first one. If the search is proving unsuccessful, that is worth noticing early rather than deciding you have not looked hard enough.
Prayer can prove helpful in such conditions. Open your heart to God, or to a supreme being, or to the cosmos, or to the inscrutable scales of probability. Turn the thing over to something larger than you.
The request is best when it’s for strength to bear the pain, not for the pain to be lifted. That is precisely what makes it a distress tolerance skill rather than a wish. It assumes the situation stays as it is and asks for help carrying it.
If you pray, pray. If you do not, asking the steadiest part of yourself for strength is not a lesser act.
Talking to Yourself Like Someone You Like
Finally, what you say to soothe yourself while all this is going on is also important.
Think of the cruellest thing you’ve thought to yourself about yourself. Is that something you would say to a suffering loved one?
Try to speak to yourself like someone you love.
“I can stand it.” “I am doing the best I can.” “This will not last forever.” “I will be all right.”
There is a second half to it, which is rethinking the situation itself. For example, if they did not come to pick you up it does not mean they don’t love you.
Saying the kinder thing on purpose can feel false at first, and for some people it goes on feeling false for a while. Say it anyway. With time it will become the truth!
Monday still comes on Monday. Nothing here will shorten the wait or change what you are waiting for.
But using self-soothing techniques and IMPROVE can help you not only survive but do so with self-compassion and self-love.
And if you need help building steadier emotional regulation skills we’re always just a call away!