Distress Tolerance Coping Skills (DBT)

What is distress tolerance?

Many people try to cope by getting into behaviors that provide relief, but the behaviors can be unhelpful or harmful.

Examples of ineffective coping behaviors are drug and alcohol use, gambling, spending money, overeating, and self-injury.

We can learn distress tolerance skills to replace the ineffective coping behaviors in order to manage stress and crisis.

How to start...

One way to figure out how to replace unhelpful behaviors with helpful ones is to create two lists.

The first, is your ineffective behaviors, and the second, healthy coping behaviors.

The objective is to eliminate the behaviors on the first list while building up the ones on the second list.

A few guideline that will improve skillfulness:

Practice daily, even when you’re not in distress, this way you know what to do when you are feeling distressed. These skills should be enjoyable.
Continually diversify your skills. Some skills will work, while others may not. I suggest having at least five skills that you can practice anywhere at anytime, as some skills will be more helpful than others, depending on the situation.
Write up a distress tolerance plan for when crisis arises and then choose to follow it. The plan will keep you focused and it can be as simple as coping behaviors and supportive people listed on an index card.

Radical acceptance skill:

“The first step in overcoming any misfortune is to allow it to be.” William James, philosopher and psychologist

What acceptance is NOT...