What is distress intolerance?
You may be having problems with distress intolerance if you are experiencing distress and you perceive that
your feelings are unbearable
you hate your feelings
you cannot cope with your feelings
you need to get rid of your feelings
you hate yourself for having the feelings
All humans will experience uncomfortable emotions one at a time or another. More often than not, these unpleasant feelings have important functions. For instance, sad feelings are meant to help us seek support for the loss that we have experienced, anger is meant to motivate us to fight for fairness, and fear may keep us away from harm.
Distress intolerance refers to a person’s perceived inability to fully experience unpleasant emotions and has a desperate need to escape from these emotions.
Further, escaping from unpleasant feelings may reduce our effectiveness in evaluating the situation or finding appropriate solutions, and may even make problems worse. Here are some examples:
Situational avoidance – e.g. avoid working on difficult tasks due to fear of frustration or failure, or avoid social interaction due to fear of rejection
Excessive reassurance seeking or checking – going for health check repetitively or overly questioning or consulting other people’s opinions to calm oneself down
Distraction and suppression – going all out to push away difficult feelings, such as keeping telling oneself to “stop it”, obsessively repeating positive statements as soon as one feels any distress, or obsessively engaging in activities to distract oneself from the slightest hint of emotion). More often than not, the feelings will resurface sooner or later
Numbing and withdrawing – this includes any that tunes oneself out from distress, e.g., alcohol, drugs, binge eating and excessive sleep, gambling and gaming etc
Harmful releases – this includes things that we do to vent our stress and also physically damaging to ourselves, such as scratching, picking, biting, punching, hair pulling, head banging, cutting or burning
What should I do if I have issues with distress intolerant?
Step 1. Start working on acceptance. It is not about liking unpleasant emotions. It is also not about allowing others to take advantage of you. It is about perceiving the negative emotion for what it is and reacting to it in a helpful manner. This may involve you mindfully observing your feelings, labelling them accurately, and taking a curious and non-judgmental attitude. Some people find it helpful to use imagery exercises to cope with their intense emotions.
Step 2. Understand that it is normal for unpleasant emotions to reappear at times. Practising acceptance helps you gain a sense of control over it instead of being overwhelmed by it.
Step 3. Explore possible solutions to the problems that caused the unpleasant feelings and develop action plans to work on the problems.
Step 4. While working to solve the problems, it is equally important to engage in healthy activities that enhance the well-being of your mind and body.
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