Philadelphia DBT Therapy: There’s no point in being miserable all the time.

You often feel things more deeply than other people. You’ve been told that you’re too sensitive. It’s not uncommon for you to get “stuck” in a place of feeling miserable longer than most people.

You may be a person who has a very high-demanding job, that deals with really, really stressful issues. Perhaps you’re an attorney who works with really high conflict divorce and custody battles. When you experience emotionally difficult days, it’s almost damn near impossible for you to leave your “work” at the office. During those days, your emotions from work seem to hijack any plans you have to come home and find some peace.

If you’ve ever found yourself feeling like a hostage to your emotions, you’re not alone. For some people their painful, negative emotions seem to latch on, and don’t want to let go.

While it’s essential to make sure you experience all of your emotions, even the awful ones, there’s no point in being miserable all of the time. Sometimes it makes sense to distract yourself from whatever emotion is taking over.

Putting Space Between You & Your Emotion: Using DBT Distress Tolerance Skills

When you find that you can’t concentrate and you’re consumed by a negative feeling, knowing when to distract yourself is an effective way to tolerate your problem. In DBT, using distractions can be helpful when you find yourself being consumed by negative emotions, and you can’t solve your problem right away.

In other words, using a time-limited distraction skill helps you put space between your emotionally painful problem, so you can eventually come back to it later when the time is right.

DBT Distract with ACCEPTS

DBT uses the acronym ACCEPTS to help you remember ways in which to distract when now is not the time to be thinking about the emotion. The way this works is by interfering with your current mood state.

For instance, in the example above with the attorney feeling the emotional strains from a court case, it isn’t effective for her to ruminate about whatever happened earlier in court. For that attorney, it makes sense to find a way to distract from being sucked into the court proceedings from earlier in the day.

Last week, I explained the value you can get from distracting by making comparisons. If you missed it, you can read it HERE.

The “E” in ACCEPTS stands for different “Emotions”. In other words, distract from your current emotion with another emotion.

Dialectical Behavior Therapy & Distracting with Another Emotion

Being able to replace one emotion with another emotion can be very effective in distracting yourself. Here’s how you do it.

4 Steps to Distracting with a Different Emotion

1. Identify the current emotion you are experiencing.

2. Identify an emotion that is different from the emotion that is distressing you.

3. Choose an activity that will prompt that new, different emotion

4. Engage in said activity for a period of time.

I’ll break it down a bit further for ya using the example above.

1. As the attorney above, you identify feeling consumed and overwhelmed by anger at the injustice of what your client has had to go through as the wife of her abusive husband.

2. A different or opposite emotion to anger could be happiness or joy.

3. Here are some options for generating a different emotion from anger. You could replace feeling anger with laughter by watching a Netflix comedy special. Or, you could generate feeling scared by reading a psychological thriller novel.

4. You’ve decided to watch that new Bill Burr comedy special on Netflix and even invite a friend over to watch it with you.

DBT distraction skills: Helping you not become consumed by your emotions.

Sometimes you need to be able to distract yourself from your painful emotion when you simply cannot continue to be consumed by it. It is important to note that when you decide on an activity to engage in, choose something that is opposite to what you’re currently experiencing.

For instance, if you’re consumed with anger, like in the example above, you wouldn’t want to watch a violent movie. Another example is that if you’re unable to find relief from sadness due to grieving the loss of your spouse, you need to stay away from reading or watching something that is also really sad.

Distracting with DBT ACCEPTS

Again, the take-home message is this. There is no point in feeling anger or profound sadness all of the time. You need to be able to experience and process your emotions. Yet it’s not effective to do so at every waking minute of the day, you know?

Your Philadelphia BPD Therapist

If you’re struggling with powerful, overwhelming emotions and you can’t find any relief, there is hope. As a therapist specializing in Dialectical Behavior Therapy, I help people who can’t seem to cope with their life’s problems in effective ways, oftentimes making things worse. I provide treatment for Borderline Personality Disorder and anxiety therapy. You are totally not doomed to be miserable forever.

Philadelphia DBT

If you’re ready to find your way out of hell, DBT can help. As a DBT therapist in Philadelphia, I offer comprehensive outpatient DBT to treat anxiety and BPD. Want to know if DBT is right for you? Reach out today by clicking HERE to book your own consultation for DBT therapy in Philadelphia.