Distress tolerance is one’s ability to endure or withstand discomfort/stress. Distress tolerance skills are unique in that, rather than the goal being to make things better, the goal is to not make the situation worse. Learning to bear pain and discomfort skillfully is important because pain and distress are part of life and cannot be entirely avoided (Linehan, Distress Tolerance Skills,1993). One of the ways that we learn how to navigate the “bumps” in life is through building distress tolerance.

When in distress, emotions can run so high that we cannot think straight. This would be described as Emotion Mind.  Emotion mind is when our thoughts and behaviors are controlled only by our emotions. Have you ever found yourself making a decision in the ‘heat of the moment’ and in hindsight wishing you’d thought it through?  When we’re in emotion mind, we struggle to reason rationally and may make ineffective decisions. Fortunately, distress tolerance skills allow us to decrease the emotions around a situation, which then gives us space to think rationally and prevents us from making the situation worse. There are a multitude of effective distress tolerance skills that are beneficial to learn.  In today’s blog, I will discuss one such important distress tolerance skill, T.I.P.P.  In our next blog (Part 2: Distress Tolerance), I will review two additional skills to help build our distress tolerance “toolbox.”