Pick Your Poison: Distress or Rumination

Some people struggle to pull on their favorite pair of jeans and then think

“oh yeah- it is that time of the month…” or

“awe man- I must be growing out of these…”

and then they move on with their day.

For others, struggling to put on clothing is seen as evidence of failure. Or a reminder of shame that is always already there. And moving on with the day doesn’t really happen, at least not emotionally.

There is a similar difference in the people who can get into an argument with someone they care about, feel upset, and then a few hours later see where both parties had some culpability in the conflict. As opposed to the person who, upon returning to the person they argued with the next day, having ruminated about it for nearly 24 hours, picks up right where the fight left off, feeling as angry and hurt as the day before.

Not to say that these people are the same. Except that, in each example, the first person has the ability to tolerate distress. For some this comes easily while for others (for various reasons), we don’t have the skills to tolerate when things are painful. So rather than using distress tolerance skills to move on from the pain, we ruminate about the problem, re-living it and giving it more space in our life than it needs to have.

Do you identify with any of the characters in the above examples?

Would you like to identify with a different character than you already do?

Who in your life have you seen that is able to feel emotional pain or distress, and move on from it, without it becoming their entire reality? Have you seen someone do this before?

Distress tolerance skills help people survive and cope with pain in ways that make life worth living. Distress tolerance skills are key to moving on from pain and living a fulfilling life.

Select any of the following you’ve used, when you’ve been in emotional pain:

•Avoiding pleasant activities because you think you don’t deserve to feel better.

•Spending a great deal of time thinking about pains, accidents, and problems in the past.

•Worrying about the potential for future pains, accidents and problems.

•Numbing yourself with food or other substances.

•Engaging in harmful behaviors towards yourself like cutting, burning, picking or hair pulling.

•Taking your feelings out on others with excessive anger, yelling or controlling attempts.

•Engaging in unsafe sexual activities including sex with strangers or frequent unprotected sex.

•Avoiding social activities because of what others will think of you when you attend.

If you’ve identified with using any of the above more often than not, learning more about distress tolerance will be such a relief to you!