You can not only cope with anything flung at you...

... you can cope AHEAD of time, and go in to the experience prepared and protected.

Jul 18, 2024

How is it going using your TIPP skills to adjust your physiology when you feel like you are going to lose it?

TIPP skills from DBT are helpful to know and use because sometimes distress gets so intense we aren’t able to think our way out of it. So doing something to change our whole physiology, like by raising our heartrate or drastically reducing our temperature, takes the thinking out of the strategy and sort of shocks us into a different state.

Emotions are an important way to understand ourselves and what we need by giving us information about our environment and our experience. One pillar of DBT Skills is Emotional Regulation with the purpose being: naming and understanding our own emotions, decreasing the frequency of unpleasant emotions, and decreasing emotional suffering.

Opposite Action is one Emotional Regulation skill that keeps us from letting big, difficult emotions dictate what we do. As much as other drivers might piss you off, doing the OPPOSITE of what anger is telling you to do might mean you slow down and smile as you pass someone who cut you off… much safer strategy than what anger wanted to do, right?

Cope Ahead is another DBT skill for emotional regulation. More specifically, you get better and better at understanding yourself and what you need and at feeling prepared for anything, when you practice Coping Ahead.

Skylar dreaded going home for the 4th of July. She didn’t like going home in general because her mom always had something to say about her size. But the 4th was even more difficult because there would be a family BBQ and that meant lots of other people who felt it was their job to comment on how Skylar looked and what was on her plate.

But this year, Skylar had learned how to Cope Ahead.

This is what she did:

Using only facts (not emotions, assumptions, or opinions), Skylar described what she would be walking in to. She journaled about this, but you could also talk through it with a trusted friend, or even to your pet or to yourself when you are alone.

“When everyone starts coming over, they’ll all hate how I look.”

She remembered the FACTS ONLY part and thought, Wait- is that a fact? How do you know they hate how you look?

“Okay- right, right, right- I FEEL like they think that. What has happened in the past is, my aunt will come up to me and say I’ve either lost weight or gained weight…The first thing people say to me is about my body!”

Skylar used facts to describe what she was anticipating and outlined her feelings about it.

“I am anticipating feeling embarrassed and alone. And honestly, sort of ignored and misunderstood- like these are my family and they don’t even know what is going on with me- they only notice how my body looks.”

Once she got clear on the feelings she anticipated, she decided a good way to handle it, when she is there. In the past, she’d just let the feelings of embarrassment, aloneness and feeling ignored cause her to isolate, which only made the feelings even worse. Now that she realized the fullness of how she was being affected, she thought about how she’d rather respond.

“I want to actually be known by my family- there is so much more to me than what size I am… When people start off with body comments, I’ll be ready to switch it up to something I want to talk about. ..To what I want them to know about me!”

Once she figured out her Cope Ahead plan, she practiced by envisioning it- not like she was watching it, like she was IN it.

Skylar noticed her temperature rise, then very slowly stated: “Hi Aunt Wendy- I want to tell you about what I’ve been working on with my pictures- can I show you some?” then she felt herself breathing slowly and deeply.

After envisioning her full Cope Ahead plan, Skylar took a few minutes to breathe slowly and deeply in real time, calming herself. She pictured the ocean lapping up on the beach- her “happy place,” which usually helps her chill out when she remembers to go there mentally. (Practicing your Cope Ahead can feel challenging, so relaxation afterwards is very important to executing it when the time comes!)

This is how you Cope Ahead. You can feel more ready for upcoming challenges because you’ve prepared for yourself how you will handle the tough emotions that arise.

Coping Ahead is useful when you have a meeting you feel uneasy about, and activity that you expect to be overwhelming, or any event that you anticipate will be hard.