Why distraction is not the way to deal with unwanted thoughts.
As a certified dialectical behavioral therapist, something common that is taught is distraction from painful thoughts. Distraction, also known as distress tolerance skills, can be things like TIPP skills or ACCEPTs skills, which are fantastic at helping you step back from the edge of feeling like you are about to lose it. Particularly because my two specialties are providing trauma therapy and couples counseling. Both a person healing from trauma and a couple in distress can find them selves in extrema emotional distress from time to time. Distracting from that very thing that causes you to boil over, can definitely help you if you are facing an extreme mood swing and you are in a complete nervous breakdown. When I teach these types of skills, I always do so with a disclosure: we distract only if we must to keep ourselves safe or other people safe. That’s it. I highly urge my clients and couples not to rely on distress tolerance skills as there go to when they are faced with a trigger, and keep on reading to learn why.
Ask just about anyone, and they will tell you what their favorite thing to do for distraction is. TV reruns, social media, and shopping are the top common ones I have noticed in my counseling practice. This is something that I have had some interesting conversations about with not only my clients but other therapists who also practice DBT therapy or other various types of therapies. It is not something that everyone sees eye to eye on. Keep on reading to learn more about the 3 reasons why I don’t want people to use distraction unless it is a last resort.
Reason Number One: You are keeping yourself from practicing being able to sit with uncomfortable thoughts, feelings, and body sensations.
Reason Number Two: You are further driving a disconnection between your mind and your body.
Reason Number Three: Pain is an unavoidable part of life, and we don’t want to get in the habit of not living life.
Reason Number One: You are keeping yourself from practicing being able to sit with uncomfortable thoughts, feelings, and body sensations.
Like I said, distraction is perfectly fine if in the moment we do not have skills that will keep us safe or other people safe. Perhaps going to Target or browsing YouTube for a few hours is all we can manage to keep us from downing a bottle of wine or sharing words with someone we can never take back. And sometimes distraction is all that we can do to keep us safe from physically harming ourselves or someone else. I totally get it and I do teach distraction tools to client’s and couples of mine that are struggling with deep emotional swings, where our main goal is to just stay safe.
But eventually I want people to learn how to practice sitting with the discomfort of being triggered by someone or something, because I know my clients and couples are capable of so much more than they give themselves credit for. Plus sitting with discomfort is a necessary skill that we need if we are able to live a live in this triggering world. Now, I never said sitting with discomfort is easy. Heck, I struggle with this all the time myself. Breathing and observing my thoughts has been a life saver, keeping me from saying words I can’t unsay and from emotionally spending on crap I do not need. And it is a skill that you can work on and practice too, believe you’ll be glad you did!
A good chunk of the therapy that I do with people is slowing down and learning to observe and not react to feelings. We do this with various mindfulness exercises. It is hard in the beginning, but with time this skill becomes easier. A visual I often give people is that we want to be more like a monk and not a volcano. A volcano explodes and explodes hard, often causing a lot of destruction to itself and everything in its zone. We don’t want to explore like a volcano, and I teach people how to tame this part of them in counseling. What we do want to be more like is like a monk, who seems to sit and listen. I like to picture a monk being in a room full of their personal triggers (I am sure monks have triggers, but they just manage them well). They breathe and just observe the uncomfortable thoughts and feelings they have. Maybe they are irritated, disappointed, sad, or bored. And that is okay. The goal is not to push these feelings away, but to just notice them and let them be and let them move along. This takes some work, but with the help of a therapist, skilled meditation leader, or yoga instructor, you can definitely improve these skills. And I hope you do!
Reason Number Two: You are further driving a disconnection between your mind and your body.
When we distract ourselves we are further driving a disconnection between our mind and our body. It is a coping skills we use when we don’t have a lot of better options or when we never taught how to manage big emotions. When people decide to come to therapy we actually work on reversing this, so that people can better control the thoughts and feelings, instead of just shoving them away. It is like hiding all the junk in the closet, it is still there and not taken care off, even if you don’t see it. In therapy we learn to organize and maybe even throw out what isn’t working for you. But if people in therapy continue to distract, they are actually undoing all the hard work that they are doing in therapy. I work really hard with my clients to further connect their mind to their body, so that they can feel more integrated. So then it becomes the responsibility of my clients to continue to work hard on nurturing that mind body connection.
We actually want to be aware of our feelings, thoughts, and sensations, because this can help us create change in our lives. Change that people often ignore for years!
Your body is trying to tell you things all the time. Like all the time. People seem to understand that when they are hungry, they should eat. Or when they are tired, they should rest. But sometimes we continue to do things that we don’t want to do or can’t for the matter. Like spending time doing activities we don’t want to do with friends, instead of voicing alternatives. Or by trucking along in a job that is making you miserable, instead of figuring out what we can do instead. Like talking to you boss about a transferring or maybe taking on a new project. Maybe even leaving. But people will ignore themselves for years and then they become depressed and anxious.
This is why we don’t want to rely on distraction. Distraction keeps us from listening to our bodies. Our bodies are smart and know when we are working too hard or when we are not in a loving relationship. Therefore I urge people to distract themselves only when they need to, so that they don’t damage the connection they have to their body. As a dialectical behavioral therapist, I really focus on teaching people emotional regulation skills and mindfulness to help them cope, so that they don’t feel the need to use distraction. It helps with both my clients who are overcoming trauma and my couples that are working on building up their relationships.
Reason Number Three: Pain is an unavoidable part of life, and we don’t want to get in the habit of not living life.
Think about the last time you spent an entire evening mindlessly scrolling through your feed on Tik Tok or Instagram. No shame! I still struggle with this and have to delete apps to keep myself off them. They are made to be addicting. But it is a waste of our time. I have worked with countless people who struggle with social media and phone addictions. Some people know they struggle with this and others need a wake up call. Sometimes we will do what is called a behavior log, where they will track their activities for a week, and they are always shocked to see just how much time they spend consuming content. I want my clients to go out and live their lives and not waste precocious time behind screens.
My clients and couples work hard to not rely on distraction as a way to cope with the stress in their lives, so that they can live a life that is worth living. A life where they don’t have time to spend on their phones unless it is to connect with another human or feel guilty after another night of emotionally spending on Amazon. I work with people in therapy to help them not avoid the pain of day to day life, instead they notice it and let it be. Pain is part of life and we can’t avoid it, but suffering is something we create. Because the way that I see it is that we can ignore it and distract ourselves from life or we can live with the pain and go on with life. Often when we choose to do the second, choosing to just live with the day to day pain, we find that the pain shrinks. You might even be shocked to find yourself going a long time without really noticing the pain and stress that you use to distract yourself from. And that my fellow humans, is the dream. To stop tuning out but instead to start tuning in, to create a life worth living.