“By failing to prepare you are preparing to fail”. - Benjamin Franklin
Increasing Distress Tolerance:
The brain is very pliable and open to learning new things, which is fantastic news. Increasing distress tolerance is a way to diminish the stranglehold of various behaviours hooked into the dopamine reward system. The concept of distress tolerance is not a popular one. The reason we have an addiction is because we want to experience pleasure or avoid pain; we are trying to escape an uncomfortable emotion or want to hold onto something we are addicted to that offers us a degree of pleasure.
Increasing distress tolerance is a journey, not an event.
Shifting the stranglehold of various behaviours hooked into the dopamine reward system takes commitment and time (see Part 1). The new rewards come from seeing shifts in thinking and behaviours and become the impetus to staying on the journey.
Strategies Toward Increasing Distress Tolerance:
These are suggestions, which can be implemented either in stages, individually, or together, and in whichever order you find most comfortable.
Develop Curiosity: Be curious about how your life could look without the addiction. Make a mental image of that life.
Be Intentional: Make a pact with yourself of being committed to that image, and changing ingrained responses when faced with triggers.
Acceptance: Accept that distress is part of the journey toward healing and change. Embrace it, rather than run from it.
Accountability Partner: Find an accountability partner, someone you check in with when you feel the ‘wanting’ creeping up on you and talk through what you are experiencing.
Identify Triggers: Identify places, emotions or things that cause you to trigger.
Make a plan: Make a plan in advance of actions you will take when the trigger presents.
30-minute Rule: When experiencing a wave of ‘wanting’, find something to do for 30 minutes. This effectively creates an interruption to your thoughts and behaviour and channels your focus elsewhere, until the 'wanting' subsides.
Initially, you may only be able to manage 5 minutes. That's GREAT.
Increase the time you expose yourself to the distress of being without the activity/object or substance by 5 minutes each time until you get to 30 minutes and before you realize it, that addiction will be broken. Minutes will turn into hours, hours into days, days into weeks, weeks into months and months into years. Before long it will be a distant, rarely recalled struggle.
Celebrate Wins: Put time makers in place – two weeks, 1 month, 2 months, 3 months, 6 months, 1 year … etc… celebrate and reward successes at regular intervals.
Self-compassion: Lapsing into old habits happens, don't beat yourself up. Pick yourself up and remain committed to changing responses the next time. Focus on your wins!
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