Will Lippincott

Dr. Linehan also recognized that people who struggled with the urge to commit suicide were often people who might be biologically vulnerable to being emotionally overwhelmed.
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[...] I scrambled to apply the skills from the first D.B.T. module I’d learned, distress tolerance.

I followed the strategy of distracting myself with highly specific tasks just long enough — usually for two or three minutes — to lower the intensity of the fear before it overwhelmed me. Depending on where I was — at home, at work or on the street or train — I’d reach for a situationally appropriate activity. And because I can’t rely on my memory when anxiety swells, I’d carry lists on an index card or on my phone: pull out a piece of paper and write down all 50 states and their capitals — in my non-dominant hand; grab ice cubes from the fridge and hold them on the back of my neck; snap the rubber band on my wrist. At the office or in a meeting, I learned to make subtle changes to my posture like bunching my toes, half-smiling to activate facial muscles, even slowing my breathing.

And as imperfect as my D.B.T. practice was early on, I found that just taking anxiety down a degree or two gave me a measure of control over my decision making in the presence of intense emotion. The lesson was profound. I couldn’t eliminate anxiety from my life, but I could learn how to tolerate it, and cope without making the situation worse.

As I made slow, sometimes unsteady progress, I became curious about Dr. Linehan’s other D.B.T. modules. Mindfulness challenges me to accept emotions and situations as they are, not as I want them to be. I’ve learned how to “observe and describe”: to state the nature of a problem with facts, not judgments, so I can determine how best to solve it.

The interpersonal effectiveness training helps me ask for what I need in relationships and to manage conflict positively, and to do both while preserving my self-respect.
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Emotion regulation teaches me how to identify and understand the functions of my emotions, and how to decrease my historic vulnerability to extreme moods. If I’m aware of how I feel physically when I’m sad, or how my speech pattern changes when I’m angry, I can recognize where I am and change course before the intensity of the emotion gets too high.

The time needed to learn D.B.T. can feel impossibly huge, especially for those of us who despair that change can’t come fast enough to save our lives. Yet, by empowering me to make the next minute or hour better than the one before it, in even the slightest, most incremental way, this therapy kindles hope. Better hours become better days, and several years on I’ve discovered my own resilience.

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