Build Distress Tolerance Skills for Parents and Kids with Dr. Laurie Santos

Understanding Distress Tolerance

• 💡 Distress tolerance is the ability to manage, allow, and endure negative emotions and other aversive states like boredom or physical discomfort.
• ⚠️ Parents often mistakenly encourage distress avoidance in children, rather than training them in distress tolerance.
• 🎯 Training children in distress tolerance empowers them to navigate and problem-solve their own negative emotions independently.

The ACCEPTs Acronym for Distress Tolerance

• 🔑 The ACCEPTs acronym provides a framework for strategies to manage distress, applicable to both parents and children.
• Activities: Engaging in activities like reading, knitting, or calling a friend to temporarily distract from distress.
• Contributing: Alleviating distress by performing acts of kindness for others, such as donating or checking in on a friend.
• Comparisons: Using thought processes to reframe distress by considering that it might not be as bad as perceived or by recalling past successful coping experiences.
• Emotions: Actively shifting emotional states by engaging with music, watching funny videos, or other mood-altering content.
• Pushing Away: A cognitive strategy involving mentally visualizing pushing distressing emotions away to hold them at bay.
• Thoughts: Diverting attention from distressing thoughts by engaging in other mental activities like puzzles, math problems, or using the 5-4-3-2-1 sensory grounding technique.
• Sensations: Changing emotional states by experiencing different physical sensations, such as holding an ice cube, taking a cold bath, or smelling a pleasant scent.

Benefits of Distress Tolerance

• 🧠 Developing distress tolerance skills allows individuals to cope effectively when external support is unavailable.
• 🚀 By embracing distress tolerance, individuals build robust problem-solving strategies for dealing with difficult emotions.
• ✅ These strategies are valuable for parents to model and teach their children, fostering greater emotional resilience.