It is now more important than ever for us to practice skills that help us in the immediate and allow us to navigate life’s many stressful moments and obstacles. In Dialectical Behavior Therapy we use a set of skills called Distress Tolerance skills to help us alleviate moments of crisis.
Crisis is defined as: A temporary situation that is making you feel awful and in danger of acting in ways that you’ll later regret.
There are many different skills in DBT that focus on Distress tolerance.
It’s all about learning how to tolerate stress and negative emotions when they arise so that it does not feel unmanageable or become paralyzing.
One such Distress Tolerance skill is: STOP
STOP is an acronym that stands for:
Stop
Take a step back
Observe
Proceed Mindfully.
Many of the Distress Tolerance skills of DBT are acronyms – the easier to remember in a moment of intense stress!
The first step of Stop is to do just that: STOP.
When you find yourself in a crisis, don’t react! Stop reacting! Remind yourself that your emotions might be spiraling and acting on them in this moment may make things worse!
This first step is crucial to putting distance between yourself, your emotions and the situation causing intense emotions.
The next step is to take a step back –
whether you do this in your mind or physically take a step back; it’s important to take a pause from the situation, and take a few deep breaths to center yourself.
Then we observe.
Observing is all about paying attention to what is actually happening in the moment. What are the people around you doing, what are you doing? What are you thinking? Feeling? This reminds us to observe the full situation and not just our reaction to it and sets us up to act more effectively.
Finally, we proceed mindfully.
We want to activate wise mind in this step and ask ourselves: what does this situation require us to do? Consider both yourself and others in this situation in a nonjudgmental way to allow us to think through the consequences and proceed with more awareness.
I often reflect on this quote by C.J. Redwine when thinking about the benefits of stop. They state :
“Losing your head in a crisis is a good way to become the crisis.”
Oftentimes practicing STOP can help us keep our head and navigate a crisis without engaging in ineffective coping mechanisms or strategies.
