Shireen Rizvi, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, co-authored the book Real Skills for Real Life: A DBT Guide to Navigating Stress, Emotions, and Relationships. She provides practical tools to better handle emotional distress.
When facing distress, common reactions might include lashing out, consuming alcohol, or ignoring the problem. Rizvi argues that these actions stem from lacking strategies to cope effectively. Her book, published earlier this year, offers guidance on accepting distress and responding constructively.
“In those moments, we have to learn how to accept the distress and respond in a more effective way,” explains Rizvi.
Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), developed by psychologist Marsha Linehan in the 1980s, initially targeted borderline personality disorder. Rizvi’s book demonstrates DBT’s broad applicability for various emotional challenges, supported by engaging diagrams and mindfulness techniques.
Utilizing TIP Techniques
Rizvi introduces the TIP techniques, comprising temperature, intense exercise, paced breathing, and paired muscle relaxation. These methods aim to reduce emotional intensity when it impairs clear thinking, such as during significant conflicts or traumatic events.
- Temperature: Submerge your face in ice water to slow heart and respiratory rates, triggering a calming mammalian dive reflex.
- Intense Exercise: Quick, vigorous exercises raise your heart rate. This calms you as your heart rate lowers post-exercise.
- Paced Breathing: Prolonged exhalation calms emotional intensity and regulates chest breathing.
- Paired Muscle Relaxation: Tense then release muscles while associating relaxation cues to enhance relaxation effects.
“Help you go from, say, a 100 to an 80 on a scale from zero to 100,” Rizvi says.
The Transient Nature of Distress
Rizvi cautions that distress doesn’t persist indefinitely. Emotions, irrespective of their intensity or unpleasantness, will eventually subside.
“One thing we want people to learn is that whatever it is you’re feeling, no matter how intense, no matter how awful it feels in this moment, it will pass,” Rizvi emphasizes.
This story was edited by Meghan Keane, with visual edits by CJ Riculan.