Welcome to she persisted I'm your host Sadie Saxton a 19 year old from the Bay Area studying psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. She persisted is the Teen Mental Health podcast made for teenagers by a team in each episode. I'll bring you authentic accessible and relatable conversations about every aspect of mental Wellness. You can expect evidence-based, Tina, proof resources, coping skills, including lots of DBT,
insights and education. In each piece of content, you consume, she persisted It offers you a safe space to feel validated and understood in your struggle. While encouraging you to take ownership of your journey and build your life worth living. So let's dive in this week on. She persisted when you engage in these maladaptive coping mechanisms, there are repercussions and you are the one that's going to take accountability.
And so if we can focus on not even making things better, because that is an overwhelming and distressing Prospect to the moment, but just not making things worse. You can save yourself a lot of And a lot of problems down the road. Hello. Hello, and welcome back to. She persisted. I'm so excited to hear today, happy mental health, awareness
month. When I was thinking about what I wanted to do for this episode, I wanted to do like a comprehensive Deep dive and I've done these in the past on things like skills for depression skills for anxiety, exposure therapy, Etc. And I wanted to do one of those comprehensive resources, where you listen, you learn about the background, the context and then we talked about the skills you can use. Use to navigate the situation and sprinkling in some personal experiences of course.
And so, for today's episode, what we're going to talk about is a new term that I've decided to coin for myself. This concept that is definitely a thing in the therapy world but it's advice that I always give to individuals when they come to me and they're struggling with their mental health and it's the idea of keeping things net neutral as what we're calling it. I love a good alliteration.
This one is not the best name for this so if you can come up with a better, Name for this concept, please do you have me at all? Officially renamed it. But the idea of keeping things in that neutral is that you're not necessarily focusing on things better, but you're just not making things worse for yourself. You might be really overwhelmed. You might be struggling with your mental health. The idea of completely shifting, your behaviors, or thoughts, your urges asking for help
restructuring. Your support system is incredibly overwhelming so rather than diving into that, and being like, this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to change my entire life, I'm going To turn my mental health around in this moment, what you're going to focus on is not making things worse. So let's dive into it. So some context that's very helpful to understand here, from DBT, or dialectical behavioral therapy. If you're new here, you're like,
what the heck is DBT? First off, I have to tell you that I'm doing daily, DBT skills on Instagram and Tech talk for mental health awareness month. So, if you want some DBT skills to mental health education, sprinkled into your feed. Go follow me on there but DB T stands for dialectical behavioral therapy. It was a therapy protocol that was developed by Marsha Linehan that addresses individuals that are struggling with borderline personality disorder and
suicidal ideation. So it's individuals that are struggling in a really big way, they're struggling to regulate their emotions. They're struggling to be interpersonally, effective and things across the board are really tough, and they've had a challenges in the past, with getting support in therapy seeing things.
Get better shifting, their emotions, their thoughts, their urges Etc. Another interesting caveat Here, I'll give you two more kind of interesting things about the development of DBT and the philosophies that kind of guide. It one is that with these patients in particular, they had a history of not being super popular, will say it with therapist because they were struggling really intensely.
With either really overwhelming, urges maladaptive, coping mechanisms, suicidal ideations and then the one additional caveat that I will give two DBT treatment and the philosophy there that is helpful to Stand so idea, of acceptance and changed. So when Marsha Linehan started developing DBT, she found that with these really depressed, suicidal struggling patients. That if you told them to accept their situation, they rejected that they were like, you're
saying things can't change. You're saying I'm stuck. Like this forever. You're not able to help me with the heck is your job that they would get really upset and pissed off. But then when you told them to change their situation they would say this is my fault. Like what are you talking about? Like I didn't do this to myself. Why do I have to do with this is my problem. And so with DBT, there's this Perfect Blend of the two. It's a dialectic, which is why DBT is called dialectical
behavioral therapy. So you're balancing acceptance and change and you're accepting the situation that you're in and you're working to change it and you're doing both of those things at the same time. And Marsha Linehan found that this was a really effective way to validate patients and also motivate them to work on what it was that they were dealing with. So, as I Enter in this population that DBT was developed for had a lot going on.
There is all of these crises that they were dealing with on a daily basis on a weekly basis. When you came to therapy, it was like and I can speak from my own experience, going to DBT. It was like, I had this maladaptive coping mechanism. Come up icon in this giant argument with my parents. I hate this aspect of my life. I'm so hopeless here, I have no motivate. Like, everything is basically a burning fire, overwhelming, Code, Red. Everything is the worst always all the time.
So you have all of these crises going on and in DBT they've come up with a really effective way to address these in a hierarchy in which you deal with these things to get effective therapy outcomes and to make sure that you're doing the correct order of operation, we've all heard of order of operations, probably
from math. Like first we're going to do parentheses and then we're going to do our exponents and then we're multiplying and dividing and then we're doing dishes and subtraction same thing exists for therapy. And In therapy. There's four stages in stage 1 we are addressing severe behavioral dis control and Stage 2 we're talking about quiet. Desperation and stage, 3 were addressing problems and living in stage 4 is incompleteness.
There's actually even a DVT House of treatment and I'll put a link in the show notes so you can have the visual. If you're watching this on Instagram and this is a clip that ends up there, you'll see the house. But basically the bottom house is on fire as we talked about, we are a hot mess at this point. When Marsha Linehan developed DBT, her guiding principle and mission in life was to help. Get people out of hell is how she described it.
She struggled immensely with her mental health, as a young adult. So once she pulled herself out of how her goal in life was to go back and help other people pull themselves out of there too. And that's why she made DB T, we love Marcia. So when we look at this DBT house, sometimes people will call the first stage living in hell, because that's what the experience is for. A lot of people, it's Overwhelmed stressed. It's constantly being unhappy and ineffective.
And so when you see the DBT house, the first floor is actually on fire. And so, this is the stage 1 of addressing severe behavioral dysfunction. This is also called addressing life-threatening behaviors. So when we're in stage one, we're getting in control. So we are addressing life-threatening behaviors. We are talking about threats to treatment or major threats to quality of life and this means committing to using skills.
Having contingency plans, if maladaptive coping mechanisms are engaged in. So the goal here is to control Behavior by increasing motivation. Having a goal to get better and committing to DBT and committing to using your skills. And So, within this life-threatening Behavior, it's things like self-harm suicidal, ideation anything that increases those urges, those thought patterns, Etc. What's interesting about DBT is that things like substance use, binge eating, not taking
prescribed medication. Get in trouble with the law. Like none of those are considered life-threatening behaviors was are considered quality of life interfering behaviors. So again when we are in stage 1, we are only focusing on life-threatening behaviors and within that does include self-harm.
And so when we have this idea of life-threatening behavior, is that is including not only the actions, you're taking the behaviors are engaging in current and future experiences, but also the urges that are coming up and past experiences with those maladaptive coping mechanisms so that is the Baseline. That's the floor of the House were on fire were overwhelmed, were distressed. That is stage 1. That is what you are addressing when you're going into DP T treatment.
So with in stage 1, we also address therapy, interfering behaviors because sure it's great. If you've agreed to use the skills, but if you're not even showing up to therapy, none of that's going to matter. So our therapy, interfering behaviors include things, like, not going to sessions. Missing them being late, not doing your diary cards in DBT, how you're tracking these
life-threatening behaviors. Maybe you are not Saying your phone coaching correctly or any interpersonal Dynamics between you and the therapist. So that's also addressed in stage 1 but not as applicable of this episode. So we're skating over at now, we're on the second floor of the house. This is stage 2, this is called quiet, desperation. And this stage you are getting
in touch. So stage one, we were getting in control here or getting in touch and we're working on a motional experiencing and we're doing both exposure therapy and also doing some cognitive restructuring to work to reduce your overall Suffering and within this encapsulates, your quality of life interfering Behavior. So things like drug use binge eating not taking prescribed medication legal problems, relationship issues. High-risk sexual behavior job loss and financial issues there
is overall quality of life. Interfering behaviors are not life-threatening, but they are impacting your quality of life and those are addressed in stage 2 and then stage three is problems in living. So we've gotten control, we've gotten in touch. Now we're getting a life. So we are identifying working towards our life. Rules were increasing our self-respect and we're both increasing happiness and decreasing unhappiness, but it's in a more normal scale. So it's called Ordinary
happiness and unhappiness. So we're not in stage. One, the house is on fire were constantly overwhelmed. It's like a normal wave of emotions. And then the final stage, the roof of the house is in completeness because we know that the journey is never over. You're not like, okay, I got to the top of the house, I've gone through DBT. My life is perfect. You're going to continue to implement those skills to the
rest of your life. So it's that radical acceptance of like okay, I've done the work. I've given myself the skills to be able to navigate the challenges that life throws at me and this is not the ending point, life continues, life goes on and I will be okay. So within this stage, we talk spiritual fulfillment. This is where like the mindfulness part of DVT comes in expanded awareness of your experience. And then having a capacity for sustained Joy.
So that's the TBT house. And while it depends on what therapist you're working with and what modality of therapy you're doing it. Most cases they're going to do that order of operations of what is life-threatening? What is therapy interfering then? What is quality of life interfering.
So the goal of this episode is to intervene us into the life-threatening Behavior. Chunk the goal is to take that off the table and to just sit above floor one, we're not on fire, but we're also a little bit in quiet. Desperation. So we're not making things worse, we're not working on, climbing up the house and getting to our spiritual fulfillment yet, but we're just Just not going further down the floors.
So there are a couple of different things at play here and one of them is the idea of accountability, especially in therapy. You are the only one that's going to be accountable for the coping skills, you choose to engage in and the way that you handle your emotional distress. So if you are choosing to engage with a maladaptive coping mechanism, you're the one that's going to have to take
accountability for that. You are the one that's going to have to deal with the repercussions, whether that's trust in your relationships, trust with your therapist, what you're able to address in sessions and Can that looks like if you're engaging these negative behaviors and DBT.
There's this almost like again. There's this contingency, which I mentioned a little bit earlier when you engage in these behaviors, you don't get phone coaching for 24 hours and it might be different in each DBT program, but the idea is that
you didn't ask for support. You didn't ask for, help in the moment of Crisis, you chose to engage in a maladaptive coping mechanism and of course, lots of intention emotions arise after engaging in a maladaptive coping mechanism and your therapist Is not going to be able to be there and talk you through that, over the phone like that. Something that would be reserved for in a session but also in the crisis moment you chose not to
use that resource. You're also not going to be able to use it in the aftermath and so that's it very specific example but it's true across the board and that when you engage in these maladaptive coping mechanisms there are repercussions and you are the one that's going to take accountability and so if we can focus on not even making things better because that is an overwhelming and Satan Prospect the moment, but just not making things worse.
You can save yourself, a lot of challenges, and a lot of problems down the road, so to paint you a picture. If you're like, my mental health is struggling. I think I need to go to therapy. I think I need to get support when you think about why your mental health is struggling, it's probably those quality of life, interfering behaviors, maybe it's your relationships, maybe it's your routine.
Maybe its core belief, you hold about yourself, you're never going to be able to address any of those or work on any of those things. Until you spend the weeks months, etcetera, working through analyzing and addressing these maladaptive coping mechanisms that you've chosen to engage in. And the thing with coping skills is that we can almost think about it as like, a neural
pathway. So if we're choosing to engage in something like restricting or overeating, or self-harm or suicide, validation, whatever it is. Every time we engage with that coping skill, rather than deep breathing, or distraction, or whatever it is, you are strengthening the neural pathway between emotional distress and them. Active coping mechanism.
So it's going to become more challenging to choose the effective option because you are strengthening the relationship between the Q, which is the emotional distress, and the response, which is the maladaptive coping mechanism. So it's also going to be more challenging long-term to use your coping skills if you solidify that pathway in that
habit and that strategy. And if you're listening to this episode, I want to add this caveat here and you're like I have already engaged in a lot of coping skills that maybe weren't the most effective. You can integrate this like net neutral plan. An approach at any point because if you can cut off the - trajectory and just stay where you're at, you are saving yourself so much suffering, so much challenge, so much distress and then you can eventually work
on your positive trajectory. So with all of that context of what happens when you get engaged in a negative coping scale, what happens when that becomes one of the symptoms that you're presenting with what happens when that becomes a
solidified neural pathway. So with all of that, context of solidifying, neural, Ways making it more challenging to engage in coping skills, long-term with knowing that you always have a decision with knowing what it looks like when you then go to treatment and you do have these maladaptive coping mechanisms for my experience, having engaged in an effective coping mechanisms for years, you will save yourself so much challenge, so much suffering, so much distress, if you can just stay
neutral again. We don't have to focus on getting better. We don't have to focus on trying to completely turn our life around just focus on not making it worse. So now, getting into the more skill space, part of this episode, we're going to talk about skills that you can use in the moment and long-term to keep
things at net neutral. And when we talked about solidifying, neural Pathways with negative coping skills, the same thing, works with positive ones, average time you choose to engage in an effective coping mechanism, you're solidifying that pathway that relationship that strategy. So, as you use these skills, you kind of are improving. But we're not even focused on that right now we're just focused on not making things worse.
So I think it's important to first address what we're going to do in. Isis mode because yes, we will talk about long-term what you can do to improve your mood and keep things constant. And when you're not in crisis, keep things at a neutral place. But when it comes down to it, when you're in crisis mode, if you're engaging in those behaviors, none of those long-term things are really going to matter because you again are making things worse for yourself. So, let's talk crisis mode.
Whenever you are experiencing a really intense emotion. We're talking like an 8 to a 10 out of your emotional intensity, and it could be a thought. It could be an urge, it could be an emotion. The first thing that I want you to do is use the stop scale. This is an acronym that stands for stop. Take a step back, observe and proceed mindfully and I'm going to go over the scales pretty quickly so that we can get through a bunch of them.
But there are tons of episodes explaining these in more depth or you can always Google the name of the scale DBT worksheet. You can see the exact worksheets that they teach in DBT for that skill. So with the stop scale again stop take a step back, observe proceed mindfully. So we're physically and mentally stopping. We're either stopping engaging in the urge. We are stopping engaging in the fiscal. Situation that's causing distress.
If it's an argument, you're physically stopping, then we're going to take a step back that is both mentally emotionally and physically. So again, if it's an argument, you're leaving the room, if it's an urge, you're going to be like, okay, I'm have a surge, let's take a step back. Let's observe, what's going on here. How did I get to this point? Etc, and that's leading right
into observations. Once you taken a step back from the emotional state, thought you're having the physical situation you're in, you're observing, how did I get to this point? What are the thoughts, emotions urges that are currently happening. What is the effective way to maybe? Cope with that's what would be the ineffective way to coping. But that's because we always have that choice and then how can I proceed mindfully and effectively?
And this is when you would choose to do, let's not even focus on, like, making things totally better and doing this really comprehensive overwhelming. Coping skill, plant. Let's just focus on, not making things worse. So that would be the proceed mindfully. Now, when we're proceeding mindfully, there are three skills that I'm going to give you. And then one caveat that I want to give this another DBT scale called mindfulness of current emotion. You can also apply this To your
thoughts in your urges. So in DB teen mindfulness, there's two acronyms Neo and eeo and pod pod and that is what you're doing when you're being Mindful and how you're doing it. So what you're doing is you're participating, you're observing and you're describing and how you're doing, it is non-judgmentally effectively in one mindfully. So when you're in that observed, part of the stop scale, when you're observing your thoughts, the emotions that are coming up
for you. The interaction that just occurred, you're going to do that by being fully present in the moment, fully Painting not going on. I thought spiral of like oh my God, this was so ineffective. This was not the gold bubble, a lot. We're just fully participating in the observation part of it.
When we are observing, we are going to be paying attention to the emotions that have come up. The physical, Sensations thoughts, the urges, the interactions that have taken place, and then we're going to describe it in one word, describe in. This is where the how skills come in. So we're being non-judgmental. We are literally just objectively stating what
happened? I said this thing, this emotion came up this The Surge is going through my head when we're doing it. One mindfully again, we're not second-guessing and doing a fault spiral about. Like how did I get into this? What am I going to do to get myself out of the situation? We're just focusing on observing and then the effective part of it. I skipped over again. This is where we're choosing to not make things worse for ourselves.
You're doing what is the most effective way to navigate the situation? What will make the most sense? So adding that little caveat for the Stop scalp, the next goal that I'm going to give you four crisis mode. Is this tip Scout talk about this all the time because it's a Change. I wish everyone had the skill in their toolkit because it's a skill that works 100% of the time. It's not often that you can say this will work for 100% of your mental health challenges when it
comes to like intense emotions. So whether you're angry, you're anxious, you're depressed. This skill will work. So when you're at an 8 out of 10, you're in crisis mode, you can't think straight A lot of the times their physiological symptoms that go with that. Whether it's increased heart, rate, increased breathing rate, are you having a panic attack?
What's going on? There's probably some physical Well, that is also tied to that emotional distress and a lot of the times that becomes the predominant focus of your attention. You can even think about like, okay, let me analyze the situation and figure out how to proceed mindfully. Because you're so overwhelmed with the fact that you can't breathe. And so that's where the tips go comes in.
So it's an acronym that stands for temperature, intense exercise paced, breathing, and paired muscle relaxation. You've probably seen the temperature part of it on Tech. Talk, basically, what you do is you take a bowl of ice water and you some Your face in it for 10 to 15 seconds between breaths.
Take a deep breath and then keep doing it until your heart rate and your breathing rate decrease, it will work 100% of the time because it stimulates your vagus nerve and Romanian diving reflex and so your body thinks you're jumping into cold water and your body's like, I'm going to be underwater, like, I need to stop producing carbon dioxide because I don't know what I'm going to get my next breath. So your body, lowers your heart rate, it lowers your breathing,
right. And as it's doing that, it's also lowering it past that threshold that it was elevated to. Cuz of the emotional distress intense exercise Works in a similar fashion. It's also great for distress tolerance, but you're going to do something like burpees Sprint's. I'm not really gets your heart rate going.
And what you're doing is, you're raising your heart rate past the threshold that it was at when you were emotionally overwhelmed, and then, as your body does, its natural system of lowering your heart rate. After exercise, it lowers it past the threshold. It was at from the emotional distress, it's also really effective when you're overwhelmed to do something that physical you're like, okay, that felt good like I need to put this energy somewhere. My thoughts are going insane doing that.
Exercise feels really good emotionally and Dish into helping the physical distress and then pays breathing a muscle relaxation will talk about together. You are doing paced breathing, so you're doing your exhale longer than your inhale. I like to do two counts. Inhale, pause three counts for an exhale and you are again, lowering your breathing rate past. But it was at because the emotional distress with paired
muscle relaxation. We know that we carry a lot of tension when were mostly just trashed. So like, if you're super angry, Angry. Your fists are clenched, your shoulders are tight. So as you're inhaling, you're clenching your muscles. And as you're exhaling, you're releasing that tension and you're releasing it past what it was at when you are emotionally distressed. So that's like the quickest run down, ever of the tips Cal amazing. When I say use the stop skill and proceed mindfully.
My recommendation of your super distress like the proceed mindfully is just tip. We know that that's our next step, that's what we dive into and then I'll figure out what to do next. So the third skill that I want to give you four crisis mode is the distractions.
Out distraction is a really effective skill when we're in crisis mode because it will distract us from the emotions, the thoughts, whatever it is that we're currently having so that we can calm down enough to be able to cope with the emotions effectively. But the issue was distraction is that, if we're constantly avoiding, our emotions will just come back and in a bigger way. We know this for anxiety, avoidance, amplifies the anxiety.
And this is true across the board with your emotions. If you avoid a thought, it's like all you can think about in your head, if you avoid an urge, it just keeps coming back more strongly. So we're using distraction, but we're using. Seeing it in a short-term way. So with distraction, there's two acronyms in DBT, but I'm gonna go over the super quickly because you know, how to distract yourself. You're watching a show, you're listening to loud music or talking to someone except ra.
So, the way, the DBT breaks down distraction is that with the except scale, you're doing activities contributing comparisons, emotional, opposites, pushing away, thoughts and Sensations, and with improve you are doing imagery. Meaning, prayer, relaxation, one thing at a time, vacation and encouragement. So, distraction, sure. Term resource long-term not effective because then it loses its Effectiveness.
And I always give the example is, I love the office whenever I'm like, overwhelmed or stressed, I'll turn on the office, but if I watch the office 24 hours a day, it would not be effective in a time of Crisis. I'm like, this is just background noise. I, I'm used to this people a skill that I'm going to give you four crisis mode. Is something called riding the wave. This is one of my favorite
skills and I use this. Now, actually, for migraines, which sounds kind of odd, but it's super effective and the Idea that nothing in life is impermanent. This is a quote that was actually set on she persisted and I'm obsessed with it. I say it all the time. I'm mentally say to myself constantly life is impermanent and then impermanence will be on your side. No emotion, no thought no urge, no physiological distress will last forever. That's just not how life Works.
Our bodies and capable of it, our mind is incapable of it. Our distress will decrease at some point, something has to give something has to shift. And so when you're in crisis mode and you're really Whelmed with energy. Like I just think that I'm going to engage in this Behavior at. Can't stop having the surge circle in my head. What you're going to do is pay 100% attention to those salts.
You're having and you're going to notice that the intensity of the urge comes in a wave certain promises drones like physics or something, but I promise this works, you're like wow these are just really strong. Like I don't even know if I'm gonna be able to resist it and then it gets a little bit lesser and then it lessens and then it's going to be more intense again and then it lessens same thing for anger or anxiety like
oh my God, I can't breathe. With okay, my mind is a little bit quieter now but then it's a tense again and then it's lesser, it works in a wave. And so what you're doing rather than trying to avoid the emotion or force, it to go away, you're just sitting with the emotion and you're riding the wave. And you're really leaning into those moments where it lessons and intensity and being like, see it's getting less intense
and this too will pass. And so when I use this for migraines, if you've ever had a headache, you're like this is comparable. And what I try to do is sleep them off. So like a lot of times, I get ahead. At the end of the day and I'm like, I've tried shower, I've tried drinking a lot of water of taking Advil, nothing is working. I just need to fall asleep and I can't fall asleep because my head hurts so bad. So rather than having thoughts
going crazy in my mind. And also having this like throbbing going on in my head, I focus all of my energy on the pain itself and you notice that it's more intense, you like oh this is terrible and then it lessens you like oh my gosh, there's that sense of relief and so as you really, lean into those moments of relief or like, okay, I got this I can do. This, I can push through and then it's also really effective to be mindful and then I just go to sleep. It's great. That's the ride.
The wave skill. I'm going to give you three more skills that you can use not in crisis mode, that will help you keep things at a net neutral point. We're not making things worse, we're not necessarily focusing on re shifting our entire life but we're just going to focus on coping with the right now. Not adding more things to our plate. So the first one that I'm going to tell you about is radical acceptance.
We talked about how in DBT accepting loan wasn't Active and changing alone wasn't effective, because it doesn't satisfy all the emotional needs and it leads to more distress. So, the idea with radical acceptance at that, you are accepting Life On Life's terms. And if you can do this, keeping things, net neutral, choosing not to engage in those maladaptive coping skills. In my experience is a bit easier. So reading straight from the DBT worksheet here. What is radical acceptance?
It's when you cannot keep painful events and emotions from coming your way. You're still going to have the urges. You're still going to have the stressor. As you're experiencing, but you can do some radical acceptance. So what does that mean? It means radically accepting all the way completely, totally, you're accepting with your mind, your heart and your body.
And when you stop fighting reality, when you stop resisting, when you stop throwing a tantrum, when things are, not the way you want it, and let go of bitterness that is radical acceptance. And so there are a couple of things that need to be accepted and you can use radical acceptance for any situation whenever I get news that I'm not excited about or I will. Things were different. I'm not accepting. But in DB T, we are radically accepting. These four pillars across the
board. Just to accept that. This is how life works and that we can't prevent painful things from happening. So we're accepting that reality is as it is the facts about the past the facts about the present. And even if you don't like the situation, the cards you've been dealt. Those are The Facts of Life. The second one is that there are limitations on the future for everyone, but only realistic
limitations need to be accepted. So one example of this Is when I was starting treatment, I had this core belief that I would never be capable of recovering, that didn't need to be radically accept it because it wasn't a realistic limitation. I was capable of getting support and shifting my behaviors and asking for help. So, that's example of like, what are we radically accepting? What are we?
Not radically accepting third is that everything has a cause including events and situations that cause you pain and suffering. So this is again, we're almost addressing this with this net neutral plan where when were engaging in negative coping skills, the Is us. We have to take accountability there.
And so if we can even avoid that from happening in the first place, saves his pain and suffering and then the last pillar that were accepting is that life can be worth living even with painful events in it and this is hard. This is a tough pill to swallow when you are in so much distress. But as your emotional intensity lessons, with time, as you regulate your emotions more effectively, the painful events, you're experiencing become less intense and life really can be worth living.
Being so that is what we are accepting and why we're accepting it is that rejecting reality does not change it. If we are resisting the truth of life it's not going to change it. It just makes things worse for ourselves. Second is that changing reality first requires accepting reality. So again we are accepting and changing but to change we first have to accept three pain. Can't be avoided.
It's Nature's Way of signaling that something is wrong telling us to some extent effective the way that we're coping with life, the relationships were engaged in, aren't working for us something new. Chef, so pain is a signal for rejecting reality, turns pain into suffering. There's a difference between pain and suffering and when we reject reality, we suffer more and I almost sometimes see those maladaptive coping mechanisms as a way of rejecting reality and
increasing that suffering. So that's why we're nipping it in the bud and trying to avoid that 5 refusing to accept reality can keep you stuck in unhappiness, bitterness anger sadness, shame and other painful emotions. It's acceptance may lead to sadness, but deep calmness. Usually follows, again nothing is permanent and that impermanence will be on your side and 7 the path out of hell is through misery, but refusing to accept the misery. That is part of climbing out of hell.
You fall back into hell and we picture house. The bottom floors on fire and burning and overwhelming. But unless we climb up that and get through that stage 1, we can address anything else. And so one little Mantra that is used for radical acceptance. Is that everything is as it
should be and everything. This is a test so to just reiterate the points we just talked about in slightly different language on a different DBT, work shape, freedom from suffering requires acceptance from deep within of what is Let Yourself Go. Completely with what is and let go of fighting reality. Acceptance is the only way out of how pain create suffering. Only when you refused to accept the pain deciding to tolerate and under the moment is acceptance, acceptance is acknowledging.
What is to accept? Something is not the same as judging it is good or approving of it. You're just saying. This is the Cards. I'm being dealt, even if I don't like them. And lastly acceptance is turning suffering into pain that I can endure. So that's radical acceptance. We love radical acceptance. I want to do like a whole episode on that at some point because it's such a freaking good scale. It's hard, but it's amazing. It's like mind-altering paradigm-shifting.
And then the second Alaska, I'm going to teach you is Copa had. We want to set ourselves up for success. And if we know that we are emotionally vulnerable to experiencing urges, to wanting to engage in a maladaptive coping mechanism, we want to set ourselves up for success and This one, we're using, the Copa had skull, so we're mentally walking through like, what's the situation?
Like, I know that when I'm sitting in bed at night and just laying there, and I'm alone with my thoughts, I am more likely to have like a negative urge pop into my head or I know that when I am alone for a really long time, those negative thoughts pop up, or when I have lots of a routine, I'm more likely to engage in this Behavior because I feel really hopeless, whatever it is be aware of what those triggers are with.
Those vulnerabilities are. And then we're going to set up a plan for how you're going to deal with the urges one. They arise in that situation. So again we're going to pull from those crises skills. We just talked about I'm going to use this stops go first. Then I'm going right into tip, then we're doing some distraction and then once I loop back to the original thought, we're going to ride the wave and we're going to work through it and we're going to accept it.
So give yourself a plan. What thoughts are going to come up? What you're just going to come up. What skill am going to use and how am I going to deal with it? Right it out make it super detailed and give yourself a plan to follow the last going to teach you. Is accumulating positives.
This one simple and it's one of my favorite skill of DBT because your Things that you like and the idea here is that when you're accumulating positive, you're not only increasing Joe and making your life, more worth living but you're improving your Baseline of functioning. So when we look at like a chart and we're like okay, sometimes I my mood is really high, sometimes it's really low and there's a big gap between that emotional high in that emotional low.
We're sprinkling in accumulating positives throughout our day throughout a routine throughout our life. We become more neutral and emotions were experiencing. So again, having pain in life can be worth living and it's more worth living when the emotions are less intense and there is not that Whiplash from like, oh my God, I just had a great day and then I'm like at an absolute low. So sprinkle in the accumulating positives and the key here is
you have to plan them. They have to be intentional. So plan your cup of coffee plan. The book you're going to read plan the TV show, you're going to watch the friend, you're going to see whatever it is. That brings you Joy plan those moments and accumulate them throughout your day. So we're reducing suffering, we're not rejecting reality. We are staying neutral. We're not overwhelming ourselves
to try to make things better. We're just not Things worse, taking accountability over the fact that we have a choice when we engage in maladaptive coping mechanisms and then we have a really comprehensive plan of how to deal with those. So that's today's episode. I really hope you enjoy this. If you do share with a friend or family member, if you shout social media, tag me that she persisted podcast. I was repost and give you a little shout out.
And thank you for listening and I'll see you next week. Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of she persisted. If you enjoyed, make sure to share with a friend or family member. It really helps. Out the podcast and if you haven't already leave a review on Apple podcast or Spotify, you can also make sure to follow along at at she persisted podcast on both Instagram and Tick-Tock and check out all the bonus resources content and information on my website.
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