Distress intolerance is the perceived inability to experience unpleasant, aversive, or uncomfortable emotions. It can be accompanied by a desperate need to escape uncomfortable feelings.
We all experience emotions; they are an important part of being human and are essential to our survival. The human experience is designed to feel an array of emotions, some of which may be comfortable and others uncomfortable. We may not like it, but experiencing uncomfortable emotions is a natural part of life.
Our NDIS psychology providers know there is a difference between ‘not liking’ unpleasant emotions but accepting they’re an ‘inevitable part of life’ and experiencing an unpleasant emotion as ‘unbearable’ and needing to ‘get rid of it’. Adults and children sometimes think they ‘can’t face’, ‘can’t bear’, or ‘can’t stand’ emotional distress. However, being intolerant of emotional distress can foster many problems and interfere with living a fulfilling life.
When we experience high intensity emotional experiences, such as a powerful and strong emotion after a disagreement with a loved one, accompanied with an overwhelming feeling of despair we can start to feel that emotions are overwhelming and think we need to get rid of them. Or, we may have an intense fear of giving a speech or confronting an issue we are avoiding. At other times it might be that you’re feeling a lower intensity emotion, such as nervousness about an upcoming medical examination, or sadness when remembering an experience. The intensity of the feeling can vary; however, your distress tolerance will depend on how much you fear it, how unpleasant or unbearable it feels to you, or how much you want to get away from it.
Our NDIS psychology providers will help you understand how distress intolerance can develop
It can be a combination of biological, social, and environmental factors that lead some of us to become more intolerant of emotional distress compared to others. Some of us may be more sensitive to negative emotions. It is likely that genetic make-up, as well as experiences in childhood and adolescence have shaped how you deal with emotions. Some of us may have not been shown ways to tolerate emotional discomfort and were perhaps punished for expressing normal emotions such as crying when sad, or anger when things haven’t turned out well. Many people have been shown unhelpful ways to cope with distress by seeing a loved one utilising alcohol or other substances to provide relief from dealing with or escaping unpleasant emotions. These methods may be reinforced by temporarily making us feel better, however they come at a great cost.
Distress escape methods
A clear sign of distress intolerance is when we take drastic measures to escape or try to get rid of our uncomfortable emotions. There are a number of escape methods which can lead to significant problems in our lives, these include:
Avoidance
Situational avoidance means that you will avoid a scenario, person, place, activity, or task that you know will bring you emotional distress. Examples may include avoiding a family member with whom you become angry at, avoiding study because of frustration, avoiding socialising due to anxiety, or avoiding seeking medical advice because you’re frightened of a result.
Another form of avoidance is constant checking or reassurance seeking. This may develop as a coping style to quickly overcome your distressing emotions via seeking reassurance or validation from people or engaging in a repetitive activity. An example may include having to repeatedly check things on your body or in your environment, over preparing or keeping things in excessive order or overly consulting other peoples opinions to calm you down.
Lastly, there is a third called distraction and suppression. This involves you trying to push away the distress rather than sitting with the emotion. You may find you’re telling yourself to ‘stop it’ or find an activity to distract yourself from distressing emotions. The problem with this is that you cant sustain it and it eventually becomes exhausting.
Numbing and Withdrawing
The most commonly known ways of doing this are by using alcohol and drugs to escape emotional distress. Binge or comfort eating is also another method people use to alleviate distress. Excessive sleep can also occur as we begin to ‘zone out’ as a form of escape from unpleasant emotions.
Harmful Releases
This term captures the behaviours that we may engage in to release or vent our emotional distresses that directly cause physical damage. Rather than allowing our emotions to just surface and accept them naturally, we might injure or harm ourselves as a way to over ride or stop the emotional discomfort. Such behaviours may include, scratching picking, biting, cutting, head banging or burning. This degree of harm we cause to ourselves can be minor or major depending on the intensity of the emotion and our level of tolerance for it at the time. The harm to ourselves is a method to escape the distress.
Some may have stumbled upon unhelpful ways to escape emotions and these methods may be reinforced by only temporarily making us feel better, however in the long run make our lives worse.
The good news is that it doesn’t have to be this way. No matter how your distress intolerance has come about, no matter what emotions you have trouble dealing with, and no matter how unhelpful your escape methods are, you can learn new ways of tolerating distress with Breakfree’s Psychologists who are all NDIS approved Providers.
Distress tolerance is a great life skill for anyone to learn!
If you would like to learn better ways to tolerate distress instead of fearing, fighting and desperately trying to get rid of uncomfortable emotions give our team at Breakfree Psychology Services a call on 0479 149 277.
We are able to assist you with all your NDIS therapy needs, either online or in person in Townsville.