The way I describe the Distract skill with patients is that there is a problem that needs to be solved, but now ain’t the time.
Avoiding your problems is easy. Distracting yourself from your problems in a healthy way that helps you eventually overcome them? A lot harder. Here are 7 healthy ways to distract your emotion mind from your problems.
Savvy Psychologist is hosted by Dr. Monica Johnson. A transcript is available at Simplecast.
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As promised last week, we are going to discuss another skill to help you cope with emotional overwhelm. If you find yourself drowning in distress or you can’t cope with a crisis, this skill is for you!
Welcome back to Savvy Psychologist, I'm your host, Dr. Monica Johnson. Every week on this show, I'll help you face life's challenges with evidence-based approaches, a sympathetic ear, and zero judgment.
In today's episode, I’m going to review with you a behavioral therapy skill called Distract. Now, some of you may be thinking, “I’m great at distracting myself from my problems—I have my Ph.D. in Avoidance Principles!”
This skill is about functional avoidance, which is different from unhealthy avoidance. With unhealthy avoidance, we really have no intention of ever ending the avoidance behavior. We are going to stick our fingers in our ears and la-la-la ourselves into oblivion. The way I describe the Distract skill with patients is that there is a problem that needs to be solved, but now ain’t the time. So, for all you worriers who are staying up until 3 A.M. trying to figure out your entire life before work, this is the skill for you. It’s also a good skill for when your emotion mind is going to take over and you won’t be able to respond wisely.
As you know, I love a good acronym and this time, it’s ACCEPTS. We use the Distract skill by remembering that your wise mind accepts. If you don’t know about wise mind or emotion mind, I would suggest checking out my episode “3 states of mind that are affecting your life.”
So, to summarize, you want to use this skill when emotional pain threatens to be too much or you’re dealing with a problem that can’t be solved immediately. Also, in functional avoidance, there is a time limit on the avoidance. Remember that the goal is to take a break from the problem so that you can catch your breath, so to speak, and get back to it—not to pretend that the problem doesn’t exist and that it will go away on its own.
One way to use distraction is through activities. The goal here is to engage in activities that are neutral or opposite to the emotions that you are experiencing in the moment as this will help to reduce arousal and impulsivity. The activity allows your attention to move away from the problem and fill your short-term memory with non-activating content. An example of this could be washing dishes or going for a walk.
The first C is for contributing. Helping others refocuses your attention on someone else’s well-being, which can allow you to forget about your problems for a while. You may have noticed this when you were having a bad day and you were caring for your children or went to help your friend with something and felt that your problem at least temporarily faded into the background. The added benefit of contributing is that it can also allow us to feel capable and can provide meaning to our lives which can improve the moment as well.
The other C is for comparisons. Did you know there are some healthy ways to do comparisons? Typically when we make a comparison, we do it in a manner that makes us feel less than, small, or unworthy. With comparisons in the Distract skill, you are comparing yourself to others who are coping the same way, less well, or to those that are less fortunate than you. It helps to keep things in perspective and to put a more positive light on the situation.
I’ll give an example to help this make sense. One time when I was still living in Tennessee, I was having a lot of issues with a major internet provider. They kept sending workers out to my house who weren’t fixing the problem and when I would call, they would do the whole “did you try turning your modem on and off” shenanigans. It was driving me bonkers! There was another time when they sent someone to my home and said the problem was all fixed and when I got off work, guess what? The internet wasn’t working!
I was tired from a long day and I immediately wanted to hop on the phone with them, but it wouldn’t have been the best use of my energy. At the time, I was the lead psychologist at a clinic that served those that are homeless and I remember thinking that I had patients who were sleeping outside on the ground and were coping well given the circumstances. It allowed me to let go of my “oh, woe is me” energy and keep the problem in perspective.
This perspective-taking led to my emotional arousal lessening. It also allowed me to be more creative in my problem-solving and use my phone as a hotspot until the issue was resolved. Also, to give a nod back to contributing, working with the homeless population was some of the most gratifying work I’ve ever done and at least once a week I think about various people who I worked with there and send loving kindness their way.
The E is for emotions. In Distract, we want to generate different emotions. When you generate different emotions, it distracts from the negative emotions you’re feeling and the current situation that you may find yourself in. Let’s say that you feel sad—well go watch a horror movie! The fear and excitement that is generated by the movie will overshadow your sadness. Or let’s say you’re angry—listen to your favorite non-problematic comedian on YouTube and watch the anger melt away.
P is for pushing away. Pushing away from a painful situation can be done by physically or mentally leaving the situation. Again, some of you may already do this, but it’s in an unhealthy manner. Remember that distraction has a time limit on it. So, for instance, if I am physically leaving a situation, I may set a timer for 30 minutes and then check in to see where my arousal is at that time. If it remains too high, then I will distract myself for another 30 minutes and then return.
Now, I want to be clear about what I mean by too high. Some of you will interpret that as, “if I have ANY distress, it means I should distract myself for longer.” The point of using distraction techniques is to get yourself back within a zone of competence. This is a zone where you can function wisely. Using a 0-100 scale, I might say that 80 is when I’m entering my danger zone. The danger zone is where my function has started to slip and will only get worse as I become more aroused. My zone of competence may be anything below 60. So, the goal of distraction would be to get yourself below a 60 and then return to the situation. Your 0-100 should be tailored to you.
One of my favorite ways to push away mentally is to imagine myself taking the issue and putting it in a storage bin and placing it on the shelf for me to come back to later. Other people like to imagine building a wall between themselves and the issue. The only caveat is that I tell my patients that we want to build a paper mache wall that is easily torn down and not a brick wall. Brick walls are usually built around things we have no intention of processing. When you build brick walls, you might find a whole Jurassic Park situation where you find out that the problem has figured out how to give birth to other problems during all those years you were ignoring it.
T is for thoughts. Similar to E, this is about generating other thoughts. You want to fill up your short-term memory with non-distressing thoughts. You can do this in a variety of ways, like singing a song, counting to 10, reading, or doing puzzles for all you Candy Crush Conquerors or Suduko Slayers.
S is for sensations. When you create an intense sensation, it can distract from other distressing thoughts. My absolute favorite is a cold shower. Let me tell you, it doesn’t matter what you have on your mind, when that first cold blast of water hits your body, it pushes everything else out of your consciousness except for, “WTF, why did I do this, oh wait the fact that I forgot why I did this in the first place is the reason why I did this.”
It’ll take a minute for what I just said to make sense and the same will be true with the cold shower. You’ll get out and all you will want to do is get warm. You could also do things like squeeze a stress ball, go for a walk in the rain, or listen to really loud metal music. If you’re really hardcore you might do the cold shower with the metal music.
Which distraction technique are you going to try? Let me know on Instagram @kindmindpsych. You can also reach out to me via my email at psychologist@quickanddirtytips.com, or leave a voicemail at (929) 256-2191.