DBT in Philadelphia: Don’t lose control. Find your pace Instead.

Philadelphia Dialectical Behavior Therapy

Sometimes you lose control.

You often wonder if you’re going crazy. You’ve certainly acted crazy before. During those moments, you felt like you were losing your mind. You’ve lost count of how many times you’ve done things you later regret.

Despite the intense guilt, embarrassment, and shame you experience losing control, you find yourself doing the same things over and over again. Those overwhelming emotions you experience during those moments are practically screaming at you to become reckless and destructive.

We’ve all been there- letting our emotions get the better of us. When people are under an undue about of stress, that stress takes its toll. No doubt about it, debilitating emotions are hard. Most people would do anything to not have to feel them.

If you’re someone who typically finds themselves on an emotional roller coaster, I’m going to guess that you’ve done things you later regret.

DBT teaches how to tolerate distress effectively.

One of the skills’ modules in Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Training teaches is how to tolerate distress. As with all of the skills taught in DBT, being able to tolerate really difficult situations takes a lot of practice. This is especially hard when our bodies and brains are basically screaming at us to act on the distress.

Distress, Negative Emotions, and our Nervous System

When you’re faced with debilitating, overwhelmingly painful stressors, your body’s sympathetic nervous system kicks into gear. This is what it is designed to do when we’re faced with a crisis or perceived danger. It arouses us and gets us ready to act, such as activating our “fight or flight” response.

The parasympathetic nervous system is what calms us back down. It tells our body to relax and calm down because the crisis or danger is no longer a threat.

The Sympathetic & Parasympathetic Nervous Systems: A Real Life Example

Let’s say you’re driving to work and suddenly another driver cuts you off in traffic, nearly causing an accident. Your sympathetic nervous system arouses you to act. In this case, helping you swerve so you don’t rear-end another car or hit someone crossing the street. After the crisis is averted, your body will eventually calm back down once the parasympathetic nervous system is activated.

Does this happen to you?

However, for some people, in addition to swerving to miss the car or person, they may also experience the urge to then continue to follow the other car, yelling obscenities, and once the other car stops, get out of the car and confront the other driver, causing an even bigger fiasco.

DBT TIP Skills are designed to target your parasympathetic nervous system, by bringing down your arousal fast.

Over the last several weeks, I’ve gone in-depth about several of the distress tolerance skills taught in DBT. Most recently, I’ve been digging into the TIP Skills.

As a quick reminder, here’s a quick review of the TIP skills.

“T” stands for “Temperature”

“I” is for “Intense” exercise

“P” stands for “Paced” breathing

Last week, I wrote about how intense exercise can help us tolerate overwhelmingly stressful situations. If you missed it, you can read the full blog post HERE.

Today’s post will focus on the “P”, which is for “Paced” breathing.

DBT Skills Training: Paced Breathing

Paced breathing can cause changes in activity in our sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems.

Here’s the basic idea. When you breathe in, you increase arousal. When you breathe out, you calm yourself back down. When you practice paced breathing, you want to make sure that when you’re breathing out, you are breathing out longer than when you’re breathing in.

The way to begin doing paced breathing is to count the seconds of your inhale and then count the seconds of your exhale. Not everyone’s count will be the same. For instance, mine is 5 seconds in and 7 seconds out.

The DBT Skill of Paced Breathing will help you calm down fast by making changes to your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. So, the next time, you’re beginning to notice your emotional arousal rise, try out Paced Breathing.

DBT Therapy in Philadelphia

DBT has been shown to be beneficial in the treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder and a variety of other mental health problems. If your emotions have gotten you in trouble in the past or you want to stop riding the emotional roller coaster, DBT can help you.

Philadelphia BPD Therapist

If you’re struggling with crazy-making situations, debilitating anxiety, toxic relationships, or intense emotions, reach out today. As a DBT therapist in Philadelphia, I provide a standard, outpatient, DBT program. My therapy specialties include BPD treatment and therapy for anxiety. You can learn to find relief from emotional suffering, maintain relationships with the people you love, and learn to deal with your life’s problems more effectively. My consultations for Dialectical Behavior Therapy are free. You can book your own DBT consultation for HERE.