Philadelphia DBT: Tipping the Power of Painful Emotions

/ Sara Weand, LPC, LLC/

Philadelphia Dialectical Behavior Therapy: Tipping your emotional control.

Have you ever been in a situation in which you were so overwhelmed by emotions that you were unable to control yourself? Most people have been there.

When you’re experiencing intense, overwhelmingly stressful stuff, it can be just about impossible to think clearly. Think back to the last time you acted on your emotions. Did it end well? I’m going to guess that it probably didn’t.

When Painful Emotions Cause Problem Behavior

Image of woman with hands clenching her forehead as she’s looking at the ground. It’s used to represent how people struggle with emotional pain and how DBT can help.

When we experience debilitating, emotional crises, our emotions want to take over. Those painful emotions practically scream at us to act on them. A lot of people struggle with this same thing and have gotten themselves into a lot of trouble or ruined relationships because of this.

Emotional crises can cause us to feel an urgency to make things better right away; to fix whatever it is immediately. The problem occurs when those stressful events cannot be solved at this moment, yet there’s this undeniable pressure to do something or react to it somehow; to do anything.

When you’ve been in situations where your emotions take over, you may experience the impulse to solve it right away even if you can’t. Often, we end up just reacting and not dealing with the problem in a skillful way.

Impulsively reacting to our negative emotions can make things worse, cause us more misery, destroy the thing we want to happen, and create more problems.

What if there were a set of skills that would quickly bring down the high emotional arousal that prompts us to react so impulsively?

DBT TIP Skills target this very problem.

Emotions have a physiological component. In other words, your body responds (has physiological changes) when you’re experiencing intense emotions. This is important to know. When you’re able to change your physiological response associated when that negative emotion, you can actually affect the entire emotional experience.

Specifically, the magic behind the DBT TIP Skills is that they target the physiological arousal that occurs when we experience emotions, specifically painful, negative emotions.

Image of a lion roaring. Image represents how the sympathetic nervous systems arouses us and how DBT TIP Skills can help.

A Brief Summary of Our Nervous System

Your nervous system is responsible for controlling, regulating, and communicating with the other systems in your body. The sympathetic nervous system is the part of our nervous system which activates our “fight or flight” responses to perceived danger. It arouses us to respond accordingly.

The parasympathetic nervous system is responsible for calming us down. It brings us back into balance or homeostasis.

The DBT TIP Skills are designed to quickly target our body’s sympathetic nervous system responses, in order to, rapidly kick start your parasympathetic nervous system.

When you experience a painful, intense, overwhelming emotion, your sympathetic nervous system is on high alert for a perceived threat. Using a DBT TIP Skill will rapidly help you change your body’s physiological response to the parasympathetic nervous system response, calming you down fast.

What are the DBT TIP Skills?

What does TIP Stand for?

1.     T is for “Temperature”.

2.     I stands for “Intense” exercise.

3.     P stands for “Paced” breathing and “Paired” muscle relaxation.

Today’s blog post will focus on the letter “T” for Temperature.

The “T” in DBT TIP Skills

How to practice “Tipping the Temperature”.

Close up image of running water, drops of water. Image represents how using cold water as part of DBT TIP Skills can help you tolerate negative emotions.

  • Tip the temperature of your face with cold water or ice.

  • When you notice that you’re about to lose your sh*t, immerse your face in cold water while holding your breath for at least 30 seconds.

Doing this will drastically and rapidly, kick start your parasympathetic nervous system. A cold temperature will reduce your physiological and emotional arousal fast.

>>> The amazing thing about DBT TIP Skills is that they are just as effective in dealing with painful, emotional experiences as using destructive, problematic behaviors. <<< 

Why cold temperature helps.

All mammals have a “Dive Reflex”. The Dive Reflex is an evolutionary phenomenon that occurs when people fall into icy, cold water. When a person falls into freezing water, the Dive Reflex immediately activates your parasympathetic nervous system. When this happens, you don’t need so much oxygen which calms you down.

It’s the same thing that you can do on purpose with ice-cold water!!!

Using DBT TIP Skills in Real Life

As a reminder, one of the reasons to use DBT Distress Tolerance Skills is when you’re in an emotional crisis or can’t do anything to solve a stressful situation right away. You use DBT Distress Tolerance Skills when your emotions are taking over and you can’t afford to make your situation worse.

Let’s say you work in customer service. Having been in customer service before, I know very well what it feels like to have to deal with customer complaints and be on the receiving end of a customer’s frustration. With that being said, let’s say you have trouble maintaining your cool when customers are demanding refunds and accusing you of some sort of misdoing.

I certainly don’t blame you for getting pissed off. Hell, I totally can relate to this. However, it isn’t in your best interest to respond to the complaining customer by telling them to f*ck off or yell back at them.

This is when you excuse yourself and go to the bathroom. Turn on the icy, cold water, and immerse your face for at least 30 seconds. I promise you this will take the edge off. It does work. If this isn’t practical for you, this can be amended. Grab an ice pack, wrapped in a paper towel and hold it over your forehead and cheeks for 30 seconds. Once you calm down, return to your complaining customer.

A side note about this DBT skill. The idea here is that using icy, cold water, will activate your parasympathetic nervous system for a short time. This is not a permanent fix or solution.

That anger you felt towards that complaining customer, may return when you get another customer provocation. You may need to return again and again to this skill in order to hold it together.

The DBT TIP Skills are some of my favorite DBT Skills to practice and teach my clients.

I hope that this post provides you with something you can try out for yourself.  

Next week, I’ll be diving into the I in TIP. Stay tuned.

Philadelphia DBT Therapy

If your emotional reactions have gotten you into trouble and you can’t seem to get them under control, Dialectical Behavior Therapy can help. As a DBT therapist, I provide a standard, outpatient, DBT program including DBT Skills Training. I specialize in the treatment of BPD and anxiety disorders.

DBT Therapist in Philadelphia

As a DBT therapist, I help people who struggle with debilitating emotions & anxiety, and who desperately want to hold onto relationships with the people they love the most. You do not need to continue to suffer. Reach out today and schedule your own DBT consultation HERE.