132. 10 Coping Skills You NEED to Know - DBT Education

Jan 26

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Today's solo episode is all about coping skills! I discuss all of my favorite DBT coping skills geared toward tolerating distress and regulating emotions and share how you can easily do them at home. These coping skills include the TIPP skill, Opposite Action skill, STOP skill, Check the Facts skill, and ABC skill.

Mentioned In The Episode…

+ Ep. 85 on Emotion Education

+ Building a Life Worth Living

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🎧 Tigress by Nadya Okamoto: This is my unedited and rather unfiltered reflection on where I find myself right now -- a work in progress, channeling my inner tigress.

About She Persisted (formerly Nevertheless, She Persisted)

After a year and a half of intensive treatment for severe depression and anxiety, 18-year-old Sadie recounts her journey by interviewing family members, professionals, and fellow teens to offer self-improvement tips, DBT education, and personal experiences. She Persisted is the reminder that someone else has been there too and your inspiration to live your life worth living.

a note: this is an automated transcription so please ignore any accidental misspellings!

Sadie: [00:00:00] Welcome to She Persisted. I'm your host, Sadie Sutton, a 19 year old from the Bay Area studying psychology at the University of Penn. She Persisted is the Teen Mental Health Podcast made for teenagers by a teen. In each episode, I'll bring you authentic, accessible, and relatable conversations about every aspect of mental wellness.

You can expect evidence-based, teen approved resources, coping skills, including lots of D B T insights and education in. Each piece of content you consume, she persisted, 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.

if we were to distract constantly, that distraction would lose its effectiveness very quickly. If every single time I felt slightly stressed, I watched the office soon, I would still feel stressed when I watch the office because it loses its effectiveness as a distraction if I'm doing it every 30 seconds.

With this, it is a [00:01:00] wired physiological response. You can use it every single day if you're struggling with panic attacks. And as you improve your other coping skills, the frequency panic attacks will go down, but this will always be there in those moments of extreme distress

Hello, hello and welcome back to She Persisted. I'm so excited you're here today. It's another solo episode and today we are gonna do a little bit of like a crash course to D B T. The essential skills that you need to know the coping skills I pull from most frequently. So if you were in a position where you're like, I know I'm struggling for my mental health, but I don't necessarily know what steps to take or what skills to implement.

This episode is for you. We're gonna cover a little bit of everything. We're gonna talk about some emotion regulation skills, some distress tolerance skills, a little bit of mindfulness, and of course some interpersonal effectiveness. So,

First and foremost, if you have never heard of D B T or Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, D B T was a type of therapy that was initially developed for adults that were struggling with borderline personality disorder and suicidal [00:02:00] ideation. So it's a population of individuals that had a lot of difficulty seeing progress and results in therapy.

They're feeling very hopeless. There wasn't a lot of willingness to implement skills. . There was this really interesting balance between needing to change, but when these patients were told that that was what was necessary, they were like, you don't understand. This isn't my fault, that I'm feeling this way.

And then also needing to accept the position that they were in and the circumstances that they were gonna have to navigate. And whenever a therapist would be like, we just need to accept this, they'd be like, no, but I can't operate this way. Something needs to change. I can't handle this. And so D B T was born from an amazing individual named Marshall Lenahan, and she actually struggled.

Mental health challenges herself. Her memoir is amazing. It's one of my favorite books. It's called Building a Life Worth Living. So that will be in the show notes. But D B T was built on this philosophy of this dialectic between accepting where you're at, and also working to change it.

So dialectics are the idea that two seemingly opposite things can be true at the same time. So in D B T, the core [00:03:00] dialectic that you are operating through is that acceptance and change are both necessary to move forward and see progress and build that life worth living.

Most of the time when you are learning D B T skills, it's in the context of doing D P T as a treatment. And a lot of the times it's done on an outpatient basis. It's like six weeks where you're learning these skills, you're doing individual or family therapy once a week. You're also going to a skills education group. And like I mentioned, D B T tends to cater to a population that is really struggling with their mental. It's individuals that are depressed, anxious, struggling with borderline personality disorder. Challenges in relationships and a lot of the time the core of this is emotional dysregulation, \

so teaching these skills, I always like to give the caveat that these skills are not in themselves. Dialectal behavioral therapy, they're DBT skills, but it's not equivalent to doing dialectal behavioral therapy because that's a pretty intense process with a therapist, a team of clinicians, you're going to group with other teens or individuals that are also learning the skills.

A lot of the [00:04:00] times there's an element of family therapy, so these skills are really helpful. They're extremely effective. They're the core of d b. But when you read the studies that D B T has insane results for depression and anxiety and borderline personality disorder, just using the skills in isolation and hearing them on the podcast isn't the same thing, if that makes sense.

But that being said, they're super helpful and they're very effective. And the way that I like to explain DBT is that if you are functioning well in life, you feel like you're effective in your relationships, you feel like you're able to regulate your emotions and tolerate distress, you're probably doing a lot of these things without realizing it.

So if you are struggling with those things, these skills will be helpful and. . Another thing that I always love to mention when it comes to types of therapy or principles that you learn in therapy is that if they're working for these populations that are really struggling and are having a difficult time seeing results in all different kinds of mental health treatments, if you are on the spectrum where you're like, I'm kind of struggling with my mental health, but I don't need full-blown therapy or treatment or residential, but I could.

make [00:05:00] improvements the way that I approach that, it's like, well then that means that these skills are more likely to work for you and they're gonna be more effective. Because if they're working in these really intense, clinical, overwhelming settings and with patients that are struggling in such a big way, they're definitely gonna work with day-to-day stress and anxiety and improving your relationships and working to build that life worth living. So with that little intro caveat, let's dive into my favorite skills from D B T.

The first skill that I wanna teach you is one of the most iconic skills of D B T. It's called the TIP Skill, and it's an acronym that is T I P P. So it's not spelled correctly, but there's a lot of things like that in D B T to make these acronyms work and to make them easy to remember.

But TIP stands for temperature intense exercise paced breathing, and impaired muscle relaxation, and this skill comes from the distress tolerance module. It is a skill that you are using when you are really overwhelmed. So like an eight out of 10 for your emotional intensity, whether that's anger or anxiety, fear, stress, [00:06:00] depression, whatever it is that you are feeling, it's a really high level of intensity of emotion.

and I wish this skill was widely known. I wish that everyone knew this skill and had it in their toolbox because it's one of those skills in D B T where if you implement it, it will work. It's not like when you're having a panic attack and someone's like, have you tried breathing? And you're like, of course I've tried breathing. I'm still feeling overwhelmed. I can't get this feeling to go away. If you use this skill and you use it correctly, your anxiety will decrease. The tip scale works to decrease the physiological symptoms of high emotion regulation.

So with anxiety, maybe that's increased heart rate, increased breathing tense muscles. If you're feeling really sad and depressed, you might feel more lethargic, you might have less energy. If you're feeling stressed, you might feel really jittery. All of these physiological symptoms that are associated with intense emotion and specifically like that, increased heart rate, increased breathing rate, intense muscles.

So each part of [00:07:00] the tip scale works to combat those physical symptoms. the reason we wanna do this is that if you have ever struggled with a panic attack, you know that one of the most overwhelming and scary parts of it is the physical symptoms.

People describe it as they feel like they're dying. They can't regulate their heart rate, they can't regulate their breathing rate. They don't know what's happening, but their physical body is almost out of their own control, and that's adding to the anxiety. Adding to the stress. And so if we can decrease those physical reactions, we can focus on the emotional part and we can use our other skills to then bring our anxiety back to a normal place.

So the first part of the tip scale is temperature. And what you're gonna do for this is you need a bowl of ice water. So this is one of those skills where it can be adapted to other situations, but to make it as effective as possible, you need a bowl of ice water, like a mixing bowl. You throw a ton of ice in there, you put in a ton of cold water, and what you're going to do is when you're having really intense anxiety, stress, anger, et cetera, the eight out of 10 emotional.

You are going to take a deep [00:08:00] breath and submerge your face in the ice water for about 30 seconds until you need to take another breath. And you're gonna continue to do this until your heart rate decreases, your breathing rate decreases and you feel a little bit more calm, ideally like two or three levels.

Down on your sub-score. If you're an eight outta 10, we're gonna aim for like a six or a seven out of 10 for anxiety or anger or whatever it is you're experiencing. So you're gonna take it with deep breath, you're submerging your face and you're doing this a couple of times until you feel that decrease in physical dysregulation.

And the reason why this works, it will work. It's not like. . I hope if I dunk my face in this water, I'll feel better. It will work. And here's why. When you submerge your face in cold ice water, your body stimulates your mammalian diving reflex, and this is connected to your vagus nerve, which runs under your eyes.

It runs down your body. There's a ton of different places that your vagus nerve is active. For this specifically, we're doing under your eyes. So when this cold water comes into contact with your vagus, Your body stimulates your [00:09:00] mammalian diving reflex and your mammalian diving reflex is there in the event that you dive into cold water and need to hold your breath for a while if you're swimming, it goes back to caveman days when we had all of these random reflexes that kept us alive.

And the idea is that when you're swimming underwater, when people drown, it's not actually from a lack of oxygen, it's from an excess of carbon dioxide. So to counteract that and make it less likely that you'll drown when you're swimming or diving underwater, or trying to run away from a shark, even though that wouldn't.

And trying to run away from a predator, whatever it is, your body is trying to decrease the amount of carbon dioxide it's producing to increase your likelihood of survival and more. Carbon dioxide gets produced every single time. Your heartbeat. So your body is doing everything it can to decrease your heart rate and decrease your breathing rate to decrease your carbon dioxide.

obviously this is not your body's natural built-in mechanism to get rid of anxiety. It has a real purpose, but we can use it to decrease our [00:10:00] anxiety. So when we're feeling anxious, when our heart is beating like crazy, when we're breathing really quickly and we can't get that symptom to go away, you can submerge your face in a bowl of ice water and your heart rate and your breathing rate will decrease, and then you can use your other coping skills to cope with that anxiety.

So that's the temperature part. It's mind blowing. It's crazy. It's really cool. It's really effective. I know you've been seeing people on TikTok doing this recently where they're submerging their face in ice water after a night out drinking. They're hungover, they're doing it to feel better and to duff or you're seeing people doing cold therapy, they're doing ice dives every morning.

It's a similar principle. The way that they're using cold therapy is different. This is more mammalian diving reflex rather than just the. Impact of being in really cold water and having more control over your heartbeat. But this specifically will work extremely effectively for anxiety. And the other really amazing thing about this skill, is that you can use it as much or as little as you need to.

So if we were to distract constantly, that distraction would lose its [00:11:00] effectiveness very quickly. If every single time I felt slightly stressed, I watched the office soon, I would still feel stressed when I watch the office because it loses its effectiveness as a distraction if I'm doing it every 30 seconds.

With this, it is a wired physiological response. You can use it every single day if you're struggling with panic attacks. And as you improve your other coping skills, the frequency panic attacks will go down, but this will always be there in those moments of extreme distress. So that's the T. The eye is for intense exercise, and I'll go through the rest a little bit quicker because they're not as complicated.

They're not as complex and. It's scientific, but with intense exercise. When you go on a run or you're doing sprints or you're boxing, I don't know, your body increases heart rate. And if you've ever run, if you're like me, you're not very athletic. You're like, this is really hard, I gotta stop. Your body's like, please stop running and. As you train more, your ability to run longer and faster and maintain that level of physical output will improve. But your body is never going to be able to [00:12:00] maintain that level of heart rate, that breathing rate, that level of physical output for a long period of time. So as soon as you stop exercising, your body really quickly decreases your heart rate and it decreases your breathing rate because it can't sustain that level of output for a long period.

And so when we have anxiety, our heart rate increases. Our breathing rate increases. So if you are having a panic attack and you do some sprints, your body will work to decrease its heart rate from that physical output, and it'll bring it past that threshold that it was at with the anxiety or anger or whatever emotion it is experiencing.

I am also sure you've all had the experience where you're feeling really overwhelmed and you exercise and it feels like you're working that emotion out of your system. So that's another reason. This is a great skill. It's really effective to get out anger or anxiety and kind of move that emotion through your body.

But it also is really effective in decreasing that physical arousal related to the emotion.

And the third bonus benefit of using exercise when you're coping with anxiety is you're releasing endorphins. So your [00:13:00] neurotransmitters are on your side. You're going to see a boost in mood, and especially if the emotion that you're feeling is depression or anger or stress, this will really help you then kickstart those other coping skills and get out of that point of crisis.

In addition to just not feeling so physically overwhelmed.

The first p and tip is pace breathing. So just like I mentioned, as you're feeling anxious, stressed, angry, whatever it is, you are breathing more rapidly. And like all of the other parts of the tip skill, your body cannot maintain your breathing at like a hundred breaths per minute. At a hundred respirations per minute all day, it's going to decrease that breathing rate so knowing that we can try and hack that and help our body decrease that breathing rate. And it's also a very grounding and calming thing for you to focus on when you're having anxiety. When you're anxious, there are thoughts running through your mind. When you're angry, you're ruminating. When you're stressed, you're thinking of all the possible things that could go wrong or all the things you have to do.

Instead, focusing your thought on your breath can be really effective. So what you're gonna do is you're [00:14:00] going to inhale for two counts. You're gonna hold for one. Exhale for three counts. Hold for one count, and the idea is to make your exhale slightly longer than your inhale. For me, it's two counts.

Inhale, three, exhale. It might be different depending on your lung capacity, but you are increasing the length of your exhale, and you are doing this to ground yourself to get your breathing rate back on track, and you're gonna do this for a couple of minutes. This is extremely effective with anxiety as well as anger.

All of the emotions. . There are other types of breathing. You can also use like square breathing. You can use pace breathing, you can do circle breathing, like there are so many different types of breath work out there. For me, just counting with two and three counts is really effective, but it's also nice to be able to visualize that in my mind and be like, okay, two increase on one side of the rectangle.

Hold for one, exhale for three. Hold for one. You get the point. And the final P and tip is progressive muscle relaxation. So like I mentioned, we hold a lot of tension in our body when we're anxious or angry or [00:15:00] stressed, like you know, those clenched fists, those tight muscles. So what we're doing is we're trying to decrease physical distress with the tip scale.

So you're gonna pair this with your pace breathing, and as you inhale, you're gonna clench your muscles further. You're gonna hold for a minute and then you're gonna exhale and release the tension in your muscles, and you are then releasing that tension below what it was at when you were anxious, angry, stressed, et cetera.

This can be really effective if you feel like you're holding your stress or your anger or your anxiety within your body. It's very calming. I love doing this before I'm going to bed. It helps me let go of stress throughout the day, but in crisis mode, I am normally pulling from. Temperature pace breathing and intense exercise the most, but progressive muscle relaxation is so helpful for anxiety and because you know the rest of the tip skill, and it's the last part of the acronym, another tool to add to your toolbox.

So that is the tip scale. To recap, we are eliminating physical distress associated with intense emotions, and we are using your body's biology to be effective at doing that. [00:16:00] So we are stimulating our mammalian diving reflex and our vagus nerve to decrease our heart rate and breathing rate. We are increasing our heart rate past the threshold that it's at with anxiety, anger, emotional distress. By doing intense exercise and working that emotion through our body, we are pacing our breathing to increase the length of our exhales and lower our breathing and heart rate. And lastly, we are doing progressive muscle relaxation to let go of the tension that is held in our body when we are experiencing emotional.

Skill one we learned at tip scale. It's in your toolbox now. Remember, T I P P. Temperature intense exercise, pace breathing, impaired muscle relaxation. You got this?

Hey there, I'm Naoto. Check out my show Tigress, which is basically my unfiltered and unapologetic journey of being a work in progress. Like I hope that I am authentic and I try to be as unfiltered as I possibly can. I am so passionate about what I do from talking about periods to wanting to [00:17:00] build community around the cause to.

Loving the business that I'm working on. Tune in each week on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever podcasts are streamed.

The next skill I talked about in my last solo episode, but it's just one of the greatest of all time.

And as I was reflecting on this skill, I was like, this is what literally helped me become undepressed, and this is what to this day, allows me to do anything and that is opposite action. So the context here, and if you want more context on this, I did a whole episode about emotion education. I'll link it in the show notes, but all of our emotions activate us to respond in a way that we are biologically wired to do so. All of our emotions are wired to serve a function.

Guilt, for example. Guilt tells us that we've done something in our relationship that threatens the relationship and is damaging the relationships As humans, we are wired to live in groups, live in communities. We're not very strong predators. ourselves. But in a group we can be really [00:18:00] effective if we work together.

So back in caveman days, what kept us alive was sticking together in groups. So our body has a way of telling us when those relationships are in deputy by feeling guilt. And the action that the emotion tells us to do is to try and repair the relationship. Another example

Obviously, you know, fight or flight, fear tells us that there is a threat to ourselves, either physical or emotional. It tells us to get outta that situation to keep us safe and survive the situation that is the action that it's telling us to do. So with opposite action. . We are looking at what our emotions are telling us to do and we're doing the opposite.

So we can be as effective as possible because if we ran away from every single thing that we were scared of, we would never be able to do anything in life. We would constantly be isolated and alone. It would be detrimental to our mental health. And there are a lot of other implications with other emotions where that is true.

So to give you some examples of opposite actions for emotions that you probably wanna do the opposite of, we'll start with depression.

Depression as an emotion or as a feeling will [00:19:00] say, tells us to isolate. It tells us to withdraw. It tells us to lay in bed to avoid our responsibilities. And what's funny is that if we do the opposite of that, if we go and engage with people, if we get out and about, if we go through and fulfill our responsibilities, we feel better.

And if you're like, no, that's not the case. It is, you will feel better if you are getting up and going out and doing things. And if you lay in bed for three days straight because we need connection. We need goals, we need motivation. We need certain activities to give us some sense of meaning in life.

And so when depression tells us to withdraw and avoid and stay in bed, we do the opposite. And as we shift that behavior, the emotion does as well. And as the C B T triangle with behaviors, thoughts, and emotions. And if we can insert ourselves into the behavior part, we'll also shift our emotions and. . So that's depression.

That's what depression is telling to you to do. The opposite that you're gonna do is you're gonna get out of bed, you're going to engage with your friends. You're going to do something that you are motivated to do or passionate [00:20:00] about, whether that's school, an extracurricular, an activity, all of those things you were doing the opposite of what depression is telling you to do.

Another common one is anxiety. Anxiety tells us to avoid because there's a threat, but anxiety doesn't always accurately interpret those threats. We blow them outta proportion. We think, oh my gosh, if I go give this presentation, everyone will laugh at me and I'll have no relationships for the rest of my life.

That's not accurate. And the threat isn't actually that large. There's not that much at stake. So it's not effective for us to listen to the emotional cue there. So we'll do the opposite. We'll get up. We'll go give the presentation. , we will breathe through it, we'll make eye contact, and we will get to the other side and engage with the thing that is giving us anxiety.

And that long term will make that anxiety go away and decrease the emotional intensity associated with public speaking. In that example anger, the last example I will give. anger wants us to attack. It wants us to judge. It wants us to ruminate. It wants us to really stay in the situation and explain why we're right or what the other person did [00:21:00] wrong.

But that's not always effective. A lot of the times that'll cause damage to the relationship. You'll say something that you will regret. It's more difficult to prepare long-term. So what we're gonna do instead is we're gonna take a step back. We're not going to attack, we're not gonna judge. We're not gonna try and say exactly why we're right and all the little examples.

we are going to take some distance from whatever it is that's making you angry. You're kind of distract. You're going to get yourself into a better space emotionally and then revisit the situation. So it's really interesting emotions. tell us to do very different things. Again, depression tells us to avoid anxiety, tells us to avoid anger, tells us to go towards that thing.

So if we're aware of what our emotions are wired to tell us to do, we can kind of question that and say, is this actually what I wanna do in this situation? Is this actually what will be most effective? So that's opposite action. This skill, literally single handed me doing this again and again and again, hundreds of times a day, was what allowed me to shift my behaviors and in turn, shift my emotions and thoughts when I was depressed and when I was anxious.

[00:22:00] And over time, as you keep doing this, you build a life that you love and appreciate.

So I just touched on this with anger, but the next skill I'm gonna teach you is the stop skill. This is another distress tolerance skill. Opposite action was more emotion Regulation tip is distress tolerance. This is another distress tolerance skill. So when I talked about anger, I said, you're leaving the situation and then you're going back and revisiting it.

That's the stop skill. You are using this when you are extremely emotionally distressed and your actions and decisions are entirely being controlled by your emotions. So maybe you're in an argument and everything you're saying is just like what you're feeling. Maybe you. have to decide what your major's gonna be, and you're really anxious about pursuing something that you're not totally confident in and the safe option you don't totally love, but at least you know that it'll be fine. You're led by emotion there.

If you go with your emotional, choose the safe option because anxiety's telling you not to pursue that other. . So when you can tell that you are making your decisions or you are acting from your emotion mind is what we call in D P T. We're gonna [00:23:00] use the stop scale, especially in situations where you're angry or anxious or overwhelmed.

Again, high intensity situations like eight out of 10 for emotional distress. Stop is another acronym. I know you didn't think we were just gonna stop. Of course. It's an acronym. It's D V T. So we're gonna stop. We're gonna take a step back. We're gonna observe and proceed mindfully. So the first thing you're doing is you're physically and mentally stopping.

You're not going to continue to say things to the other person. You're not gonna continue that mind spiral and that panic attack. You are physically stopping in whatever situation you are in, and you are mentally stopping the thought that you're. , you're gonna take a step back. Ideally, this is physical.

If you are in a situation where you're having a panic attack, maybe you step out and go to the bathroom. If you are in an argument, you are leaving the argument. Next step is to observe. So then after we are outta the situation that's bringing up this intense emotion, hopefully our distress goes down a bit, and then we can kind of reflect on what's happening, what is going on in this argument, what is effective, what's not [00:24:00] effective.

are we going anywhere or is the same argument just happening on loop over and over again? If you're anxious. What was making me anxious? What is the actual threat here? How likely is that thing to happen? Is it effective to avoid this, or is this just kind of reinforcing my anxiety cycle? and based on that analysis, we're gonna proceed mindfully.

We're gonna make a decision that makes sense. So a lot of times in arguments, how you'll probably proceed mindfully is being like, can we table this until tomorrow when we're both mentally in a better spot, and we can talk about this more effectively. If it's anxiety, you're probably gonna wanna return to this situation.

You're gonna cope with the anxiety. You're gonna get yourself into a better head space, and then you're gonna go back to the thing that was making you anxious. You could overcome that emotional obstacle and not build up your avoidance and anxiety around. That's the stop scale. Simple, extremely effective.

And if you were ever in a crisis, that's the scale I want you to remember because it's like the first step you take. We can use tip scale, but you first have to stop and take a step back before you could implement the tip scale. So crisis survival 1 [00:25:00] 0 1 is the stop scale. It's an amazing tool to have in your toolkit.

We're gonna learn two more acronyms and then this class is over. Class will be outta session. The next skill we're gonna learn is in the emotion regulation module, and this is the check the facts skill.

This is the skill that I use all the time. I've started using this phrase in like conversation, and it's funny, when I'm talking to my parents, like check the facts, and they like, look at the D B T skill. They love it. They get so excited, but it's something that anyone and everyone can benefit from using.

It's really simple, it's really effective, and any high stakes decision. or emotional situation, you gotta pull the scale outta your pocket and implement. So check the back scale.

what we are doing here is we are checking the level of emotional intensity. The caveat here is all emotions are valid, but the emotional intensity isn't always justified. It's not always a proportionate response. Even if you're having an insanely disproportionate response, the emotions are still valid.

We still have to validate those. We can't change emotions without validating [00:26:00] and accepting them and creating space for them. So that's step one. . But then after we validated and said, okay, this is what I'm experiencing. This is why I'm experiencing this. It makes sense that this is what's coming up for me.

We say, is it effective and justified and proportionate for me to be this anxious about this or this angry about this or this sad about this? And then that's where we're working to shift the emotion. So again, acceptance and change is at the core of D B T. We're accepting the emotions and then we're working to change them.

To give a little situation for you here to give a little. Mock scenario, if you will. Say you were having a giant argument with your parents. You want to go out with your friends and they're like, you didn't score well on your last test. You can't go. This is not from experience, but many similar things have happened with my parents.

Many a time so likely if you're me, you're gonna be like, this is so not fair. I, a lot of the times in this situation will feel all or nothing. I'm like, this isn't fair. I have to go to this. If I don't go to this, I'm gonna not be engaged and excluded. Like, I remember this argument happening so many [00:27:00] times with my parents where it feels like everything's on the line and I have to go.

I want to go. That's my number one goal. And so, because. That level of emotional intensity, a, it's not very comfortable whenever we're feeling a really intense emotion. It's not fun if you're upset, if you are anxious about being excluded, if you're stressed about not being able to go to this event.

If you're angry at your parents, like that's a lot to deal with and cope with. It's not very comfortable to be experiencing that. Additionally, it's probably not effective. Being that angry at your parents isn't great for your relationship. It's not great for your own mental. So we want to change the emotion.

We're accepting that this is what's coming up, but we wanna shift something because this is not efficient or effective. So this is when we check the facts and the check the facts scales is very simple. We're gonna do the who, what, when, where, why, what's going on in the situation. We're gonna reduce it to the facts without judgments, and then we're gonna look at what assumptions we're making.

We're gonna look at the judgment. So if the situation is that you got a bad grade on your test, so you can't hang out with your friends, if it was me, the assumptions I'd [00:28:00] be making. If I don't go to this, I'm gonna be excluded, and then I'm not gonna be as close to my other friends. There's never gonna be another opportunity like this.

I'm missing out on so much. My parents are being so unfair, they don't trust me. Like all of these judgments and assumptions are coming from this one interaction. Maybe you're different and you're like, Sadie, what the heck is going on inside your head? I've never had that emotional experience. That's how it works in.

So I will check the facts and I will say, realistically, being a hundred percent honest with myself, what will happen if I don't go to this? And it's not nothing. We're not gonna completely be like, you're so wrong for being upset. Like there's literally no implications on your life here. What will happen, your friends will spend more time together with each other than they are with you.

You're gonna miss out on this activity. , maybe you're gonna go to school next week. They're all gonna be talking about it. You're gonna feel excluded, you're gonna feel sad. Those things are probably actually realistically gonna happen. , what's not gonna happen are some of the assumptions that you made that your parents don't trust you.

They [00:29:00] probably do trust you. They just maybe had set a boundary before that if you get below this grade, you can't spend time with your friends or school's. The number one priority, everything else comes second. What other assumptions do we make? We said that this will forever ruin the friendship. That's not gonna happen.

Like we know this. You have friends that love and support you and care about you, and so they're not gonna completely write you off because you couldn't go hang out this one time. Other assumptions, your parents are being totally unfair. It totally feels that way. But do your parents think that they're being unfair?

From their perspective, are they like, we're gonna be so unfair and that's just what's gonna happen? Our goal here is to be completely irrational, unfair in making this decision and setting this boundary. So we're going through and we're checking all these assumptions and judgments and really doing as much as possible to think about everyone else's perspective.

as honest as we can with ourselves of what really is going to happen. And then once we've established an accurate prediction that's not fueled by emotion, we can then cope ahead, which is another scale which we'll learn next and figure out how we're gonna cope through what's actually gonna [00:30:00] happen in this situation and the emotions that will actually arise.

Like if your friends will talk about this next week at school, how are you gonna deal with the sadness about being excluded? Are you going to step out of the situation or are you gonna then plan another time to spend time with your friends? Whatever. Seth's check the fact scale. It's pretty simple, but very effective.

the last skill from the emotion regulation module that I would like to teach you is the ABC Scale. This stands for accumulating positives, building mastery, and coping ahead. This is at the core of your ability to regulate your emotions. These are three skills that will allow you to build that life worth living and a.

Direct way, and they're pretty simple. This again goes back to that idea if you are living a wonderful mentally balanced life, you're probably doing these things. the first part of the A b, C scale is accumulating positives. When we are accumulating positives. This isn't just like, oh my gosh, I was walking down the street and there was a rainbow, and I was so happy.

Yes, that is a positive experience, but the accumulating positive skill is being intentional and [00:31:00] planning moments to boost your mood. So maybe it's spending time with a friend. Maybe it's making your favorite cup of coffee in the morning. Maybe every night before bed, you read a good book or you watch a TV show, or you do your skincare routine.

These are all things I do in my life and they make me really happy. You are intentionally planning moments that will boost your mood. I saw TikTok, maybe I was listening to a podcast, something where it was like, happy people don't just wait to be happy. They do things that make them happy within their life.

Something like that. I'm totally butchering. That sounded way more eloquent, but this is kind of the skill that embodies that idea. You're not leaving your mood up to chance. You are planning things that will in turn boost your mental health. So that's what it is. You are. planning moments that will make you happy.

And then as you're experiencing those things, you're being mindful, you're fully experiencing the emotions, you're appreciating it. And then there's also the afterthought gratitude where you're like, oh my gosh, I had an amazing day today and I feel really great right now. And I'm so grateful that I have these relationships or routines that make me feel good.

And then the other thing here that I wanna [00:32:00] mention that was really helpful for me in the early days of recovery is that what the accumulating positive skill allowed me to. Was rewire the thought pattern that I had nothing going for me. When I was really depressed, I was really hopeless, and so when I would get into a low mood, I would immediately go to the thought pattern of everything sucks.

I have nothing to look forward to. My life is terrible and nothing is worth it. That was immediately where my mind would go and me accumulating positive skill meant that that statement was no longer. . It was like, no, no, no, no, no. This past week I've accumulating these 10 or 15 moments throughout my life that actually were really amazing and did make me happy, and I wasn't depressed in those moments.

And so, , it allows you to rewire that thought pattern. in general, as you use the scale over a long period of time, your emotional baseline is adjusted. so every single time you're doing these things that make you happy, your baseline is improving a little bit. Your average emotional experience is improving. . And your baseline is, is trending upwards. So that is accumulating [00:33:00] positives the last thing that I'll add here is there is a caveat, which is that you can do this both short term and long term. So short-term, getting that cup of coffee, planning to spend time with a friend. Long term. It's building healthy relationships. It's having good mental health. It's having routines and habits that support your mental health.

It's being enrolled in classes that you enjoy. It's having extracurriculars that boost your mood. All of these things that set you up for success and a long-term basis. and the last skill of the episode I know it's been a lot, is cope ahead. So I mentioned if you are anxious, when you check the facts and you can accurate representation of what's really gonna happen, we cope ahead.

So coping ahead is, you are mentally walking through your worst case scenario and then you're adjusted what is more likely to happen scenario and you are being intentional and planning every single coping skill that you would use to get through the situ. . So if you were scared of flying, this is the example they always give with COPE head.

So you're almost doing a mini exposure therapy. So you are mentally like, okay, I'm pulling up to the curb at the [00:34:00] airport. I'm getting my bag out of the car, I'm walking inside. I already feel anxious. My heart rate is increasing. What am I gonna do? I'm gonna do some deep breathing.

Okay, I'm walking towards security now. It's kind of feeling hard to breathe. What am I gonna do? I'm gonna put a headphone in, I'm gonna listen to some music, and I'm gonna remind myself that I still have two hours until I even have to get on a plane. So it is not an immediate threat, and I can calm down at this moment.

You go through the entire airport experience, you talk about what skills you would use at each point. Maybe we're gonna use like an adapted tip scale. So you bring one of those ice packs that you can pop on the go. Maybe you have an ice roller in your bag. You're gonna use that under your eyes.

As you get on the plane. You're gonna have water that you're gonna buy at the airport, so you can drink water and focus on that sensation. You're gonna download your favorite TV show on the plane and distract yourself. All of these skills that you are gonna use, you're gonna play on it. And then when you actually go through the situation, you.

actually get on your flight. You know exactly how you're gonna cope with that. Worst case scenario, most intense emotional reaction possible. those are all of our D B T scales. This are some of my favorites that I'm constantly pulling from. If you [00:35:00] guys like this style of episode where I teach you skills, , let me know.

I'm hoping it's not redundant. If you read these before, I'm hoping it's interesting and that you're learning something, but if you're like, I like the interviews and the stories, please stop teaching us things. . Let me know. So me a dm, I'll adjust. I'll adapt. And thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this, hopefully you did.

Please leave a review, subscribe, follow on social media at She Persisted podcast. I really appreciate you guys. You're the best and I, I love doing this and you guys make it so much more fun to know that people are listening. Have a great week. You got this, and I'll talk to you next Thursday.

Sadie: 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 podcasts or Spotify, you can also make sure to follow along at actually persisted podcast on both Instagram and Tik TOK, and check out all the bonus resources, content and information on my website.

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