Building Distress Tolerance Through Somatic Experiencing
What is distress tolerance?
Distress tolerance is an individual's capacity to "tolerate" or manage uncomfortable emotions and sensations without resorting to unhealthy coping patterns or reactive behaviors. For example, have you stonewalled or lashed out in an argument you later regretted? That behavior may result from the build-up of uncomfortable sensations and/or emotions where reacting or shutting down helps alleviate the distress temporarily. Long-term these reactions not only have consequences on your relationships but teach your nervous system that conflict and distress are intolerable. This is why building a distress tolerance where one returns to equilibrium is important in creating a healthy internal landscape and relationship with oneself.
What are the factors that influence your distress tolerance?
Biological factors
Genetics and temperament can vary in an individual and affect the capacity level one has. This includes both physical and mental diagnoses such as depression anxiety, or chronic pain to name a few that can impact sensitivity in the nervous system.
Environmental factors
Trauma and neglect on the personal, collective, and systemic levels. This includes caregiver support, meeting basic needs, and feeling safe in one's home/ neighborhood. If one is in a constant state of stress, their distress tolerance level can adapt to fit the environment. This could look like being over-sensitive or hyperactive or the opposite where the body can live in a freeze state or somewhere in between.
How a child learns to cope with stressors
As a kid, of course, things are often out of our control-- from our biological makeup to the environment and family of origin that was assigned to us. How we learn to cope with stressors in our developmental years impacts our current distress tolerance. As human beings, fear and anxiety are inevitable, and what we have access to before, during, and after provides a neurological wiring for our bodies to respond to stressful events.
Those who had enough support from an adult in their life through words, emotional availability, and physical presence can build more capacity for stress in their lives because they've internalized the support they received and have learned to practice it independently as an adult. However, children who lack consistent support often need to make sense of their dysregulation and learn to soothe themselves, sometimes by turning inwards to unhealthy ways, the lack of support often gets internalized as "there's something wrong with me" (shame) or can turn into nervous system hypo-arousal (shutdown, numbness, disconnection from one's experience such as dissociation) and hyperarousal (agitation, hyperactivity such as fight or flight). This chronic cycle of activation (stress) paired with no time or permission to release creates a system that feels stuck in chronic stress and lack of safety leading to a low window of tolerance.
Why is expanding your window of tolerance important for your mental health?
Building distress tolerance is important because as long as we are a human being living on this planet, we will encounter challenges that will cause us anger, grief, distress, anxiety, and pain. How we move through those emotions and come back to ourselves is key to having a healthy life. Emotions are complex, they can get stuck when they may want to be expressed. Having a container within yourself to hold, and express (in your unique way) your experience will help you honor and move through your day with more openness and compassion.
Being able to stay connected to people in your life while feeling activated is also important. In today's culture, boundaries are often encouraged but what I'm also noticing is that people are mistaking boundaries for avoidance which can deteriorate a relationship. I, of course, want to acknowledge that cutting contact or retreating is sometimes necessary for survival and one's well-being; I'm referring to the more grey areas where harm is caused but the nervous system jumps to the worst-case scenario and repair feels impossible with the people who may have created a rupture in the relationship.
Are you emotionally regulating or dissociating?
I get this question from clients often, sometimes staying regulated and dissociation can look similar on a behavioral level, one may appear calm and collected. However, the key difference is presence. I often ask, are you present with your experience after a stressful event happens? When we are dissociating we may not be connected to our senses, the environment, or the people around us while if we are regulated, our social engagement system is online, and so are our emotional channels and sensory processing. This can be something sneaky that occurs, thus, it's important to be mindful in discerning your experience at the moment and build on being present.
Somatic exercises to help increase distress tolerance
According to Somatic Experiencing and Trauma specialist Linda Thai, four things need to happen in the occurrence of trauma for a child or adult to come back to regulation and safety: time, space, permission, and resources. Having access to these also allows for the development of distress tolerance. The somatic exercise below helps us tap into these characteristics that we may not have had when we were younger.
Time allows us to take our time and not respond to the sense of urgency when our alarm system is going off internally, space, allows us to pause and choose something different than we may react to, permission gives us a sense of agency and autonomy and resources are both the internal cues and external engagements we can invite to help our nervous system settle.
Visualize the anticipated distress
Visualize the distressing event and as you do that, notice the sensations, emotions and thoughts that arise. Then check in with your experience by feeling the below...
Time & Space:
As you visualize, notice where you are. Are you in your apartment? What time of the day is it? Orienting to the time helps orient us to the present. Why is this important? Trauma, fear, and distress disorganize our sense of time and leave us stuck in distress when in reality, we are okay, this allows us to tune into the safety of the present.
Permission:
What makes a situation traumatic when we are kids is that we often don't have a choice; we are forced to endure the distressing event. Permission is important to give ourselves as an adult because it cues our body that we have agency and power. While you are visualizing notice that you have agency in the present moment, you can move your hands and feet, you can stand up or sit down, and you can also follow impulses, we are teaching your body it's okay to choose to do something different, this creates more flexibility.
Resources:
As you visualize, notice what feels pleasant or even neutral to you, this is called resourcing. This can be feeling the texture of your blanket or the support of your sit bone or feet on the floor, this again, not only invites you back to the present but also allows you to orient to the places in your body and your environment that are not touched by distress.
To expand our distress capacity is to teach our nervous system that we are safe
Oftentimes, when our distress tolerance is low, we can feel like we are flooded with unpleasant sensations, these three things are a counterpoint that can help you explore the areas you feel okay-- and build new neuropathways to come back to your regulated self. The more we teach our system that we are okay, the wider our window of tolerance or capacity becomes.
Somatic Experiencing Therapy
Somatic therapy is useful for trauma, childhood trauma, complex PTSD, and general stress or anxiety! Learn more about the benefits of somatic therapy or contact me, a BIPOC somatic experiencing therapist to see how I can support you in your journey forward.
