Crisis Survival Skills: Distracting and Self-Soothing

Hi.  I'm Marsha Linehan. I'm a professor at the University of Washington and a researcher there.  The kind of research I do is on behaviour therapy. And in my research over the last, well frankly, a lot of years, I've been developing behavioural skills. And I've been developing these skills and then I do research to see if the skills work.  And the good news is most of the skills that I've developed work. At least for some people some of the time. 

So there are lots of different sets of skills but the skills that I'm going to teach you on this program are called Crisis Survival Skills. 

Now, if you happen to have my book or if somebody has given you pages from my book, then you're going to want to open your book or get out your pages.  And the ones you're going to be looking for are called Distress Tolerance Handout I Crisis Survival Strategies and the first one is called Distracting.  So we're going to review all those skills.  And then the second one is called Distress Tolerance Handout I Crisis Survival Strategies Self Soothing.  And we're going to go over all those skills too. 

So that's what we're going to do in this program.  We're going to work on how to survive a crisis without making it worse.  That's the basic idea. 

Now, there are a few things I have to tell you before we get going.  These are really important.

The first thing is the skills I'm going to teach you in this particular program are not the skills that are going to solve all your life problems.  And they're really not going to be enough skills to build a life worth living.  They're not even going to be enough to figure out how to change everything about yourself you don't like.  Or how to change your life and all the things in your life you don't like. I'm all for solving life's problems; I'm sure you are too. I'm for building a life worth living; I'm sure you are too.  And, well, I'm all for changing every single thing about yourself that you don't like.  If it's possible, I'm for it. The problem is, is that in order to do that, in order to build your life up, well, it's just not going to work out if you don't stop tearing your life down. In other words, if you're a person who sometimes makes things worse, well, I hate to give you the bad news here right at the beginning of the program, but I'm telling you right now, you're going to have to stop that. You cannot continue to make your life worse. 

So, the question of course is how would you do that? How would you stop making your life worse? Most people only make their lives worse in dire situations. That is to say in crises, times of terrible trauma.  Are you one of those people? Think about it for a minute. And just think back on your life.  Do you do things that actually make things worse instead of better?  Maybe you go for the bottle.  Maybe you eat too much. Take drugs. You think about killing yourself - some people do. If you're one of those people these skills are for you. 


CRISIS

The first thing we're going to ask is what a crisis is.  I mean if you're going to learn crisis survival strategies, it'd be a good idea to know what a crisis is. So what is a crisis?

Well, first a crisis is a stressful event. Often it's a traumatic moment. Usually there's a lot of emotional stress in a crisis.  That's the first characteristic.

The second characteristic is they're short term. I mean, crisis don't last forever. If it's something that lasts forever and you think it's a crisis, it's your life, not a crisis.

Third, what goes on in a crisis, you want it resolved right now. Generally there's a sense of urgency like 'Ah, I've got to get it solved!' or 'I've got to get out, I've got to get out, I've got to get away!'



So that's what a crisis is.  There are two main rules of crisis survival.  The first rule is, if you are in a crisis and you can solve the problem now, solve it. Ok.  Rule 1: Solve the problem if you can solve it.

Alright. The second rule of crisis survival is if you can't solve the problem, survive it.  Got that? What are they?  The first rule: solve it.  The second rule:  survive it.



This program is going to assume for the moment that you've got a crisis; it's got a problem in it that you can't solve. So we're going to focus not on how to solve the problem 'cause we're assuming that even though you may be able to solve it another time, you can't solve it now.  So we're going to assume that.  So what we're going to focus in is how to actually survive it.

How in the world would you do that?  I mean, how do you survive times of trauma and stress when all you want to do is run away, hide, get in bed and pull the covers over your head, or do other things?  Well, in this program I'm going to focus in on two different kinds of skills.  The first set of skills are going to be the Distract skills.  And the second are going to be the Self Soothing.  Two of my favorite sets of skills. 

Now, before I get going on these I just want to say a couple of things about them before I tell you how to do them.  First thing is, have you been told by somebody that you distract too much?  And you're thinking, 'Hey, wait a minute what is she doing teaching me how to distract! This is ridiculous!' My therapist, or my friends, or my mother, or my partner, or somebody tells me, 'Stop distracting.'  Alright. 

If you distract when you can solve the problem - not a good idea.  The time to distract - when you can't solve the problem. So we're going to talk about that. But just remember I'm not advising you, don't go telling everybody I'm saying this either, to distract all the time. 

Now the second set of skills... I don't know lots of people I work with have loads of problems with them, they're self soothing skills.  So you may be thinking to yourself. 'Well, I'm going to listen to Distracting and I'm not planning on paying attention to Self Soothing.'  People say that who think, 'I don't deserve to self soothe. I'm not worth self soothing.'  If you're saying that, well, just put that thought on the shelf.  You're going to be surprized. You could actually learn it.

Ok, I just have one last thing to say before I get going.  I know you're wondering if I'm ever going to get going but don't worry, this is the last thing I have to say before I get going.  I've got a lot of information.  In fact, most people learn this information best if they take notes.  So my advice to you is to get paper and pencil and take notes while you're listening. Now if you don't have paper and pencil right now... well, if I were you, I'd get up, go to the program, switch it off, put it on pause, go get your paper, get a pencil, come back, get yourself all comfy, turn the program on, and we'll get going.

Are you the kind of person who, if a crisis hits, you usually make things worse? If you're the kind of person who does that, either a lot of the time or some of the time, this is the program for you.  This is a program about how to get through a crisis without making it any worse than it already is. 

So when do you need crisis survival skills?  You should look at the situation and see if it fits three criteria.
First, it needs to be a real crisis. That is, it's highly stressful, short term, and there's a pressure to resolve the problem quickly. Second, it needs to be a crisis that can't be resolved in the short term.  In other words you can't solve it right this minute.  And third, has to be a situation you can't afford to make worse than it already is.



If you put it all together, the basic bottom line is you need crisis survival skills when you're in a crisis and you've got to tolerate it until you can make it better. So that's what these skills are for. That kind of crisis.   On this program I'm going to focus on two different kinds of skills. The first set of skills are going to be the Distract Skills and the second are going to be the self soothe. So we're going to start with distract.


DISTRACT SKILLS

Distracting is a skill that a lot of people already know about because distracting is when you throw your mind off of the problem.  In other words, you think about or do something else. You know people when they say, 'I threw myself into my work'.  That's when people are distracting.

I've got seven distract skills I'm going to teach you. The way to remember them is the first letter spells out the word 'Accepts'.  Let's start with A.

Activities
A means activities.  Now the idea here is to just throw yourself into activities. You can't do activities that you can do mindlessly. You know how sometimes you do things and while you're doing them all you're doing is thinking about your problem? This is not a good idea. That's not an activity for distracting.  You need a distracting activity; one that will just fill up your whole mind.  What are some examples?

Reading is a really good activity. It's one of my favorites but you can't do reading if you can't concentrate.  So you could try reading if you can get yourself involved or you've got some great book and you're dying to see how it goes. That's a really good one if you can get involved.  It's always a good thing to keep a few books around that are really involving.  That's why I like junk novels.  Really serious novels, serious reading - I like to do that sometimes. Well, actually, I mostly do that at work.  But at home I keep spy stories and novels.  I keep the kind of stuff you can just really get your mind into.

Or, if you can't concentrate and just reading's out, how about exercise? Now with exercise, you've got to do an exercise that will really get your mind involved. So the best kind are the kind that are really hard exercises.  Involving exercises. Ones that focus the mind. 

Maybe you're a person who has hobbies. That's what lots of people do. They throw themselves into their hobbies to distract from their problems. That's always a good idea. You have any hobbies? 

I have friends who throw themselves into cleaning their house. I really do. I've got a friend she says, 'Well, whenever I've got troubles I clean my house'.  Now, I do that too. Sometimes if I just can't solve a problem, especially at work, I start cleaning my desk. You can always tell when I've got lots of problems - my desk is very neat.

You could go to an event.  You could go to a movie or concert. Open the paper; try to find something to go to.  Movies are good. 

Lots of people distract from their problems by getting together with their friends.  Now, the trick here is if you get together with friends to distract, what would you not want to do?  You guessed it. Don't spend the whole time talking about your problems. 

So that's the list.  Now you should add to it. Think of all the activities that have ever done you some good and add them to the list.  You'll probably be able to think up lots of them. The trick is, think up the activities when you're not in a crisis.  It's really hard to think them up in a crisis.  If the crisis is really bad, you want to be able to just open your list, go down it, do the first thing on the list, that doesn't work, go to the second. If that doesn't work, go to the third, just keep right on going.

What do you do if you don't have any activities to fill up your mind?  You need... can't think of anything to do or everything seems boring or every time you try to do something all you do is think about your problems anyway.  Move to the next skill.

Contributing
The next one starts with C.  C, contributing.  So what's contributing? It's where you distract from pain and suffering by focusing your mind on someone else or something else that you can contribute to, somehow make better. 

The idea here is to distract, that's the good part.  And the second good part is you try to distract in a way that will actually make you feel better about yourself.  To make it even better, you try to distract in a way that will actually make the world a little bit better.  So even if you're suffering at least you're doing some good in the world.

You could do volunteer work. Lots of people do volunteer work as a way to kind of get your mind off themselves - get their minds off their troubles.

Could do something nice for someone. If you're in the middle of a crisis you could think, 'Well, what would someone else like? What could I do for them?' Maybe you could give them a call.  You could call people you haven't talked to in a long time who might be missing you.
You could do something surprising for someone else.  There are lots of things you can do that are contributing.  You just have to think of something. Think back in your own life, what's something that you do that contributes to other people, makes someone happier that you could do in a crisis. 

If you can think them up, write them down. Now's the time.  Write them down now. 

It's really important to remember that contributions don't have to be big. The facts of the matter are, in the middle of crisis when you are just trying to survive, you're probably not going to do something really big.  That's probably not the time. So, what you want to do is try to think up small things you can do. 

For example, there's a grocery store two blocks from my house. I go there, I don't know, a couple of times a week.  So, I always think to myself whenever things really get me down, I'm really in trouble, having a bad day. I say, 'Alright Marsha.  All you have to do to make this day worthwhile is walk down to the grocery store. Get in line. And smile at the checkout lady.' I figure they have really difficult days.  Have you ever noticed how rude people can be to check out people in grocery stores?  So, you can just make the whole world better by going down and smiling.  That's what I do.

Now, you may be one of those persons who, when you get in a crisis and then you think of contributing, you start thinking, 'Oh, it isn't going to make a difference.  It's really not worthwhile. It's not my time.' In a crisis sometimes we start putting ourselves down thinking we're worthless, thinking that whatever we have to do doesn't contribute.  So, this is my advice.  Stop that.  That's not effective. Go ahead and do it.  Even if you don't think it's going to help, try it anyway.

Well, what if you've already tried it. You either tried it and it didn't work or you decided 'I'm not doing it. I'm the one in trouble.  I'm not giving something to someone else. I need someone to give something to me.' Ok.  Give it up.  You're not going to contribute. Let's go to the next one. 

Comparison
The next letter in 'Accepts' is C again, but this time it's C for comparisons. When you're trying to distract by using comparisons, what you're trying to do is trying to compare your current situation or the current crisis to a situation that's worse than the one you're in now.

So for example you could compare yourself to people who have less than you have. Or you could compare yourself to people who maybe have the same thing you have but they have a lot harder time coping with it.  Or, you could look at your own life and you could think about times in your life when things have been a lot harder or you didn't have the same resources you have now.

The whole idea is to try to feel better by comparing yourself to a time when you could feel worse. In other words you're trying to get yourself to sort of say in your mind, 'Could be worse'.

So how does this work? Well when it does work it's probably generating a sense of gratitude or a sense of feeling lucky or even a sense of relief. So, that's when it works.  It works. You feel relieved. You feel better about yourself.  Feel a little more competent. Maybe you're not quite as incompetent as you thought. 

Emotions
E is for emotions. The idea is to distract from one emotion by figuring out a way to create another emotion.  So how in the world would you do that?

Well, one really effective way, that you are probably already using anyway, is music.  The secret to using music as distraction or crisis survival is to pick your music so that it changes your emotion. You'd be surprized at the people I know who when they're sad, what do they do? They put sad music on. How do you think they feel?  Do you think the get less sad?

No.  So the idea is if you feel sad, what kind of emotion would you like to have? Well you probably want to feel energetic or even happy if you could.  So you've got to put some energetic happy music on.

Now what's happy for one person may not be happy for another.  That's really important.  I was once running a group of people who all had drug problems. And in the groups before that we'd always used music at the end of group to sort of rev everybody up; make them feel better.  So in this group, I said 'Alright, let's put the music on'. They said, 'No.  No. No'. I said, 'Why not?' and they said. 'Well every song we like makes us think of using drugs.'  I said, 'Fine.  Good. We're not doing that.  Don't put that on. 

Now if you're feeling really anxious and tense you could try putting music on that's soothing and calming. Sort of soft music. Maybe background music; maybe classical music. That might help.

So think about what kinds of music change your mood. That's what you want to do.  You want to get that kind of list going and then when you are in a crisis, first what do you do? Check out how you feel.  Second, pick your music.  Third, put it on. Fourth, make sure it's loud enough that you can hear it, even low background music.

What else could you do?  Well, you could try reading.  The most important thing though about reading is that you've got to find a book that's emotionally involving.  No newspapers, no magazines.  Nothing scholarly.  Nothing informational. You can't read the encyclopedia. You've got to find a story that's emotionally involving.

So it all depends on what's emotionally involving. For me it's spy stories. So I... if I really find myself worrying, kind of in a crisis, and I'm just making things worse by all the stuff I'm thinking, I'll often just get up and try to read a book. But I try to pick a book I can become engaged in.  I get all involved in the story and when I close the book, I try to keep my mind in the story.  So I try to keep that emotion somewhat excitement. 

What else could you do?  You're trying to get another emotion going. Well one way is to try to find some humour.  I did that once.  I was driving cross country and I was driving all the way from Washington DC to Seattle. So I had to drive across the middle of the country.  So I was thinking as I drove across the middle of the country I figured I was going to be really bored because, you know, what do they have in the middle of the country? That's how I was thinking at that time in my life. I figured, 'Alright, they're going to have cows and cows and cows'.  And I thought that's not going to be interesting. I'm going to get really bored so I'm going to take my comedy records, put them on tapes - you can tell it was records- this was quite a while ago. Put them on tapes then I was going to listen to them as I was going across the middle of the country when I had nothing to look at but cows.

So, as it turns out, going across the middle of the country turned out to be really interesting. And I actually didn't listen to my records. But, after I got across the middle of the country, I came to mountains.  You know how sometimes when you go up mountains and you can be on the side of the road that's near the mountain or you could be at the side of the road that's right near the ledge?  Now if you're on the side of the road near the mountain, you're not going to be so scared.  But if you have fear of heights - I have fear of heights - and you're driving your car on the side that's on the ledge, you're going to get afraid.

Well, take it from me, I not only got afraid, I got panicked.  I kept seeing the edge so I started thinking that I was going to go over the ledge.  I couldn't even concentrate.  There was nothing I could do. What was I going to do? You just can't stop your car and get out - I thought of doing this though. Stopping it and getting out and saying, 'I'm too scared to drive!  Would you drive my car?'  But I didn't think that would work out too well.

So, I pulled my car over to the side, they're turned out to be a little indentation where you could take your car. So I pulled my car over and I thought, 'I've got to get through this.' So what did I do?  I put my comedy tapes on.  And I started listening to comedy tapes.  Now I had finally got myself back over onto the road, I'm listening to the comedy tapes - they took my mind off the edge of the highway where I could have fallen off. And I started, well I didn't start laughing actually, but I did start smiling. And sure enough, I got through the drive.

Now that's a really good example of crisis survival skills.  You can do it with humour. 

What else? Well, you could go to emotional movies.  Movies are like reading though, if you're going to go to an emotional movie, make sure you don't go to a move that's going to intensify the emotion you've got.  So if you go to a movie, don't go to a sad movie if you feel sad.  Don't go to a love story if someone just broke up with you.

Pushing Away
What's the next letter?  P.  P is for pushing away.  It's really a good set of skills to do when you just can't cope.  This is really hard.  So I'm going to give you a couple of things to do that can make it a lot easier. 

The first step is get yourself a piece of paper. Get something to write with. The second step is to make a list: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5... You're going to want to make a list of the main problems that are on your mind right now. So for example you might say, 'One: my mother. Two: my bills.  Three:  none likes me at work.' And so on. Ok.  So that's the first thing.  You make your list - put a number beside each one of them.  Alright. 

And the second thing is you go back over your list, one at a time, and for each item on your list, you ask yourself the following questions.  Question 1: Can I do anything about that right now?  And question 2: Is this a good time to work on it? Now if the answer to both those is yes, I can work on this problem now and this is a good time to work on it, ok, skip pushing away.  Go to the first rule of crisis survival - solve that problem now.

However, lots of times you'll say no, I can't do anything now, it's midnight, what can I do about my mother? Nothing. Is this a good time to work on it? This is not a good time to work on my work problem because I need sleep. If I work on it now I'll be exhausted tomorrow.  So if you say no to both then what you do is put a check mark next to it.

Say... let's say you've got the first one, my mother, you've got that checked. Now you go to the next problem.  And you ask the very same questions. You say, 'Is there anything I can do about this problem now and is this a good time to work on it?'  And if you say no to either one of those, you put a check by it.  And you just go one down your list.  Now the idea is to use the first rule of crisis survival strategies on any problem on your list where the answer to both questions is yes. And where the answer to either one of those questions is no, then you can use the pushing away skill.

So what is the pushing away skill? What you do is you go through each one of the items on your list and in your mind you imagine picking the problem up, putting that in a box and putting it up on the shelf.  You want to do this for each one separately.

The trick is you're trying to send a message to your brain that says, 'Brain, cut it out.  Stop dealing with this problem. Put this on the shelf.'  You're really trying to send a message to yourself that says, 'This is not effective. This is ineffective. This won't work. I have nothing to gain by working on this problem now.' And when that's true, pushing away can be a really good skill.
So that's the skill. It's blocking, censoring, shutting off, putting away, getting rid of.  But remember you can only do that, this only works when you can convince your mind that it's not a good idea, that you can't do anything if you work on it now.  Because if your brain keeps thinking that somehow it's going to get somewhere with this, you're going to actually solve the problem if you keep thinking about it, you won't get it on the shelf.  It just won't work.  Alright.  So that's that skill. Shall we go onto the next?

Thoughts
The next letter in "Accepts' is T. And T stands for thoughts. This one is the skill of distracting yourself from a crisis by focusing your mind on thoughts. 

Has anyone ever told you to count to ten when you're angry?  The idea is that if you count to ten you won't yell or scream or do something you'll regret.  Most of us have been told that at least once. Well, that's this skill. I know it sounds sort of silly and like not really an important skill but it can really work.  It's especially good in some situations. And the situations it's really the very best in is when your emotions are really intense and you're trying to keep yourself still.  In other words you are just trying to keep yourself from doing anything until the crisis passes.

Or you could start naming things.  Like if you're with your boss and he's being really really critical of you. You could be sitting there and in the back of your mind you could just be looking at him counting and naming the various things he has on.  You could say, 'Tie, shirt, jacket, hands.' Just about anything that occupies your mind is good when you are in an overwhelming crisis and you're trying to keep yourself from doing anything else. You're trying to get your mind busy with something.

Thoughts, thoughts will work.  Sometimes you could use just the same thought over and over.  Because if your mind is empty, what do you think will happen?  Crack!  The crisis will go right into the middle of your mind.  Take it from me, you'll never make it. So, what do you do?  You focus your mind on a word.  That can be any word. All depends on what words work for you. 

When we work with our clients we sometimes say breath in the word 'wise', breath out the word mind.  'Wise mind'. What's good about that is you... you're trying to get into a wise mind.  When you're in a crisis the whole idea is to act wisely not unwisely.  So you might try that.  Why don't you try it right now while you're listening?  Breath in 'wise'.  Breath out 'mind'. 

You're going to really want to make the mind go for a long time. Now the idea when you do this is try to become the words.  So you want to just throw yourself into the words.  You want to try to fill your whole mind, your entire self, up with the words. It's often hard to do at the beginning.  It's hard to keep your mind focused on one thought.  If your mind gets distracted, you start thinking about something else, don't worry about it.  The minute you notice it just come back to the thought, or the counting, what you're doing.  Just bring your mind back, start over again.

If you practice this a lot it actually gets better.  You'll get really good at it.

Sensations
The last letter in the word 'Accepts' is S.  And S stands for sensations that will distract the mind.  This is a fabulous skill.  It's really helpful if you are in extreme emotional pain or you have physical pain or you're overwhelmed with an urge to do something not in your best interest.
I sometimes tell people I work with, if they're really feeling overwhelmed or they have an urge to do something destructive, try a hot bath. Or, a cold shower. Another thing people sometimes do especially if they have an intense desire to do something destructive and they don't want to do it but they feel like they're about to lose control, have you ever had that feeling? Like you really want to do something destructive, you really don't want to do something destructive and you're afraid you're losing control, and you're going to do it. Go to the refrigerator and open it up, get a piece of ice, hold it in your hand and keep it in your hand while it melts.

Take it from me, this will distract the mind.  And, it really works. I... I don't exactly know why that works so well - I've been kind of amazed. I got people doing this and I figured, 'Ok, it was a so-so skill'. But lots of people have told me it's the most effective thing they do.

What's important is that you distract your mind with the sensation that does not harm you. The idea here is to make things better not worse. 

Those are the Distracting Crisis Survival Skills. You can remember them by just going through A-C-C-E-P-T-S.


SELF SOOTHE

So, we've gotten through the Distraction Skills now we're going to move to a new set and these are the Self Soothing Skills. Now self soothing has to do with nurturing yourself, comforting yourself, being kind to yourself.  That's exactly what you need in a crisis.  In a crisis you're going to try to soothe yourself through it. 

There are lots of ways to soothe yourself. But almost very way has something to do with one of your five senses.  Vision, hearing, smell, taste, touch. So let's talk about each one of them. 

Vision
The idea of self soothing with vision is you want to do something that soothes the eyes. Something that soothes your sight.  What could that be? Well lots of people think flowers are beautiful. It's one of the reasons we plant them in our yards.  And it's really wonderful to have a flower. You could get just one flower on a really awful day when you're in total crisis.  Go to the store, find one really beautiful flower. 

Just because I knew we were going to be doing this, I brought a beautiful flower.  So I'm going to keep that here just to remind you of soothing through beauty.

Another way to soothe through beauty or through your eyes or through vision is to try to make something nice in your house. Have you ever noticed how when you walk into the house and just see a mess that you can feel that you're in more of a crisis than you were before?  So the idea here is to make one part of your house beautiful.

Now I'm not adverse, you could clean your whole house up, I mean you could make the whole thing beautiful but that's kind of a big task - probably not what you want to do in a crisis.  So in a crisis the thing to do is just find one nice place. In fact, if your whole house is a catastrophe, you could clean up one corner.  In fact you could take everything from that corner that's a mess, put is somewhere else, put a flower. Have your chair face that corner and try to find a way so that you just see the beauty. 

If you like pictures or art, go to an art museum. You can go to a bookstore and look through art books.  You could have art books at home and look through them.  There might be a magazine where you really like the pictures, that's always a good thing to do. 

But you want to remember is that your environment counts.  And if you can improve the environment around you, make the environment more beautiful, it'll make a crisis easier to get through.

Hearing
The next sense, hearing. Music soothes the mind.  Sometimes you'll have a song that a favorite song that's really soothing, like a lullaby. You could sing it to yourself.

Have you ever noticed how some people when they get really stressed, they start humming. You could hum. Humming can be a very soothing sound. 

If you know how to play an instrument like the piano, guitar, violin, you could plan music. 

Now lots of people find another human voice soothing.  This is really good if the crisis is that you're alone. So how could you hear another human voice?  Well, you could call somebody, listen to them talk. That's always good. 

I have some other ideas - you may think these are silly but take it from me, in a crisis you've got to do anything that could help. So, if you want to hear a human voice, you could call 800 numbers; listen to the voice on the number.  Or you could call reservations people, talk to them.  You could call your crisis clinic, talk to someone there.

There are lots of places where there are sounds of voices. You could turn your tv on, listen to the voices. You know how some people leave their tv on all the time, no matter what they're doing, even when they're not watching it. Why do they do that? Because it's soothing. They just feel more comfortable with the sound of voices in their house. And if you're that kind of person, turn it on. You don't have a tv? Turn the radio on. Just keep it on. It can help.

Smell
So what's the next sense?  Smell.  Now if you're going to use smell to soothe, you've got to think about what smells do you find soothing.

A lot of people find flowers soothing. You could put on a little bit of perfume - I love putting on perfume.  When they sell new houses they often put things on the stove so that the house will smell really good.  You just want to try to get smells from the kitchen wafting all through your house.  It's really nice. Most people find smells from the kitchen really comforting.  Some people just like the smell of fresh air. That's good if you are in a crisis and it's stuffy. Go outside, smell the air.

So, smell. Try to surround yourself with soothing smells.

Taste
What's the next sense? Taste. Some people only use food to comfort.  I hope you're not one of those people, but if you are plug your ears up while I talk about food.  This is not going to be the skill for you. 

You might want to go to the store and get some tea, like a special tea.  Some people carry candy around. Now my mother always carried around peppermint candy.  I swear any crisis that showed up in her life, my mother would pop peppermint candy into her mouth. She put so much peppermint candy in her mouth in so many crises that we all told her, 'When she died, we're putting peppermint candy in her casket.' And that's exactly what we did. We went and put a whole bag of peppermint candy right in her casket.

Touch
How about touch. Touch is unbelievably important when it comes to soothing. There's been a lot of research on this and a lot is being done. And it turns out that touch can really soothe, relax and lower stress. Getting close to someone or holding someone's hand, having someone put their arm around you can be very comforting. 

Sounds great doesn't it. What if you don't have anybody to touch you? You can put your hand on your hand.  You could soothe your hand.  You could soothe your arm.  You could rub your arm. Massage can be very soothing.  Another way to soothe with touch is to put lotions on.  You know you can by creams and salt rubs and things like that. 

Touch I really love. I love clean sheets. I love the feel of clean sheets. I like them sort of starchy. You could put clean sheets on your bed. 

One of the most common things people I work with do when they're in a crisis and they want to soothe themselves with touch is they go and find their animals and hold them and pet them and stroke them.  Pick up a dog. Pick up a cat. Stroke the cat.  Stroke the dog. This is a great skill because you like it, the cat likes it, the dog likes it.  In fact this seems so important that they now have animals in a lot of care facilities for older people. 

Conclusion
The great thing about self soothing is that not only can it make a crisis a lot more survivable - it gets you through really tough times.  But, if you can get self soothing into your life on a pretty regular basis, it can actually prevent crisis. Because it makes you stronger. Makes you less vulnerable. You're better able to cope with life.

Now, there's some problems with these. Self soothing can be on the complicated side. And the ordinarily... one of two problems. Either you already know how to self soothe.  Problem with you is that self sooth too much. Or, you could be a person who never self soothes.  You can't do it.

So let's start with the person who it's too easy for.  Some people self soothe all the time, in fact, that's their problem. They are always soothing themselves - that's how they get into the crisis in the first place.  So if you're that kind of person, you already know these skills. You might want to think about should you be doing self soothing a little bit less. On the other hand, some people who soothe too much can't do it when they're in a crisis.  They can only do it when they're not in a crisis. Ask yourself if you're that kind of person.  If you are, then you're going to want to practice self soothing in the middle of crisis.

Now, what if you're the other kind of person?  You know I can't begin to tell you the people that I have worked with who simply can not do this. They say, 'what, me? Me?  Soothe myself?  I can't do that!' Often they say, 'Look, I don't deserve it.'  Or, they say, 'Listen, why would I do that? I feel worse.  I feel guilty.  I feel ashamed. I'm not going to do it.' If you're that kind of person, you need to learn to self soothe. Now, if you feel more ashamed or guilty when you soothe yourself in a crisis, don't do it in a crisis. Do it when you're not in a crisis.  You just have to start practicing self soothing. 

The idea is to get to the point where you really get soothed.  But, it's an essential skill. Every single one of us has to be able to soothe ourselves.  So it's really important that you learn how to do it. But practice outside of crises until it starts having some positive, soothing effect. 

Those are the Self Soothing Skills. 


REVIEW

Ok.  So, we've gone over a lot of material.  Let's put it all together.  And we're going to review.  And as I review with you, you try to review with me.  Ok so see if you can remember what you've learned in the program. Ok.
What's a crisis? Remember it's got three criteria or three components.  What are they?  Do you remember?  Well first, crisis is highly stressful or traumatic. Second, it's momentary - that means its short term.  Crisis is not your entire life.  And third, there's a really strong urgency and pressure to get it resolved right now. Seems like sort of an emergency. Alright? So that's a crisis. 

What are the skills that we covered in this particular program on how to do that?  I'm sure you remember.  There were two sets: distracting skills and self soothing.  Remember now there are 7 distracting skills and the way you remember all 7 is with the word 'ACCEPTS'.

A? What's A stand for?  Activities. You want activities that will fill up your mind or take your mind off your stress. 

C. C? Well C is contributing.  You want to contribute to other people and take your mind off yourself or your current mood.  The idea is to sort of throw your mind to somebody else. 

Ok, what's the third one?  Well, it's another C. C, comparisons.  In this one you compare yourself, your state of mind, your current distress, trauma or crisis to either another time in your life when it's actually been worse. Or to someone else whose life is a lot worse than yours.  The idea here is to try to replace distress with a sense of relief.  You're trying to kind of generate the idea that it could be worse.

What's the fourth letter?  E.  E for emotions. Here we're looking for opposite emotions that are intense, opposite to the one you've got now.  So don't try to get your current emotions more intense. That would just make things a whole lot worse. If you remember you've got to switch emotions.

Alright. We've got P. What's P?  You remember? Pushing away.  The idea here is to push away your troubles.  Put them on the shelf. Wrap them up.  Put plexiglas in front of you.  Get distance. Push your problems away.

Ok.  What's the next letter? T. Know what's T stand for? Thoughts.  Now the idea here is to try to switch your thoughts. You're going to try to fill your mind up with some new thoughts that are not distressful thoughts.  So you're going to try to push out your current worries by throwing you mind onto some other thoughts.  A word, a mantra, a verse - any source of thoughts. It could be a saying. 

And the last letter? S. S stands for sensations. Now remember you're looking for sensations that are really strong and ones that are going to distract you.  So what would those be? Do you remember? Well, you could do hot water.  My favorite one though, and I recommend you try it if you haven't tried it before.  It's in a real crisis when you feel like you're going to fall apart, you're emotionally aroused, you just can't stand it - run don't walk for the freezer and take out some ice.  Put ice in your hands and hold it.

Now, I have to ask one thing.  How many distracting skills have you written down?  Have you written some down?  Do you realize that if you get in a crisis you're not going to be able to remember any? Your mind just won't be able to think any out.  That's what most people experience. So if you didn't write any down, my suggestion to you is, put the program on pause again and write some down.  Now you can't just write the word 'Activity'.  You've got to write 'Activity?  What am I going to do? Ok, my activities will be... I will 1, 2, 3... I'll go running. I'll bake a cake.' Alright? So get activities written down.  Go through the whole list.  Write something down for each one. Because you need lots of distracting skills to try. 

Alright, so that's the Distracting Skills.

Now the next set that we went over were the self soothing skills.  And you can probably remember self soothing if you can remember the five senses. So let's go through them.

First, vision. You're going to want to find beauty to soothe your eyes.

Second, hearing. You're going to want to find some sounds that'll soothe your ears.

Next, smell. You're just going to try to figure out a way to get some wonderful aromas to soothe your nose. 

How about taste? Well, delicious foods. Really nice drinks.  You're going to soothe your appetite. Soothe your tongue.

And how about touch? Well, the idea here is to try to find something sensuous that you can put close to your skin to soothe your body. 

So those are the Self Soothing Skills.

Alright so that's the Self Soothing and the Distracting Skills.  Now.  If you remember all those skills what do you have to do to make it work? 

What do you have to remember to make all this work?  First, you've got to know when a crisis is coming your way. You've got to notice when you've got the urge to do something destructive. So, you're going to try to get yourself to be a little more aware.  Second, when a crisis comes your way and you have an urge to do something destructive, you need to immediately say, 'What's the problem? And can I solve it?' If you can solve the problem right now, well, why not solve it. Now, if you can't solve it you're going to want to remind yourself that making things worse is going to make your life worse. You've got to remember that.

You've got to repeat that over and over. 'Making things worse will make my life worse.' Got to remember that. 

Then, once you decide ok I don't want to make things worse, you've got to figure out a skill to use. Now the problem is there are lots of skills. The question is which one do you use. Well, it's really helpful if you actually have them written down.  If you've got my workbook or if you've got some of the handouts, you can go look at the list and just see if you can figure out one to try.  The idea is to try any skill that you think might work. If that skill doesn't work, well, go to the next skill. That one doesn't work, well, go to the next. If that one doesn't work go to the next. You just keep going right through the skills until you get to the bottom. 

What if none of the skills work? What do you think you should do then?  Start over. Just start right back over from the top.  The idea is don't give up.  Keep trying skill after skill after skill after skill.  You'll find one sooner or later.

And, you have to remind yourself that Crisis Survival skills work if you survive the crisis. All you're trying to do in a crisis when you can't make it better is to not make it worse. Some people think, 'Oh, I didn't feel any better, therefore these skills don't work.'  Well, feeling better is almost always going to require solving the problem. Or at least starting to solve the problem.

Crisis survival is when you can't solve the problem. And you can't even start solving the problem so they're just trying to get you through it.  So you have to ask yourself, 'Did I get through it? Did I carry on? Did I avoid making it worse?'  If you can say yes then you can say, 'I was skillful.'  So that's the whole point of these skills. 

Listen, I know making your life better is going to take a lot of work. I'm not forgetting that little detail. I know it's true. And these skills... they may seem sort of trivial, like they're not important. But take it from me, they are important. Because to make your life better, to get where you want to get, you have to survive crises.  There is no other way. You can't make it if you don't.  Its life and death. You've got to do it. And these skills, I think, will help.