Wouldn’t it be nice to have a shortcut to happiness? Well, what if I told you that you actually have one built in from birth…but it was suppressed for the comfort of others? Although unintentional, so many of us were raised by hurting adults without their own access to distress tolerance and emotionally intelligent spaces. As a result, we are all wandering wounded and bypassing the very thing that makes space for more happiness in our lives: experiencing our sorrows.
Our goal is to raise our kids to be happy, healthy, and independent – and to in turn, as humans (parents or otherwise) to be happy, healthy, and independent.
Unfortunately, independence and health are not necessarily connected to happy. But because so many of us were raised in homes that primarily focused on distress avoidance, we did not understand that distress tolerance is the more lasting and healthy way to create independent kids who become independent, confident adults.
Distress avoidance remarks from adults sounds like this:
“You’re fine.”
“Stop crying; it isn’t a big deal.”
“Why do you even care what they think?”
“You’re making a mountain out of a molehill.”
Add your own examples if you’d like, but notice how you feel when you hear those phrases. They’re dismissing your very real experience and very real emotions. Instead of training you to handle and move through the discomfort of rejection, grief, sorrow, rage, or jealousy, you’re passively told those emotions aren’t worth your time. That you are better off pretending they’re meaningless and avoiding them – instead of learning that it’s okay to feel them and understand what they have to offer.
Building our distress tolerance is crucial as children because adults without any distress tolerance become the very dysregulated coworkers, grocery store shoppers, and aggressive drivers we see all around us (and sometimes embody!). Every single day, I encounter a person who does not have the inner strength to tolerate the distress in front of them. Usually because they have a lot going on at once, and not enough support in their life to move through it – inside themselves or around themselves.
Wouldn’t you love the idea of being able to stay with yourself through crisis? To feel empowered and emboldened to make a good choice for yourself when you feel forced into a corner and scared? Distress tolerance relies on our ability to pause and respond instead of reacting out of defensiveness or self-protection. If you find yourself shouting out blame statements and resisting anything that isn’t unicorn sparkles and good vibes, maybe some distress tolerance support is a good next step. And lucky for you, building distress tolerance is one of the core tenets of grief work within the Restorative Grief model, so here is my first step to noticing a need for better distress tolerance in your own life.
When I mentioned those adult remarks about distress tolerance earlier, what did you notice? Did they remind you of someone (maybe your parent, or even yourself as a parent)? We tend to hear these things and immediately begin a mental checklist of justification. The statement must be correct; I must be fine, even though I’m crying and upset, because this other person says this response is not appropriate. That I shouldn’t be crying about something that is so small and trivial to them.
But that’s…just…it. As children, a molehill may seem like a mountain because they are smaller, and they are experiencing conflict and trouble in the world often for the very first time. It IS a HUGE deal! It is their first encounter with something that doesn’t feel right, and their inner sense of justice and self-preservation is being confronted.
In those situations, all people – kids and adults alike – deserve to be seen and cared for with intention. They deserve someone who will validate their response and remain with them to witness the impending moment of growth. When we are allowed to remain with ourselves and be honest about what we feel, we feel seen. We feel heard. We feel that although this experience is uncomfortable, we can handle the intensity and sensations because we are taught and reminded that they are not permanent.
Just as our happiness fades from time to time, so does the sadness. Emotions are fleeting. The ephemeral state of this life in general means we will see things come and go, but if we are addicted to feeling safe and certain, we will struggle every single time a distressing experience occurs. If we continue with our habit of moving quickly toward a mental game of justification, we will bypass the sensations of our nervous system. The body is brilliant, and yours has been keeping track of your conflicts and needs for your entire life.
Every time you encounter a distressing situation, your body sends a rapid series of messages for you to find safety. This doesn’t mean avoiding the distress entirely; sometimes it means inviting yourself to pause and figure out if the distress or the threat is real and present, or imaginary. Imaginary here doesn’t mean unreal – it just means not in the moment. It might mean we are dealing with a conflict in a friendship, and we begin to imagine how they feel about us without any real evidence. Or maybe we are afraid of an uncertain diagnosis, and instead of practicing distress tolerance with the unknown, we move immediately to dismissal and distraction.
To be clear, these are moments when coping tools are healthy and helpful. It is the long term reliance on a coping tool that disallows our inner self from finding strength through distress tolerance. Return once more to the sensation you noticed with those initial dismissive phrases. What message could your body be sending?
Personally, the message I received as a young person taught me, “The adult speaking has more understanding than I do, so I should trust them instead of trusting what I feel is true.”
In many cases, the adults around me did know better than I did. But about my own inner world? That’s so often not the case. If we are not taught to explore our inner world and learn what our own distress and needs sound like, how can an adult know more about our inner world?
This is where it gets uncomfortable, and it’s up to us as grief literate adults (young and old) to start empowering others to practice distress tolerance. That includes us, by the way. I practice daily. When we are in the presence of someone in distress, our job is not to make them feel better. That becomes a habit of bypassing, whether through distraction, humor, spirituality, comparison. It’s all meaningless and reflective of our personal lack of emotional intelligence.
Instead, we are invited in that moment to witness their humanity. To reflect their distress in a way that does not imitate and embody it, but in a way that validates and sees them as having a real response. Put simply – it’s okay to feel the way you feel! But for so many of us, it hasn’t been. We’ve so often been denied space to simply feel messy and weak and vulnerable not because it isn’t safe to feel that way, but because the people around us don’t feel safe to be messy and weak and vulnerable.
If a parent has never been allowed to cry through their pain, why would they allow their child? It was positioned as a weakness, and they’ll be damned before they raise a weak child.
This mindset is exactly what I’m talking about. A grief literate society that creates space for happiness, health, and independence cannot perpetuate spaces where emotional violence is celebrated.
So when you hear the rally cries for freedom, happiness, health, and independence, attune to their emotional messaging, too. Listen to bypassing or evidence of dismissal. Watch the behaviors and physical movements during moments of distress. If there is space to be sorrowful or reflective, there is likely space for true happiness, health, and independence to grow, too.
Thank you for listening to episode 196 of Restorative Grief. Distress tolerance is a skill every single person can practice every single day. You don’t need to be a parent or a teacher; it’s not about demonstrating the skill for other people and their kids, either. If you’re listening to this, there is a very sweet little person within YOU – many, in fact. All those younger versions of you that remain present and witnessing all of it. All those versions that have strategies for survival but really, just want to return to being a safe, little kid. When you notice a moment of distress within yourself or around you, it is for those little parts that you can pause, breathe, notice yourself, and understand that while this distress is very real and very present, it will not remain forever and you are capable of holding yourself through it.
If this is your first time listening to the show, thank you for being here. Restorative Grief is a litany of resources for grievers around the world in care deserts and who lack financial resources to receive the support every human deserves. If you felt this podcast was helpful, leave a five star review and share it with your own social network. Your word of mouth support for the work is what brings others closer to themselves and the support they need in their own times of distress.
If you want to learn more about Restorative Grief and its many offerings, visit MandyCapehart.com or check out the show notes for a link to the bonus content via Patreon, info about the Restorative Grief Project, or to learn about one on one coaching support options.
Shoutout and thank you to the Patrons of the show, and as always, before we go, one last thing. Please remember, the only solution for grief is to do the work of grieving. Thank you for listening. I’ll see you next week.
Links + Resources from this episode:
- MandyCapehart.com/coaching
- Patreon.com/MandyCapehart
- Connect with Mandy on Instagram