Distress Tolerance Skills

Sorenson’s Ranch School’s behavior modification program offers students many opportunities to engage in basic fun, entertaining, and educational activities as they learn to change and manage their behaviors. All of these activities have a purpose in assisting teenagers in managing their behaviors. Managing their behavior is a skill they can learn with help from dedicated therapists and staff.
Sorenson’s Ranch School facilitates a skills group entitled Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) developed by Marsha Linehan. The DBT group focuses on teaching skills to assist with developing Core Mindfulness, Interpersonal Relationships, Emotion Regulation, and Distress Tolerance. The majority of students at Sorenson’s Ranch School have difficulty in at least one of these areas; therefore, learning the DBT skills can be an important part of their therapy.
Distress Tolerance Skills are skills for tolerating painful events and emotions when you cannot make things better right away. Distress Tolerance Skills were developed to assist individuals who have a difficult time managing their emotions in handling situations that they cannot fix quickly, including: death of a loved one, intruding thoughts of a trauma, getting along with others, and tolerating a situation in which they are not getting their way. Many of the students at Sorenson’s Ranch school have difficulty managing their emotions, and are impulsive and defiant. The DBT Distress Tolerance skills are designed to help students manage life changing events and daily stress.
The Distress Tolerance skills focus on teaching students crisis survival strategies through learning distracting skills, which include joining in activities and contributing to others through service. Sorenson’s Ranch School provides daily activities for students to use these Distress Tolerance skills. A few of the activities include educational fieldtrips, campouts, cookouts, fishing, boating, fun games such as capture the flag, organized sports, and service projects on campus and in the community. These activities are designed to teach social skills, help them learn to have fun while sober, and offer the opportunity to leave one’s worries and problems behind for the moment, until they can be appropriately worked through.
What might look like just a fun, time-consuming activity for your student is really a well thought-out and planned activity that has a purpose in teaching your student lifelong skills to manage their behaviors and emotions. If you would like to learn more about the DBT Distress Tolerance Skills be sure to ask your teenager’s therapist.
Linehan, M. (1993). Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment of Borderlines Personality Disorder. N.Y.: The Guilford Press.