Overview: Crisis Survival Skills

The DBT Skills Challenge

Crisis Survival Skills Overview

"Crisis Survival Skills" is a critical component of the Distress Tolerance module in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT). This set of skills is designed to help individuals navigate through acute periods of emotional distress without worsening their situation or engaging in destructive behaviors. Each skill offers practical techniques to manage intense emotional crises effectively, helping individuals maintain stability in challenging times.

STOP Skill: A quick intervention tool that stands for Stop, Take a step back, Observe, and Proceed mindfully. It helps individuals pause and gain control over their reactions before acting impulsively.
Pros and Cons: Encourages evaluating the benefits and drawbacks of engaging in harmful coping behaviors versus tolerating distress. This helps in making conscious decisions that align with long-term goals.
TIPP Skills: Focuses on changing physical conditions to reduce extreme emotions quickly. This includes Temperature (using cold water to calm down), Intense exercise (to burn off energy), Paced breathing (to stabilize the mood), and Progressive muscle relaxation (to reduce body tension).
Distract with Wise Mind ACCEPTS: Uses distraction techniques to manage distress by focusing on Activities, Contributing to others, Comparisons, Emotions (inducing different emotions), Pushing away thoughts, Thoughts (focusing on non-emotional thoughts), and Sensations (engaging in intense physical sensations).
Self-Soothing: Encourages calming oneself through the five senses, like listening to soothing music, enjoying a warm bath, or savoring a favorite scent or flavor, to comfort oneself in moments of distress.
Body Scan Meditation: Involves mentally scanning the body for areas of tension and consciously relaxing them, which can help reduce overall emotional arousal and restore physical and mental balance.
IMPROVE the Moment: Implements techniques such as Imagery, Meaning, Prayer, Relaxation, One thing at a time, Vacation (taking a brief break), and Encouragement, to improve the current situation and decrease distress.

These crisis survival skills provide a toolkit for individuals to access when faced with intense emotional distress, offering immediate and practical methods to cope with and endure severe emotional episodes without exacerbating the situation. By applying these skills, individuals can prevent destructive behaviors and regain a sense of emotional equilibrium.

Below you can see how this skillset fits with the other DBT skillsets.

DBT Skills Categories

Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is structured around a general overview and four main skill categories, each designed to address specific aspects of emotional and behavioral regulation. The summary below shows how this skillset fits into the overall program.

General Overview: The introduction introduces skills training and provides tools for conducting behavioral analysis.
- Analyzing Behavior: Tools to help individuals understand why they engage in ineffective behaviors or fail to engage in effective behaviors.

Mindfulness: Focusing on improving an individual's ability to accept and be present in the current moment.
- Mindfulness Skills: Core practices that help individuals observe, describe, and participate in their thoughts, feelings, and sensations without judgment.
- Other Perspectives on Mindfulness Skills: This includes practices such as Loving Kindness, which fosters compassion towards oneself and other.
Interpersonal Effectiveness: Enhancing the skills needed for building and maintaining healthy relationships.
- Obtaining Objectives Skillfully: Techniques to effectively ask for what one needs, say no, and negotiate conflicts.
- Building Relationships and Ending Destructive Ones: Skills for developing and maintaining positive relationships while ending or transforming unhealthy ones.
- Walking the Middle Path: A set of skills that balance differing viewpoints and approaches, facilitating better communication and understanding in relationships.
Emotional Regulation: Aimed at helping individuals understand and manage their emotions effectively.
- Understanding and Naming Emotions: Enhances the ability to recognize and label emotions accurately.
- Changing Emotional Responses: Offers techniques for modifying emotional reactions that are not aligned with the facts or that are unhelpful.
- Reducing Vulnerability to Emotion Mind: Aims to decrease the intensity of emotional responses by cultivating a balanced and satisfying life.
- Managing Really Difficult Emotions: Provides strategies for handling and enduring severe emotional episodes responsibly.
Distress Tolerance: Focused on increasing resilience and the ability to tolerate pain in difficult situations without resorting to destructive behavior.
- Crisis Survival Skills: Techniques for managing acute emotional distress and crisis situations effectively.
- Reality Acceptance Skills: Skills that help individuals accept and tolerate reality as it is, even when it is painful or difficult.
- Skills When the Crisis is Addiction: Targeted strategies for coping with addiction-related crises, including managing urges and preventing relapse.

Through the skilled application of DBT techniques, individuals can achieve improved mental health, emotional stability, and stronger relationships.