-Maintaining a balance between acceptance and improvement is the key to building distress
tolerance. You need to feel the emotion first, accept it, ride through it, and then take action to
improve it.

-The common guiding principle for improving distress is to do the opposite of your distress escape
methods, and find specific activities that improve your emotional state.

-Acting opposite to your escape urge involves dropping your escape methods (i.e., situational
avoidance, reassurance seeking or checking, distraction and suppression, alcohol or drugs, binge
eating, excessive sleep, harmful releases, etc), allowing and experiencing the distress, and
participating in activities that are activating or soothing.

-Activities that are activating or soothing we call ‘distress improvement activities’, and you will need
to experiment with these activities when you are distressed to find out what works for improving
your distress.

-Once your distress is more manageable, it may be worth questioning if there is something you can
change about your situation to further improve the distress. If it is a situation you have some
degree of control over, then you can use the 6 problem solving steps as a way of working through
the problem systematically.