The Power of Distraction: What My Mother Taught Me About Emotional Regulation

Children express their emotions easily. When they are feeling hungry, angry, hurt, sad, frustrated, bored or overwhelmed, they show it. When they have no words or are unable to express how they felt, we see tantrums, tears, agitations as the behaviours behind those emotions. At that age, it is just natural to express their emotions and overwhelm.

I remembered one time I was trying to comfort and soothe my child who was crying profusely for reasons I now cannot recall. My mother suddenly dashed over, scooped him off his feet and started pointing to the sky. “Look, look at that bird flying over there! Wow, it’s so big! What’s the colour?”

Under the circumstances that my child was not physically hurt and was just emotionally dysregulated, distraction happens to be my mother’s favourite strategy for treating emotional dysregulation in kids. She’ll push a lolly in front of his face or take him to the pantry to find one that he likes. She’ll clap loudly or make some funny exaggerated actions to take his attention from whatever was giving him grief. Guess what, many times, her strategy actually worked! Suddenly the clueless boy forgot what made him cry as his mind switched gear to the new object of attention. In a minute, the tears stopped and a meltdown crisis turned into calm.

My mother is not educated in psychology but using DISTRACTION methods is actually one of the distress tolerance skills used in Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT).

Even as adults, we can feel emotionally overwhelmed too. Distraction methods are crisis survival skills that offer temporary relief and helps us to bear emotional discomfort when we can’t solve the problem right away. Recall how when you tell nurses you are fearful of injections, they always change topics and starts engaging you about something irrelevant? It’s a distraction tactic.

Next time you find yourself feeling emotionally overwhelmed, here are 7 easy distraction methods in the form of an acronym ACCEPTS:

· Activity – find an activity that takes your mind off the crisis by capturing your full attention. Even folding laundry can work if you lean into it.

· Contributing – doing something nice for someone else, takes the attention off ourselves. Eg volunteering

· Comparison – compare yourself to others less fortunate or to a difficult time in your past.

· Emotions – Watch a funny video, listen to a powerful song, or read something inspiring to shift your emotional state.

· Pushing away – for a limited time, commit to not thinking about the crisis.

· Thoughts – Puzzles, counting backwards, reciting lyrics— find an activity that occupies your mental bandwidth.

· Sensations – find something that engages either your sight, hearing, taste, or touch that is so intense that it takes your focus off whatever is currently distressing you. Eg holding ice in your hand.

Ruminating about a situation that you cannot change or staying upset over a problem that you are unable to solve in the short term is foolishness. Distraction is a short-term measure but it is not avoidance. The goal of crisis survival is not to solve a problem but to get through a difficult time effectively without making the situation or us feel worse. The key is to regulate our emotional mind back into a calmer space, where our rational minds will be in a better position to engage the problem and think of solutions to whatever we are facing.

If you would like to learn more about Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) or if you are seeking support on managing intense emotion dysregulation, contact us at Hope is Mine Counselling & Training.