Video · 14 minutes · C-PTSD · Skills

Fighting, numbing, or running from distress often makes it worse. This video is about building enough tolerance to stay present when sad, mad, or scared feelings show up — without calling that “just suck it up.”

The exercise at the end is education, not a session. If you dissociate easily or are in acute crisis, skip it and talk with your clinician first.

What this video covers

  • Sad, mad, and scared feeling groups
  • The second voice that comments on the first feeling
  • What distress intolerance is
  • How it develops (biology + what you were shown)
  • Why the “get away from heat/pain” strategy backfires with emotion
  • Acceptance as dropping the struggle, not resignation
  • A timed write-what-is-happening practice

Key takeaways

  • People rarely seek help for joy. They seek help when disappointment, shame, rage, dread, or panic feel unbearable.
  • The feeling is one thing. “I can’t stand this / I’m weak / this will last forever” is another. That second layer turns up the volume.
  • Tolerance is how much you fear the feeling, how unpleasant it is, and how unbearable you believe it is.
  • Rigid control of distress sits under a lot of anxiety, OCD, C-PTSD, and compulsion.
  • Avoiding heat works. Avoiding emotion often grows the emotion.
  • Acceptance here means acknowledging what is already here and holding space — not giving up on changing your life.

Who this is for

Adults with C-PTSD or anxiety who white-knuckle, numb, or flee the moment a feeling starts — and who need a smaller first step than “process the memory.”

Next step

If you are a California resident and want to discuss fit, request a consult.

Transcript

C-PTSD and Distress Tolerance

What is distress intolerance? Humans have comfortable and uncomfortable emotions. People do not usually seek help for contentment or joy. Today is about feelings people find distressing.

Sad: disappointment, hurt, despair, guilt, shame, sadness, depression, grief, misery.

Mad: irritation, agitation, frustration, disgust-as-anger, jealousy, anger, rage, hatred.

Scared: nervousness, anxiety, dread, fear, panic, terror.

Most of us evaluate discomfort as bad. Feelings rarely ride alone. A second voice comments: I can’t stand this. This is unbearable. Take it away. I can’t cope. I’ll lose control. Only a weak person feels this. I’ll go crazy. I’m broken. This will last forever. A good person wouldn’t feel this. It’s wrong to feel this.

We have reactions that escalate intensity and reactions that lower it. We can also grow reactions that help us deal with what life stirs up. The more tightly you hold those unhelpful beliefs, the more desperate you become to get rid of the feeling.

Tolerance depends on fear of the emotion, how unpleasant it feels, and how unbearable you believe it is. Distress intolerance is believing you cannot cope and then escaping or avoiding. Rigid attempts to control human distress sit at the root of a lot of misery. In practice I have seen that desperation fuel anxiety disorders, OCD, complex trauma, and many addictions and compulsions.

How it develops. Biology and environment. Some people feel negative emotion more easily, more intensely, and longer. Childhood and adult models matter: being punished for crying or fear; watching adults drink or use to cope; never being shown a workable way to sit with discomfort.

Getting away from heat, cold, pain, or hunger makes sense. Using the same tactic on emotion often backfires. The more you fear, fight, or avoid distress, the worse it gets. Fear and avoidance amplify it.

What helps. Learn to sit with the wave. Emotions pass like weather. That means challenging implicit beliefs about feelings, and balancing two things: tolerate discomfort when it is here, and still take action to improve your life.

That is acceptance. In this culture the word is loaded. Other phrases: acknowledge what exists. Drop the struggle. Sit with a thought or feeling. Hold space. Acceptance is not resignation, white-knuckling, or giving up on change.

To accept what is happening you have to know what is happening. Awareness drops when a habit hijacks you. Growing up emotionally means growing that awareness.

About the exercise. This video is education. I am not your therapist. Get a go-ahead from your clinician before you try it, especially if you dissociate or are in crisis.

You need a timer and a way to take notes. Plan the length in advance — start with 10 or 15 minutes — so you do not bail midstream just to make the feeling stop. Then write a report of this moment: thoughts, images, body sensations, movement impulses, where they sit, what the breath is doing without changing it. Notice and describe. Do not fix.

Learn more at www.michaelgquirke.com.

Educational content only. Not therapy, a diagnosis, or a crisis service. Do not use the exercise as self-treatment in place of care. If you are in immediate danger, call 911 or 988. Psychotherapy is available to California residents.