by William Taboas, M.A.
It is better to tolerate anxiety than to demand than it go away. In our world that aims to distract, avoid, and sedate, the concept of developing anxiety tolerance (or general distress tolerance, for that matter) has become foreign to most of us. A favorite area of study of mine is exposure therapy, where gradual exposure to a fear or anxiety-inducing stimulus results in better coping in the presence of the stimulus. Traditionally, exposure therapy (typically integrated into protocols of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy protocols) has been thought to work by reducing the intensity, frequency, and duration of negative emotions such as anxiety, and there has been plenty of empirical evidence to show significant symptom improvement resulting from such interventions. On the other hand, there is growing scientific evidence supporting the long-held clinical notion (included in Albert Ellis’ earlier work) that tolerating negative emotional states, such as anxiety, has also resulted in improved general functioning.
The idea that accepting and tolerating negative emotions is quite jarring for many people to hear and paradoxical in nature. As a student-in-training, I found that it was best to understand and explain the concept by experiencing it first hand: think of something that creates some anxiety (not TOO much anxiety- this is an experimental exercise via a blog after all), and make the experience vivid for yourself. Once you begin experiencing a negative emotion, attempt to force the emotion out of your mind. What do you notice? Did you notice your emotion getting stronger or weaker? Chances are that the more you thought about reducing the anxiety-inducing memory, the more you kept the anxiety alive. Much like forcing yourself to sleep, the more effort you exert, the less favorable the result.
Interestingly, every iteration of CBT as well as other interventions have included distress tolerance components. Most of them have in common sitting with the discomfort the anxiety brings on in order to learn that anxiety is uncomfortable, but only just uncomfortable. We tend to forget that no matter how intense the anxiety is, anxiety itself will never really hurt you (perhaps the consequences of not tolerating it might hurt you!). We are more resilient than we think in the face of anxiety; after all, we have endured and will endure anxiety in almost every area of our lives. In forgetting how resilient we are and we have been, we tend to forget that we have the innate ability to cope. Perhaps learning to tolerate anxiety is merely reminding ourselves that we DO have the ability to cope and ride the wave of the emotion, no matter what the outcome.
What kind of relationship would you like with your anxiety?
