Reducing distress in life comes down to improving either internal conditions, external conditions, or both. Improving external conditions means bettering your position within the external world such that it is more closely aligned with your values—changing jobs, increasing interactions with people in hopes of developing a stronger community, and changing where you live would be such examples. Improving internal conditions means decreasing disharmony in your mind and may involve things like processing trauma or changing unhelpful behaviors. It should be noted that internal and external conditions are not entirely separate domains and, in fact, can be quite coupled.
The content below will focus on improving self-regulation—one such component of internal conditions. Healthy self-regulation looks like the following:
Practically speaking, self-regulation is the process of internally managing our thoughts and emotions without relying too heavily on the external world. Learning to self-regulate allows you to weather storms as if you were a rock instead of a branch.
Mindfulness practice is the foundation of this work. Being able to determine when you are lost in thought is vital to completing the succeeding steps.
What this can look like: Just having awareness that you are experiencing anger, sadness, or self-doubt, for example.
You must accept the thoughts and emotions that you are experiencing—this means not attempting to suppress them, run from them, or distract yourself from them. Feel them fully and let them exist as things happening to you without them being you.
What this can look like: Not trying to escape or fight against the thoughts and/or emotions; it is truly letting them be there without any sort of judgement, fear, or desire of wanting them gone.
It is important to realize that thoughts and emotions are just that: thoughts and emotions. They are not you if you do not let them be. They can simply be a blob of nothingness if you choose to distance yourself from them.
What this can look like: Saying to yourself, "I am having a thought that I feel empty and alone."
What is the underlying need that you are seeking that is engendering these feelings and emotions? Emotions that put us on the offensive—anger, for example—are often just a front for an underlying desire that we are not getting.
What this can look like: "I am having a thought that I am angry at this person. Underneath this anger, am I wanting to feel respected? Understood? Do I feel hurt? Am I wanting to feel loved?"
You can offer the remedy to yourself once the unmet need has been discovered. Yes, this is possible.
What this can look like: You can imagine what it might feel like to truly receive what it is you are looking for. Try to reach a place where the negative thoughts and/or emotions dissolve away because you are experiencing the emotions you would feel if you satisfied your craving. If you can get to this place, you might ask yourself, "Is what I'm looking for already here?"
Sure, easier said than done.
We can not control all of the thoughts and emotions that we experience, only our reaction to them. This is cool in theory, but how do we actually do this when our thoughts and/or emotions are consuming us? We can achieve this by learning the tools offered in one or more of the following frameworks, and internalizing these tools through repeated practice. The end goal is to be able to self-regulate, in real-time, when confronted with distressing thoughts or emotions. Common frameworks in no particular order include:
I am of the opinion that each of these frameworks will ultimately have you do the five steps outlined above, but will use differing vocabulary and routes to get there. Different people will find different frameworks more useful for them, so it is all about finding a framework that works for you and internalizing it. This content isn't here to teach these frameworks, just to make them known.
This work requires engaging with the following resources and actively participating. You must buy in. If nothing changes, then nothing changes.
These book recommendations are focused on doing the work and not just reading the theory behind it. If you are unsure about which modality you should choose, then start with the CBT section. If you are unsure which book to choose from a section, just choose the first one.
Richard Schwartz, the founder of IFS, has a plethora of free resources online, including the IFS website.
Free resources found at dialecticalbehaviortherapy.com
A list of free resources can be found in this reddit post.
Kristin Neff and Tara Brach both have a plethora of free resources on their websites located at self-compassion.org and tarabrach.com, respectively.
A list of free resources can be found here.
Steve C. Hayes, the founder of ACT, has lots of free resources on his website; as does Russ Harris on his website.
A list of free resources can be found here.