T3: List of Distracting Activities

When you begin to experience an emotional crisis, there are steps that you can take to prevent the whole situation from becoming worse. We are going to cover the RESISTT technique that will help you cope with this in the next article (Exercise 4). To prepare for that, however, in this article we will work on making a list of distracting, pleasurable activities that you can do when having an emotional crisis. These activities are meant to distract you from the emotional distress. These activities will help you to create some space between the problematic situation and yourself, so that you can come back to the problem later when you feel a little better. Have fun with this exercise!

Create a list of distracting activities that you can use to interrupt a descent into an emotional crisis. Do this exercise once, and then return to it occasionally as a reminder or to refresh your list.

Step One: Things You Enjoy Doing

First, think of activities that you enjoy doing in your free time. It can be a hobby of yours, something that you usually do in your free time to unwind. Maybe it's reading books, watching movies, playing with your pet, or listening to music.

You want to choose something you can easily do on short notice. So don’t choose cruising the French Riviera, unless you live in Europe and have a boat. You should also not choose things that are unhealthy and that you might regret later. So even if you enjoy drunk texting, maxing out your credit card, or binge eating, they should not be on your list. Take several minutes to think about this, and write down 5 activities.

Step Two: List of Distracting, Pleasurable Activities

To get you started with some more ideas about activities you can use to distract yourself when you are overwhelmed with negative emotions, we have a list of pleasurable activities below. Whenever you feel like you could do the activity below, put a check next to it.

Step Three:

Now that you thought about what you usually enjoy doing and browsed through the list that we provided, you are ready to write down your own list. Choose 15-20 pleasurable activities you would like to distract yourself with next time you have overwhelming emotions. We will go over this list again in the next exercise (in the RESISTT technique).

Get down your list of distracting activities. The more specific and prepared you are, the better. Saying you are going to listen to music is okay. Better would be to figure out which songs you are going to listen to and create a playlist. The more specific you are, the easier it will be to use these activities when you need them.

DBT Distress Tolerance: List of Distracting Activities

DBT Distress Tolerance: List of Distracting, Pleasurable Activities

When should I use the list of distracting pleasurable activities?

You can use the list whenever you feel like you can benefit from distracting yourself from overwhelming emotions and may be triggered to engage in a certain problematic behavior. After you became more distanced from the situation and your overwhelming emotions, you can go back and revisit them. Also, we will use this list that you created in the next exercise - the RESISTT technique.

What if I enjoy an activity that is not very good for me (such as eating too much, smoking, or procrastinating)?

Try to fill your list of distracting, pleasurable activities with things that won't affect you in a negative way. Usually, activities such as addictions or avoidance of things bring temporary relief to the pain that you might feel, but they will not solve the root of the problem. This way you will also practice delaying immediate rewards which is always necessary when we try to accomplish a goal that requires long-term commitment.

I can't think of anything enjoyable, I've been feeling pretty depressed and down lately. What should I do?

Often, when we find ourselves in such situations, we make assumptions that there is nothing that we would find enjoyable. Now, when you're depressed or experiencing low mood, it is realistically harder to do this. Here is what you can do: before trying an activity that you might enjoy, write down how much you assume you'd enjoy it on a scale of 0-100. Then try the activity, and assess how much you actually enjoyed it after. Maybe the second number won't be as high as you would want, but it might be higher than what you assumed before. Try to do this until you find activities that you rate highly and seem to find some enjoyment in.