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 help you from tolerate 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!

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.