As promised last week, we are going to discuss another skill to help you cope with emotional

overwhelm. If you find yourself drowning in distress or you can't cope with a crisis,

this skill is for you. Welcome back to Savvy Psychologist. I'm your host, Dr. Monica

Johnson. Every week on this show, I'll help you face life's challenges with evidence-based

approaches, a sympathetic ear, and zero judgment. In today's episode, I'm going to review

with you a dialectical behavior therapy skill called Distract. Now, some of you may be

thinking, I'm great at distracting myself from my problems. I have my PhD in avoidance

principles. This skill is about functional avoidance, which is different from unhealthy

avoidance. With unhealthy avoidance, we really have no intention of ever ending the avoidance

behavior. We are going to stick our fingers in our ears and la la la ourselves into oblivion.

The way I describe the distract skill with patience is that there is a problem that needs

to be solved, but now ain't the time. So for all you warriors who are staying up until

3 a.m., trying to figure out your entire life before work, this is a skill for you. It's

also a good skill for when your emotion mind is going to take over and you won't be able

to respond wisely. As you know, I love a good acronym, and this time it accepts. We use

the distract skill by remembering that your wise mind accepts. If you don't know about

your wise mind or emotion mind, I would suggest checking out my episode, three states of

mind that are affecting your life. So, to summarize, you want to use this skill when emotional

pain threatens to be too much or you're dealing with a problem that can't be solved immediately.

Also in functional avoidance, there is a time limit on the avoidance. Remember that the

goal is to take a break from the problem so that you can catch your breath so to speak

and get back to it, not to pretend that the problem doesn't exist and that it will

...