Tag: Wellness
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Using TIP to Tolerate Distress
When emotions feel overwhelming, the TIP skill—Temperature, Intense Exercise, and Paced Breathing—can help calm your body and mind fast. In this article, Dr. Christine E. Dickson explains how to use this DBT distress tolerance tool to reset your body chemistry, reduce anxiety, and regain control in moments of high stress.
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Pushing Away: A Distress Tolerance Tool
Emotions can’t always be controlled, but they can be managed with the right tools. The DBT skill “Pushing Away” helps create distance from overwhelming feelings so you can respond more calmly. In this article, Dr. Christine E. Dickson explains how to use this distress tolerance technique to pause, regroup, and approach emotions with greater clarity.
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4 Ways to Cope with Panic Attacks
Panic attacks can feel overwhelming, but resisting or fighting the symptoms often makes them worse. As Dr. Christine E. Dickson explains, the key is to face the sensations with compassion, accept what your body is doing, and allow the wave of panic to rise and fall naturally. With grounding strategies such as calming breath, mindful…
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How to Take Hold of the Mind
Before we can calm the mind, we must first calm the body. Meditation—through simple practices like breathing, mindful walking, or body scans—creates the foundation for taking hold of our thoughts. As Dr. Christine E. Dickson explains, learning to step back and observe the mind as a “witness” helps us see thoughts as stories rather than…
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SufferWell Tonic
Many people turn to alcohol, marijuana, or sleep aids to cope with suffering, but these often leave us feeling worse. As Dr. Christine E. Dickson shares, a simple apple cider vinegar and honey tonic—used since Ancient Egypt—can calm the body, ease anxiety, and even improve sleep. This natural “SufferWell Tonic” may not only soothe suffering…
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Overcoming Anxiety: The Story of “Alan”
Dr. Dickson describes how she helps clients overcome anxiety with four simple tools.
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Improve Anxiety and Depression with Cold Showers
In 2017, when I first learned that cold showers could significantly improve symptoms of anxiety and depression, I immediately began suggesting it to all of my clients. Exposure to cold is known to activate the sympathetic nervous system and send an overwhelming amount of electrical impulses from peripheral nerve endings to the brain, which can…
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What is Mindfulness?
Sometimes we get stuck thinking about a particular thought and it feels like we have no control over our mind. All of this brain chatter can be overwhelming and affect how we feel each day. But if we really tune into our thoughts, we’ll notice how much they wander. We might be: Thinking about plans…
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3 Ways to Tolerate Stress and Anxiety
At times stress and anxiety can feel overwhelming, leaving us exhausted and drained. In this post, licensed clinical psychologist Dr. Christine E. Dickson shares practical tools for tolerating strong emotions. These strategies can help you move through difficult moments with greater resilience.
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9 Ways to Accept Reality
In a previous post, I wrote about the practice of radical acceptance. Radical acceptance is accepting life on life’s terms. It is derived from deep spiritual wisdom that goes back thousands of years. The practice of radical acceptance has helped people thrive during periods of upheaval or change, and has helped decrease symptoms of anxiety,…