ACCEPTS Or The 7 Keys To Learning To Tolerate Discomfort

Surely many times you have felt that you cannot control a certain discomfort and that all the initiatives you take only seem to contribute to making it more intense. Thus, you will have come to the conclusion that controlling a torrent of unpleasant emotions that struggle to get out is a rather complicated task. Sometimes the key is to tolerate that discomfort without facing it directly.

You have heard about “frustration tolerance” and how it is good to educate our children under this principle. Principle loaded with common sense since life will not always give us what we want nor will it arrange chance according to our interests nor will it take into account when we want it or how we want it.

Life will frustrate us. It is as if it provokes us to be stronger. The plans will not turn out many times as we had planned and this change will not be for the worse if we know how to put it in our favor. There will be unexpected changes that will disrupt our existence and put us to the test.

That is why it is important to educate our little ones from this beginning. Because if not, the least they feel frustrated, they will throw in the towel or anger will take over. Frustration if it requires something, is to be managed intelligently.

ACCEPTS: skills to better tolerate discomfort

Something similar happens to us with discomfort. It is a dull ache that comes on and does not go away easily. It appears with a meaning and a motive, like all emotion. For this reason, it is important to listen and interpret this sense, so that once heard and understood, to be able to act.

1. Find an activity to channel frustration

It is about doing some activity that you enjoy and in which you feel comfortable and fulfilled. An activity in which you can flow and give you peace of mind, being that source of  positive feelings that has rarely failed you.  Find “your” activity. Each one will choose an activity that fits their way of being and how they want to feel at that moment.

For some it will be to draw what is on their mind. Others will disconnect riding a bicycle or running and for others the best thing will be to play a musical instrument … Find your activity and let it be the one that softens that discomfort so that little by little it goes away.

2. Contribute to improve our environment

When we speak of “contributing” we refer to dedicating our time to the interests of others, to helping or collaborating with others for the sole and simple pleasure of doing so. It is about feeling useful and improving our environment. When we contribute to the well-being of the beings around us,  our sense of personal efficacy increases, and as a consequence, discomfort also tends to disappear.

3. Make realistic comparisons

Sometimes being able to compare yourself to someone who is going through a worse situation relieves us in a certain way. Or even comparing yourself to yourself at another time when you were in a more difficult situation. All this makes us put a distance from how we feel. Many times we tend to see ourselves as the same eye of the hurricane.

The place where chaos is born and develops. In this sense,  distancing ourselves from the center of this destructive force and making a realistic assessment of our situation is a healthy exercise for discomfort to go away. In this sense, it will prevent, for example, that we continue to mistreat our self-esteem.

4. Emotions versus emotions

This point is closely related to the first, that of activity.  It is about motivating emotions other than those we are feeling and one way to do it can be through activities . This will help us to abandon the emotional state that we like so little.

In this sense,  do not worry about what others think or may think. Don’t lock yourself at home after a breakup no matter how much someone else thinks, if you don’t, that you didn’t care about the relationship. If it is what you feel like doing it, but if you feel that it is not what it touches, do not do it. Probably the person who criticizes you is not the one who is going to help you or the one who loves you.

5. Zoom out

With “move away” we mean to put that situation that causes us so much discomfort in the background for a while. This idea does not apply to all situations, but to many it does. Think that much of your discomfort can go away if you make an effort to focus your mental attention to a different place than the one that causes it.

We will deal with it later if we need to. Taking care of another activity will help us reduce that level of discomfort that we feel. It will help us once again to distance ourselves from that emotional hurricane.

6. Thoughts are the food of emotions

Sometimes we just need to stop feeding emotion with thoughts. When we do it, quite simply, many emotions die. For example, it is very positive to learn from mistakes, especially not to repeat them; what is not positive is to install ourselves in the perpetual lament, generating hypotheses and alternative worlds that respond to “what would have happened if …”.

Learn, repair and forget. Remember the teaching, but forget the fact. Don’t go back and forth to him to punish you. If you do, you will lose yourself because all the punishments of that type end up becoming a labyrinth of shadows in which only fear lives.

7. Sensations

At this point we can generate a feeling that we are going to perceive intensely to help us decentralize our attention to the discomfort we feel. With sensations we mean those that we can perceive with our senses. A good meal, a movie that inspires us, a relaxing massage …

Sensations that anchor us to life and make us feel that we are part of our existence. Therefore, being able to tolerate the discomfort we feel is something that must be born in us. It is also a task so that there are different strategies or steps, as we have seen, which are far from the direct confrontation with said discomfort.