Life skills part 2 (reposting since a lot of people liked it)

So in our group meeting on the second week for life skills we started talking about "Tolerating compulsions or distress"

Again i will do my best to explain what i got from it.

Ok so let's say something stressful happens, anything that sets you off to normally either drink, cut, shop...ect you know what i mean. Well on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being in full blown panic or cutting ect...and let's say 2 at the begining before you have lost control. Well we are being taught that it is a matter of trying to catch yourself at 2 and right away do something different. When we are at 10, we have pretty much lost control, and our judgments, decisions are not very good since at this point we are basically reasoning with our emotions and not our head and logic. So most of our decisions or things done in this state are usually not trustworthy. We act without thinking.
When we are getting to level 10 basically we are looking for instant gratification.
So this is of course about learning how to tolerate the pain and get through it without jumping to bad coping skills.

We did not get that far into it but here are some of the distractions one can try using these are a few which may not work for everyone. For example, shopping or browsing at the mall can be a good distraction for someone but not if you are a compulsive shopper get my drift?

SHOPPING:
If you have a hard time with shopping compulsively you can try the following, when i go into a store i can of course convince myself i need everything in there, so i tell myself leave it there continue shopping for what you actually came for and if you decide in an hour that you really need it, come back to get it. Well 99% of the time i do not come back!

CUTTING:
Use a red marker and draw where you would cut, or even red nail polish so it looks like blood.
Take an ice cube and hold it in your hand for as long as you can. Take an elastic band around your wrist and  snap it until it hurts.

PANIC OR NEVER ENDING SPINNING THOUGHTS:
Get out of the house even if just to go to corner store, it changes your perspective. Go for a short walk. Do a puzzle. Play with your cats. Call a friend right away and start talking about something else. Take a nap. Put your wrists under freezing water, put freezing water on your neck, i find this one helps a lot and brings me back to the present. If you are feeling guilty, ask yourself do i really have something to feel guilty about, most of the time YOU DON'T have anything to feel guilty about or are over exagerating it.

I carry a list of like 3 pages long with me of activities i know will distract me MOST of the time. We were also given a list of things to do to distract yourself. I will write those in my following blog. But planning ahead with a list is quite good.

And remember if you are at a 10 and feel like you will lose control (first you wont) but still, or feel suicidal or anything. Tracom is open 24 hours a day 7 days a week, and as i keep repeating they are angles at helping with any situation. Again here are their numbers 514-483-3033 or 1-877-483-3033.

Thanks for reading me :o)