Advanced Distress Tolerance Skills: Improve the Moment 45 Notice how your body feels and observe any tension or pain you might be feeling.
Recognize how your thoughts might be contributing to how you’re feeling. Use
cue-controlled relaxation to release any tension.
Notice any painful emotions you might be feeling as a result of time traveling, and
use one of the distress tolerance skills to help you relieve any immediate pain.Exercise: Listening to Now
Another exercise to help you refocus on the present moment is the Listening to Now exercise.
Dedicate at least five minutes to help yourself refocus.
Instructions
Sit in a comfortable chair. Turn off any distractions, like your phone, radio, and television. Take
slow, long breaths, in through your nose and out through your mouth. Feel your stomach expand like
a balloon each time you breathe in and feel it deflate each time you exhale. Now, as you continue to
breathe, simply listen. Listen to any sounds you hear outside your home, inside your home, and inside
your own body. Count each sound that you hear. When you get distracted, return your focus to listening.
Maybe you hear cars, people, or airplanes outside. Perhaps you hear a clock ticking or a fan blowing
inside. Or maybe you hear the sound of your own heart beating inside your body. Actively and carefully
listen to your environment and count as many sounds as you can. Try this exercise for five minutes and
notice how you feel afterwards.
A variation of this listening exercise will help you stay focused on the present moment while
you’re in a conversation with another person. If you notice that your attention is beginning to
wander and you start thinking about your past or future, focus your attention on something that
the person is wearing, like a button on their shirt, a hat they’re wearing, or their collar. Note to
yourself what color the item is and what it looks like. Sometimes this can snap you out of your
time traveling. Now continue to listen, and if your mind begins to wander again, do the same
thing and try to keep listening.
Exercise: Mindful Breathing
Another exercise that will help you stay focused in the present moment is breathing. It sounds
simple, but we often don’t breathe as well as we should. Think about it: who ever taught you how
to breathe? If you’re like the rest of us, probably no one. And yet, you do it about fifteen times
a minute or almost 22,000 times a day! Everyone knows that we breathe air to take in oxygen.
But how much of the air you breathe is actually oxygen—100 percent, 75 percent? The correct
answer is that the air you breathe is only about 21 percent oxygen, and when your body doesn’t