When Everything Goes Wrong: Try IMPROVE
The airport is one of the most notorious places on earth. It seems that no matter how early you arrive, you’re always running late. You’ve got more suitcases than you can shlep (three) while you desperately search for signs to guide you to security. For a place intended to help you get where you need to go, it’s ironically similar to a maze.
Once you get to security, you hand over your passport while someone looks at you highly suspiciously (what exactly is suspicious? Your sweatshirt that says ZZZ, I JUST NEED SLEEP THESE DAYS?). And, of course, a blaring beeper goes off as your suitcase passes through baggage check (after rifling through all your neatly folded clothes they found the illegal merchandise: your bottle of shampoo).
Too many unnecessary disasters later, you realize the gate on your ticket doesn’t exist. Literally. So now you’re looking for anyone in the the airport that works here. You mean anyone: so when the janitor passes by, you ask him for directions. With his directions, you finally make it to your gate.
First thing you do after collapsing into a seat is look up to see when your flight is arriving.
No. Way.
FLIGHT DELAYED- SIX HOURS.
This is what we call “the straw that breaks the camel’s back”. It’s the part of the story where you go from keeping it together to spiraling. This is ridiculous. My entire day is ruined. I’m going to miss everything. Why does this always happen to me? You feel intense distress wash over you, the negative thoughts hitting you from all directions.
What you’re feeling makes a lot of sense, but it’s not helping matters. You had a pretty awful morning. The flight is delayed. And there’s no negotiating with the red delayed sign. So what can you do?
When you’re distressed and there’s nothing you can do to change the situation, you can still change how you move through the moment. That’s where the DBT distress-tolerance skill IMPROVE comes in. IMPROVE gives you seven different ways to make a difficult moment a little more manageable:
I — Imagery: Picture a calming, safe, or hopeful scene in your mind.
Ex. As you sit in the airport, picture being at the beach.
M — Meaning: Look for purpose, value, or something you can learn from the difficult moment.
Ex. Think about how this can be a character building moment, teaching you patience.
P — Prayer: Connect with prayer, spirituality, or something greater than yourself.
Ex. Pull out you Tehillim and say a few perakim.
R — Relaxation: Do something that helps your body physically calm down, like slow breathing or stretching.
Ex. Practice a breathing exercise.
O — One thing in the moment: Focus only on what is happening right now instead of everything at once.
Ex. Focus on the moment: maybe you’ll notice your hungry, so you can go buy a snack.
V — Vacation: Take a brief mental or physical break from the situation.
Ex. Call a friend to schmooze with or read a book
E — Encouragement: Talk to yourself with supportive, reassuring statements like, “I can get through this.”
Ex. Talk to yourself positively. Tell yourself that you’ll get through the discomfort, and that you can totally handle it. Self talk makes all the difference!
It’s often a very rewarding feeling to stay calm when you feel yourself getting stressed. When you use this skill, you’re building your ability to tolerate, and manage, those overwhelming moments we all face. It improve our experience of the stressful moment, and the way we interact with the world in general.
