The Power of Exercise in Cultivating Distress Tolerance
When I was growing up I used to hate exercising. I never liked to eat so I would always tire out quickly in gym class and resented the fact that my dad would make us go play tennis on the weekends. I didn’t find my love for running and now yoga (after a knee injury) until my late twenties. I didn’t consciously understand the connection between distress tolerance and exercise until much later but looking back, I realize that it was not just the runner’s high that made me addicted but it was the ability to practice handing emotional discomfort during a long run that made me love it so much.
Distress tolerance is a foundational component of mental health. When we are able to handle the ups and downs of life, we are less likely to get dragged down into depression or sucked into anxiety because we have the ability to handle the sometimes brutal nature of life. In this post I’ll talk about what is distress tolerance and how exercise can improve our ability to handle life’s challenges.
What is Distress Tolerance?
Before we get into how to improve it, I think it’s important to understand what is distress tolerance. The term refers to the ability to handle emotional distress. When our distress tolerance is high we tend to be more resilient in the face of hardship because our threshold for handling emotional struggle is higher. Distress Tolerance is term often used in therapy to gauge a client’s level of functioning and monitor progress. The ability to handle stress in a healthy way is a pretty crucial skill to have because let’s face it, life can throw some pretty tough curveballs our way. If we don’t have a high level of distress tolerance then those curveballs can easily knock us out.
I think distress tolerance can increase organically as we age because the more life we live the more we are exposed to hardship. By virtue of being forced to go through difficulties, our ability to handle things will naturally increase because we have no other choice. People who go through grief understand this concept really well. When you lose someone you love, there is often this sense of courage to keep living that comes naturally despite the heaviness of that person being gone.
The Connection Between Distress Tolerance and Exercise
The benefits that exercise has on mental health are pretty well-known at this point. Research shows that people who exercise have lower rates of depression and anxiety. There’s even evidence to show that exercise is more effective than anti-depressants: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/is-exercise-more-effective-than-medication-for-depression-and-anxiety
Exposure to emotions
One of the mechanisms through which exercise improves mental health is by increasing distress tolerance. When you engage in physical exertion there are emotions that come up. There can be frustration, anxiety, joy, excitement, calmness. All of the emotions you experience during exercise are the same emotions you experience in daily life. Yes the circumstances are different, but the feelings are the same. For example, the fear you feel over not accomplishing a certain work task is different than the fear you feel before launching into a sprint, but the qualities of the emotions are similar.
When we voluntarily put ourselves in a situation where we experience distressing emotions, it allows us the space to practice navigating them. Exercise is a controlled environment for you to expose yourself to feelings that you experience in regular life. Because the emotions you experience in exercise are in a controlled environment it allows for more confidence in tolerating them.
For example, when you experience fear or a lack of confidence in yourself before starting a difficult workout and you choose to tolerate the fear and do the workout anyways it’s a choice that allows yourself to learn that you can handle difficult emotions. Your belief in your ability to handle difficult emotions is exactly what distress tolerance is, so every time you have a distressing feeling in the context of exercise, it’s an opportunity to practice your capacity to handle them in real life.
Breath Awareness
Another way that exercise can increase your emotional distress tolerance is through focusing on the breath. When you’re heart rate increases during exercise you naturally become more aware of your breathing because you have to..if you’re not breathing when you’re heart rate is racing, you might pass out. Deep breathing is one of the best ways to cope with difficult emotions because it communicates to the nervous system that we’re safe. Our bodies often know what we are feeling before our minds do so deep breathing is an essential way to increase distress tolerance.
Increased Self-Compassion
A key component of distress tolerance is cultivating self-compassion. The more self-compassionate you are the more permission you give yourself to experience the range of human emotions. In contrast, when you are self-critical there is a lot of self-blame and resistance to feeling distressing emotions. When you experience self-doubt in exercise it gives you a chance to practice cultivating self-compassion. For example, when you are feeling unmotivated, Instead of judging yourself for being “lazy,” you can practice acknowledging the feeling and removing the self-judgement.
In closing, building your ability to handle the wide range of emotions that come with living is fundamental to being mentally healthy. I hope this blog post gave you a solid understanding on how to increase distress tolerance. By understanding what it is and the mechanisms through which increasing distress tolerance helps us live more balanced lives, you can live a life that is rich and vibrant. If you’re wanting to understand why you might have a lower distress tolerance and work on increasing it feel free to reach out for a consultation here to see if we’d be a good fit.