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Distress is inevitable.
Pain is an inevitable part of life.
And so much of what we do are attempts to avoid distress and pain.
We drink when we're anxious or we lash out at people when we're angry.
Those behaviors are the result of not knowing how to tolerate what feels intolerable in that moment,
which is that emotional experience.
You're listening to Life Kit.
I'm Mariel Segarra.
And you just heard from Shireen Rizvi.
She's a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Montefiore Einstein.
She co-wrote a book called Real Skills for Real Life.
And it's filled with distress tolerance skills that come from dialectical behavior therapy.
That's a form of therapy that helps people understand the connections between their thoughts, their behaviors,
and their emotions.
She says, according to this framework, in moments of distress, we have these two options.
We could try to change the situation that's causing us distress,