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Sensations – The idea here is to shock your system with one or more of your senses. When your body is shocked, your lower brain functions kick in and will dislodge your troubling thoughts. Dive into a cold swimming pool, or take a cold shower. Go into your car or a nightclub and BLAST some loud music. Put a rubber band around your wrist and snap it a few times. Hold a bag of ice or frozen veggies against your hand, face, neck or back. Think these through now, while you're in a good frame of mind, and figure out which of these you think would be easiest to try. Then try them. Honestly, I tried every last one of them, and found a few that work for me at different times. After you've given them a shot, and understand what may work for you, jot them down on a note card and put it in your wallet or purse. Next time you're tempted to reach for one of those ever-present dysfunctional behaviors, reach for the card instead of the behavior. Pick one on the card and try it. Put every ounce of energy into it and see if you're able to make it through. If you're like me, you'll find that different situations call for different distraction techniques. The more you practice using these the more ingrained that response will be. Remember, you need to unlearn the dangerous behavior an learn something more productive that works. It will take time, but eventually it'll become an automatic response. While learning these, I found it helpful to review and rethink them when the crisis passed. For example, I had a fight with close friend and really felt just awful. I grabbed the cheat sheet, where I'd marked those things I thought would work. I thought "Activities" would work, and I called a friend and asked if we could go out for coffee. I was still pretty upset, so I wound up talking to her about the issue. She wasn't in a great mood herself and wasn't being very supportive, nor was she in a mood to go for coffee. I gave up at that point. Later, though, I reread it and realized that I didn't need a friend, I could have gone for coffee myself. Next time, I though, I could call and put off discussing the situation. Perhaps just going out for coffee and talking about fun things would have worked better. Or, I could have called another friend, if the first one wasn't able. I have lots of examples of where my first, second, third, etc attempts didn't work out as planned. Each time, though, I learned a little more about how to approach it in a more effective way.
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