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Areas › Low mood and hard feelings › Tolerate distress
You do not have to fix it right now. You only have to outlast it. Feelings crest and fall like weather.
Your Lord is sure to give you so much that you will be well satisfied (Quran 93:5). What weighs now is not the end of the story He is writing.
الضحى
وَلَسَوۡفَ يُعۡطِيكَ رَبُّكَ فَتَرۡضَىٰٓ
your Lord is sure to give you so much that you will be well satisfied
Qur’an 93:5read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
Naming a hard feeling as intense but passing helps you sit with it rather than doing something rash to make it stop; the wave falls on its own if you let it.
Bowen, S.; Marlatt, A. (2009). Surfing the urge: Brief mindfulness-based intervention for college student smokers. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors doi
Watching an urge rise and fall without acting on it (urge surfing) reduced smoking, showing urges pass on their own if not fed.
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Reminding yourself a feeling is temporary helps you tolerate it without acting to escape it.
Where this sits: DBT, Distress Tolerance skills.
Some people are not frightened of a place or an animal. They are frightened of their own racing heart, their own tears, their own anger, and it behaves like any other fear: it grows on avoidance and shrinks on careful contact.
Let your hands fall open, palms up, on your lap or at your sides, and breathe there for a minute. It is oddly hard to stay in full fight with open hands.
Stop fighting what already is. Accepting a hard reality, without approving of it, ends the extra layer of pain.