when you are an anxious or emotionally sensitive person, your emotional crises aren’t going to always happen when you’re at home in your safe space surrounded by your coping tools. in fact it’s actually usually more likely that you’re gonna be triggered or stressed out when you’re out and about, around other people or in public spaces. and in that situation what are you supposed to do to cope? in a previous video I talked about how creating a distress tolerance kit can be helpful when you’re an emotionally sensitive person. so a distress tolerance kit is a thing we use in dialectical behaviour therapy (or DBT) where in a physical space— like a basket or a box or bedroom drawer, something like that— you collect together all of the materials and tools that you might use to cope when you’re stressed ou. you can also create a digital distress tolerance kit like on your phone or computer. and usually how I recommend doing this is just like a list or a notepad or an email or a Google DOC that you can access from anywhere from your phone that lists off different coping skills you can use and offers you tools to use when you’re out and about. distress tolerance kits are always gonna be unique to the person, and what specifically works for you. and digital distress tolerance kits are the same. but for some common things that work, I think about going through the DBT skills and how can I find that on my phone. so if you think about the TIPP skills for regulating your nervous system from distress tolerance. you can specifically focus on Paced Breathing the first P of the TIPP skills and find a guided meditation on YouTube— I have one if you wanna check it out— or some other app that kind of you can go to and it walks you through pace breathing to help calm you down in a moment. the other big one that’s often gonna be on a digital distress tolerance kit-like list is links to YouTube videos for ASMR kind of self soothing through your sense of sound or maybe listen to music create playlist of your favorite artists. visual things that are self soothing— find videos of running water or nature on YouTube that you can link to. or download photos of your loved ones. just looking at them can sometimes help you feel better. put those things into the Google DOC or the list or whatever you’re using for the digital distress tolerance kit. finally the last kind of big category is distraction. what can you do on your phone that can distract you when you’re feeling stressed out? so obviously: phone games, word games, social media scrolling, going on to news sites and reading articles, going to favourite Reddit subreddits and reading about your favourite things. anything that will distract you and you can access on your phone is a great coping skill and can be included in that digital distress tolerance kit. finally the IMPROVE skills, which is an another acronym from Distress Tolerance skills. and ones that I usually recommend including for Digital Stress Tolerance kit is encouragement or imagery or meaning. can you have in your kit somewhere, kind of written down on that note, mantras for yourself, reminders of how you have felt differently, how you’ve gotten through difficult things. maybe inspiring quotes written down from your favourite authors or spiritual leaders— make sure those are there too so that you can read it in times when you’re feeling stressed. okay these are just some ideas. as I said everyone’s kit is gonna be unique. but it’s finding that digital space on your phone or on your laptop so when you’re out in public, surrounded by other people, don’t have access to your physical tools for coping you still have options and things that can support you in coping to get through stressful times. comment and let me know what’s in your digital stress distress tolerance kit and we can help each other out!