Verified by 
Key points
- Distress tolerance helps parents consciously and effectively respond to children rather than react, preserving the relationship.
- Cultivating distress tolerance begins with identifying one's triggers that cause the most stress.
- After a parent identifies their stress triggers, they can create an action plan for when they are overwhelmed with their child.
Stress directs the majority of resources in our brain to areas responsible for primitive survival instincts useful for staying alive. If a tiger leaps out at you from the bush, by the time you’re done thinking about the tiger, the danger he poses, and what you should do in response, he’s already eaten half of you and is thinking about dessert. But let’s say you are not in a situation of physical danger, but something stressful happens. Physiologically, all the same mechanisms fire: Brain activity goes to the primitive/instinctual area, you go into flight, fight, or freeze default setting, and your learning from your family of origin kicks in.
This cerebral bias towards survival neglects the other needed brain resources that help in emotional/relational contexts. To explain further, the areas of the brain which are responsible for our ability to make judgments, sequentially think through an issue, analyze social cues, and control our impulses is called the neocortex, specifically the pre-frontal lobe. Little resources are directed to this area of the brain when stressed. We may say and do things that we regret afterward, but we can’t understand why. “Why did I yell?” “Why did I immediately get defensive?” “Why did I perceive my child’s question as an attack?” What keeps us alive in the jungle against the tiger, sabotages us at work, with friends, co-workers, and partners, and at home with our kids.
How does this survival stress response affect you in an emotional/relational context? A parent who is stressed often makes their parenting decisions based on their exhaustion, not on rational thoughts or values. They will give in to their child’s demand because it would take more energy not to. In fact, discipline becomes such a chore; parents will do anything to get their children to stop. This can manifest in multiple ways. For example, imagine a child is whining loudly at the grocery store. They saw some candy and they really want it. However, you just bought food for a dinner you’d been planning to make after shopping. So, the child, in order to get your attention, cries even louder. They start screaming. Other people are now giving you that look. What do you do? Stand your ground and draw more attention and embarrassment, or stop your child’s whining and give in? Do you shut down and give in as you did with your family of origin? Do you fight fire with fire? Do you avoid the situation and try to get away from the conflict? Maybe you buy a few candy bars for yourself and eat them all?
The fact that you get overwhelmed easily doesn’t make you a bad person; however, it is an area of needed growth. Psychologists have categorized “getting overwhelmed easily” as low distress tolerance. This is having a low capacity to withstand a stressful situation. Once you’ve reached a threshold, you make decisions and say and do things you wouldn’t normally do, such as giving in to your child’s demands, overeating, making a thoughtless comment, or avoiding a conversation. Instead of falling back into the same negative pattern over and over again, try a new strategy laid out in three simple steps below:
Identify Your Triggers
Stress doesn’t come out of nowhere. It is brought on either by a feeling, thought, or event. Therefore, the first step in getting control of your stress is recognition. You need to be able to recognize your child's specific behaviors that cause you the most stress.
One way to accomplish this task is to create a log of your week. Be ruthlessly honest and record each time you get overwhelmed and give in or want to give in. Change can’t happen if you’re not honest. Look to see if there are any patterns when this happens. Does it happen when you’re multitasking? Does it happen in the morning or late at night? What leads up to it? What happens after? Can you identify a pattern?
Preparation
Once you’ve identified your child's behaviors that trigger your stress, you can be prepared. Preparation involves having a strategy to manage the stress when you are triggered.
I remember working with a parent who struggled with their child's behavioral issues. They would use prayer when they felt triggered. Prayer didn't totally remove the stress, but it helped. Besides the spiritual benefit of prayer, it also had a distracting effect. When my client prayed, they weren't thinking about their anger or resentment towards their child but psychologically shifted to acceptance and compassion.
Another client I worked with would strike her child when stressed. She identified the feeling of being alone as a trigger. The second trigger was laziness on the part of her son, and finally, juggling multiple tasks. These triggers in combination lead to a violent result and one she regrets very much. So, we worked on identifying the triggers in real-time and implementing a prepared strategy for managing the stress. After some trial and error, my client reported feeling more in control of her stress and successfully found alternatives to striking her son.
Distress Tolerance
The combination of identifying triggers and implementing a pre-planned strategy with consistency results in better distress tolerance (DT), which is the ability to tolerate stressful situations in an effective and competent manner. This allows a person to achieve a desired outcome.
Distress tolerance is the opposite of low distress tolerance (LDT). Parents recognize and manage their stress responses so that they can make wise and healthy choices. Using emotion regulation skills like deep breathing, mindfulness, conscious awareness of thoughts and feelings, and acting on a pre-made plan of what to do when their child triggers them, parents effectively respond instead of reacting to their child's bad behavior in a way that preserves their relational connection.
