There’s a moment many of us know too well. You’re sitting alone after a tense conversation, maybe in the quiet of your apartment or at a corner table in a cafe with the city humming just outside. Your heart is racing. Your mind is replaying every detail. Maybe you’re staring at your phone, fighting the urge to send a message you’ll regret later. You tell yourself to calm down, but your body hasn’t gotten the memo.
That moment, raw, messy, and overwhelming, is exactly the kind of moment Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) was designed to help with. DBT teaches us that emotions are like waves. They rise, crest, and fall. The goal isn’t to stop the waves... it’s to learn how to ride them.
When we’re caught in emotional pain, our instinct is often to escape it. We might lash out, withdraw, scroll endlessly, or reach for something to numb the discomfort. Those reactions make sense. They’re our mind’s way of trying to reduce pain quickly. But often, they create more suffering in the long run. DBT offers another path: staying with the feeling long enough to understand it, to let it move through us rather than control us.
Riding the wave doesn’t mean liking the waves. It means trusting that the waves will pass. Emotions, even the intense ones, are temporary experiences. We give them more power when we treat them as permanent or dangerous.
I often tell clients that emotions are information, not instructions. They tell us what matters, what needs our attention, and where our boundaries lie. But we don’t have to act on every emotion to respect it. Riding the wave is about acknowledgment without impulsivity.
One of the first distress tolerance skills I teach is to “Observe and Describe” what’s happening. For example: “I feel angry.” “I feel hurt.” “I feel scared.” This might sound simple, but naming an emotion starts to separate you from it. Instead of being swept away by anger, you become a person feeling anger. That small bit of space allows for choice: the space to breathe, to pause, and to not react automatically.
When you’re in the middle of an emotional storm, here are a few grounding steps that come from DBT’s distress tolerance toolkit:
- Pause and breathe: Bring your attention to your breath or the physical sensation of your body against the chair, the floor, or your hands resting in your lap. You’re anchoring yourself in the present moment, reminding your brain that you’re safe.
- Name what you feel: Say it out loud or silently. “I feel shame.” “I feel afraid.” “I feel lonely.” Labeling activates the rational part of the brain and helps the emotion start to shift.
- Validate yourself: Tell yourself something like, “It makes sense I feel this way. This is painful.” Validation calms the nervous system and softens self-judgment.
- Ride it out: Visualize the emotion as a wave passing through you. You don’t need to fight it or hold onto it. Allow it to crest and recede.
Sometimes people hear “ride the wave” and think it means doing nothing, just sitting in pain. But in DBT, riding the wave is an active practice. It’s choosing to stay grounded while the emotion moves through you. It’s a skill that grows with practice, like learning to balance on a surfboard.
I remember working with someone who described feeling consumed by anxiety. Whenever the wave hit, they’d immediately try to escape by pacing, calling friends for reassurance, and finding ways to keep busy until it passed. Those were understandable efforts to feel better, but they were driven by panic rather than intention. The relief never lasted, and the anxiety always came back stronger.
When they began to practice observing the feeling, noticing where it lived in their body, naming it, and validating it, something shifted. The waves didn’t stop coming, but they stopped knocking them over.
That’s the quiet power of distress tolerance. It doesn’t erase emotion; it transforms your relationship with it. You start to believe: I can handle this. I don’t have to run from this.
The truth is that emotions are meant to move. They’re like the weather, sometimes light, sometimes intense, but always passing. When we let ourselves feel them fully and safely, they lose their grip.
The next time you find yourself in the middle of a difficult day, try this: pause. Breathe. Name what’s happening. Let the waves come and go. You might find that on the other side of it, there’s a little more clarity, a little more space, and a little more you.
Because healing isn’t about never feeling the storm... it’s about learning how to stay steady through it.