Acceptance - I may not like my feelings, but they are my feelings. If those feelings are hurting me, I change them NOT because they are the wrong feelings to have but because I no longer need them and they hurt me.
Avoidance - Similar to "Escape" below but involves not allowing yourself to be "exposed" to the hurtful feelings in the first place. Result: increased anticipatory anxiety and anguish.
Change - Recognizing that the strategies we have used in the past lead to similar consequences. Change involves willingness to take risks, trust in our capabilities, patience, and persistent small steps towards what we seek in life.
DBT - Dialectical Behavior Therapy. The scientific techniques used to balance acceptance of what is, with resourceful methods to change what is when necessary. Frequently involves internal changes (how you think, feel, perceive, react, behave, and the posture you take toward the world) rather than external ones (expecting the other person or the world to change). A balance between validation of what you feel, and changing what you feel.
Dialectics - the art and science of observing how every choice we make in life has both advantages and disadvantages. If we are afraid to leave the house, and stay home to feel safe, then we are gaining safety and losing the freedom of movement in the world we deserve. Therefore the dialectic here would be safety vs. freedom.
Distress Tolerance - Sometimes we can't, or should not, change our feelings. Sometimes we can't change the feeling because they are so intense and our belief in the truthfulness or basis of our feeling is so strong. Other times (such as after the death or loss of a loved one) we should not change the feeling because it is the appropriate and normal response to the situation, even though it hurts. Distress Tolerance teaches us how to "put up with" or endure emotional pain without hurting ourselves further.
Emotion Regulation - Changing what we do and how we react, to create new and different feelings from the ones we are having now. Frequently involves active behavior in a new direction to create new experiences that we attend to mindfully.
Emotional Sensitivity - Having a strong reaction to your own experiences internally or externally.
Emotional Strength - The willingness to face the devil in spite of your fears (doing nothing keeps everything the same). Accepting your weaknesses along with your strengths, and taking action rather than just thinking about it.
Escape - The behavioral or emotional process of removing yourself from things, places, people, thoughts, or feelings that frighten or upset you. Escape leads to "negative reinforcement" (each time you escape successfully, your fear actually increases over the long term).
Exposure - Allowing yourself to feel what you feel. Acceptance of what is, without resistance or fighting the experience.
Mindfulness - the meditative strategy of focus on the moment, observing rather than thinking or analyzing, being in the world rather than thinking of the world and rationalizing about it. Getting out of our head and in to the world.
Meaning-Making - Increasing activities and behavior that make your life worth living because those activities have importance, anchor you to the world, and make you feel good. Involves emotional investment, rather than simply "going through the motions."
Psychotherapy - A corrective emotional experience where a guide or coach takes you safely in to scary places in your feelings and past, and offers techniques to do so with care and caution.
Strategic Behavior - Behaving in ways that help you accomplish your goals (both long-term and short-term) in life, rather than simply reacting to your emotions in the moment.
Validation - Accepting that feelings are real, important, sometimes compelling, and always right. However, even "right" feelings can hurt so that is why we attempt to change them at times.
Withdrawal - Another form of escape or avoidance that gives you the false impression that you are safe. As Dr. Kabot-Zin states, "where ever you go, there you are."
