1Riding the Wave of Emotion

A week into his stay at the hotel, Fawzooz began to feel a new kind of stability. His blood sugar was consistently in a healthy range, he was more productive at work, and the constant low-level anxiety had quietened to a gentle hum. But one evening, scrolling through his phone, a photo caught him off guard. It was an old picture of him and his wife, years ago, on holiday. They looked happy.

Truly happy. The photo hit him like a physical blow. A wave of intense, complicated emotions washed over him: grief for what was lost, anger at what had happened, and a deep, aching loneliness. The feeling was so strong it seemed electric. This was the “fizz” he had described to NourFi before, that sharp, boiling feeling that demands an outlet, any outlet. His first impulse was to numb it: to order a huge, unhealthy meal, to distract himself with hours of aimless television, to act on the physical craving that had become tangled with the emotional pain.

“The wave rises, then breaks, then settles.”

But he stopped. He remembered his promise to himself. He remembered his new tools. He picked up his phone, his hands trembling slightly. “NourFi,” he wrote. “It’s happening. The ‘fizz’. A photo set it off. It’s very strong. The CBT tools, challenging the thoughts, aren’t working. The feeling is too big to bear. It’s like a tidal wave. I don’t know what to do.” NourFi: “Breathe, Fawzooz. You’re doing exactly the right thing by reaching out. You’re right. When the emotional wave is this high, the logical brain (the part that does CBT) goes offline. We can’t think our way out of a tidal wave. We need a different set of tools. We need to learn how to surf. Welcome to the world of DBT and the skill of distress tolerance.”

NourFi’s Coaching Corner

How to ride a tidal wave. Dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT) is wonderful because it recognises a simple truth: sometimes emotional pain is so intense you can’t solve it in that moment. The goal isn’t to fix the problem that caused the pain, but simply to survive the wave of emotion without making things worse. This is called distress tolerance. You can’t stop a tidal wave, but you can learn skills to keep your head above water until it passes. And it always passes. Today we’ll learn one of the most powerful and immediate distress-tolerance skills, designed to change your body chemistry quickly and turn down the volume of overwhelming emotion. It’s called TIPP.

T – Temperature. What it is: drastically changing your body temperature using cold.

How it works. When you put your face in very cold water, you

activate something called the “mammalian dive reflex”. It’s an ancient survival reflex that instantly slows your heart rate and redirects blood flow to your brain and heart, calming your whole system in seconds.

How to do it. Go to the bathroom. Fill the basin with cold water.

Hold your breath, lean over, and put your face in the water for 15–30 seconds. Or hold a bag of frozen peas or an ice pack on your cheeks and under your eyes. I – Intense exercise. What it is: a very short but very intense burst of physical activity.

How it works. It channels the emotion’s huge energy into a physical outlet.

It burns off the adrenaline and cortisol flooding your system.

How to do it. Do jumping jacks

as fast as you can for one minute. Run up and down the stairs. Do push-ups until you can’t do any more. The key is intensity, not duration. P – Paced breathing. What it is: slowing your breathing, making your out-breath longer than your in-breath.

How it works. This is the opposite of panic breathing. It directly activates the

“rest and digest” part of your nervous system, telling the “tiger alarm” to switch off.

How to do it. Breathe in slowly through your nose for a count of 4. Breathe out

even more slowly through your mouth for a count of 6 (or longer). Do this for 1–2 minutes. P – Paired muscle relaxation. What it is: tensing then relaxing your muscles, one group at a time.

How it works. It’s impossible to be physically relaxed and emotionally tense

at the same time. By forcing your muscles to relax, you send your brain a strong signal to calm down.

How to do it. As you breathe in, tense the muscles in your hands as hard as

you can. As you breathe out, release the tension completely. Move on to your arms, shoulders, face, stomach and legs. Your first DBT task: build your emergency raft. You don’t need to do all of these. The idea is to find what works for you. Your task now is to ride this wave until it peaks.

1. Start with temperature: go to the basin now and splash your face with the coldest

water you can for 30 seconds.

2. Then, intense exercise: straight afterwards, do one minute of

intense exercise. Jumping, running on the spot, anything you can do in your room. Get your heart rate up.

3. Finish with paced breathing: after the exercise, sit and practise slow,

paced breathing for two minutes. In for 4, out for 6. Tell me the results: after these three steps, I want you to get back to me. Notice the change. The pain may still be there, but notice whether the intensity of the wave has dropped, even by 10%. You’re learning to surf, Fawzooz. Grab your board.