Tolerating Discomfort

How to Be Open to Uncomfortable Emotions: Learning from the Dandelion Story

A common topic that has been popping up in my DBT skills groups this past month is centered around the difficulty to feeling uncomfortable emotions. Specifically, clients are labeling these emotions are hard to feel: rejection, shame, disappointment, and anxiety. The intolerance of these emotions can lead to behaviors such as numbing behaviors, addictions, trying to control other people, too much dependency on change-oriented coping skills, ruminating, and staying busy. However, in DBT there are some key concepts that I really focus on to help my clients develop thicker skin and grow emotionally stronger.

They are:

1.) Everyone has negative emotions.

2.) Negative emotions are there for a reason. We want an attitude of curiosity to learn from them.

3.) Instead of judging our emotions, accepting them will actually help us to decrease suffering and work through it.

4.) The more we we try to push away our emotions and not feel them, it will make them more amplified and can lead to more rumination.

5.) We can use our energy to just face our emotions and get to the root of the issues, or we can waste our energy trying to fight it.

When I teach these concepts in DBT group, I will share a story taken from Marsha Linehan's skills manual for Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT). It is adapted from Anthony De Mello's book The Song of the Bird (1984). This story is used to help clients who are struggling to cope with painful experiences and emotions:

A man bought a new house and decided that he was going to have a very beautiful lawn. He worked on it every week, doing everything the gardening books told him to do. His biggest problem was that the lawn always seemed to have dandelions growing where he didn't want them. The first time he found dandelions, he pulled them out. But, atlas, they grew back. He went to his local gardening store and bought weed killer. This worked for some time, but after summer rains, alas, he found dandelions again. He worked and pulled and killed dandelions all summer.

The next summer he thought he would have no dandelions at all, since none grew over the winter. But, then, all of the sudden, he had dandelions all over again. This time he decided the problem was with the type of grass. So he spent a fortune and had all new sod put down. This worked for some time and he was very happy. Just as he started to relax, a dandelion came up. A friend told him it was due to the dandelions in the lawns of his neighbors. So he went on a campaign to get all his neighbors to kill all their dandelions.

By the third year, he was exasperated. He still had dandelions. So, after consulting every local expert and garden book, he decided to write the U.S. Department of Agriculture for advice. Surely the experts could help him. After waiting several months, he finally got a letter back. He was so excited. Help at last! He tore open the letter and read the following:

"Dear Sir: We have considered your problem and have consulted all of our experts. After careful consideration, we think we can give you very good advice. Our advice is that you learn to love those dandelions."  (Linehan, 1993, p.94)

What do you learn from this story?

When has your choice to stop fighting reality helped you to cope better?

What is going on your life now that you need to accept the reality of (like accepting the dandelions) and the emotions that go with it?