The Top Two Life Skills, In My Opinion

If only life came with a blueprint for managing its ups and downs. We struggle through, with both strengths and weaknesses, doing the best we can. Sometimes life gets messy.

We can look at research from UNICEF, UNESCO, and WHO, who named the top ten life skills. They are critical thinking, creative thinking, decision-making, problem-solving, empathy, interpersonal relationships, effective communication, self-awareness, coping with stress, and coping with emotions. These are important.

But if I could advise my younger self on the most important life skills, I would choose distress tolerance and emotion regulation. Let me explain why.

As a marriage counselor, I sometimes see people at their worst. They come to me when their relationship is breaking, and they may feel broken themselves. Roughly fifty percent of couples divorce due to intense conflict and arguing.

When broken, we are prone to behaving badly. Couples who struggle the most are “high conflict” couples. This term refers to couples who engage in extreme forms of conflict, often involving intense hostility and verbal aggression. Being a marriage counselor in sessions when intense conflict erupts is not for the faint of heart. It is our job to calm the storm.

Struggling couples initiate counseling to improve their communication. But most often, it turns out that communication is not the primary problem. The real problem is that they can’t regulate emotion, and they can’t tolerate distress.  

One thing that I tell couples is that they cannot come to an understanding if they are flooded with emotion. They cannot articulate what they want to say, and they cannot hear what the other is saying if they can’t manage their emotions. If they can tolerate distress for a bit, they can set aside defensiveness, criticism, and contempt and truly hear the other person. Emotion regulation is important because it allows individuals to effectively manage and respond to their emotions in a healthy way.

Distress tolerance skills can help us manage strong emotions. These skills teach us how to tolerate distress, learn to sit with it, manage our emotions, and think clearly. We may not be able to change a challenging situation at the moment, but we can change the way we feel, how we cope, and behave.

These skills are not only important in a love relationship, but in every aspect of life’s challenges. They can improve relationships, decision-making, mental health, and work performance. Essentially, they help people navigate life’s ups and downs without being overwhelmed by their feelings.

If only I had learned, and regularly practiced, emotion regulation and distress tolerance skills as a child, I would have been better equipped for life’s challenges.

Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) helps people learn skills to manage their emotions, build relationships, and tolerate distress. It’s based on the idea that people can change their patterns of behavior, thought, and emotion. If you experience emotions really intensely, you could benefit from this type of counseling. There are also many good DBT books.