TIPP Technique - Video Transcript
Hi, everyone. I'm Kristen, the Anxiety Therapist. In this video I'm going to be sharing a technique called TIPP. This is taken from Dialectical Behavior Therapy also known as DBT. It's a really quick and effective way of calming down your emotions if you're feeling just completely emotionally overwhelmed or dis regulated.
The T stands for Temperature. If you saw my video last week I talked a little bit about Vagus Nerve Icing. This is essentially the first step in TIPP. You want to expose your body to extreme cold and bring down your body temperature. This is going to slow your heart rate and send a signal to your brain that it's time to slow everything down and activate that dive response that I mentioned in last week's video.
There are a few different ways of doing this. You can put your face in a bowl of ice water, you can splash cold water on your face, you can put an ice pack on your cheeks, eyes, chest, back of your neck. If you're in your car you can blast the A.C. and have that blowing in your face. If it's winter or really cold out you can step outside and we only want to do this for about 30 seconds.
The next part is the I that stands for Intense Exercise. So you're going to want to get your heart rate up now by doing some form of intense exercise to match the intensity of your emotion. This can include doing some jumping jacks or pushups or maybe running or dancing in place. You're only going to do this for about 60 seconds to get your heart rate back up.
The third step is the first P. that stands for Paced Breathing. The goal here is to breathe from your belly and not your chest. You want to do some some diaphragmatic breathing. We want to breathe from our diaphragm. The key here is to make your exhales longer than your inhales. A good rule of thumb is to practice breathing in for a count of 2-4 and then holding it and then breathing out for a count of 4-6. Just do this again for 30-60 seconds and you're going to decrease your heart rate again.
The fourth step is the other P and this stands for Progressive Muscle Relaxation. With this, you're going to start at the top towards your head and work your way down to your feet. You're going to take each muscle group, tense it for about five seconds and then release and relax and then move on to the next muscle group.
If you feel like this is a hard thing for you to do on your own and you want a little bit more guidance, there are a ton of YouTube videos out there on progressive with muscle relaxation. Just search it up and it will give you a bunch of different results and they can kind of guide you through the directives of tensing and relaxing those muscles.
There are just a few cautions when using the TIPP technique and that is if you have a heart condition or you're taking a beta blocker or you have a severe eating disorder. Definitely check with your doctor, this might not be a great technique to use because you are really kind of messing with your heart's rhythms. You're decreasing your heart rate then increasing, then decreasing it and we just don't want to do any damage or have your blood pressure dis regulated at all.
So, just use caution if you have any of those things going on, but otherwise let me know how it goes in the comments or if you have a question, feel free to reach out and ask. It can just be a really effective way of helping you feel like you're gaining a sense of control over your emotional state and kind of grounding you back in the present moment so that you can think about things a little bit more logically or rationally.
So again, I'm Kristen the anxiety therapist, be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel, The Anxiety Therapist or follow me on social media @catharticspacecounseling or check out my website www.catharticspacecounseling.com. I put out new content every week.
So stay tuned for more and I hope you all have a good weekend take care.
