Song Sung Blue, Everybody Knows One: Practicing Distress Tolerance in Adversity

“Yes, there is a human nature that transcends all culture… and it is precisely our power to choose our attitude in any given set of circumstances.” —Viktor Frankl

I was telling some of my friends who are in their eighties and nineties about the idea that this year may be historic for breakthroughs in health and longevity.  On the near horizon we could be living decades longer.

They shook their heads, “No thanks".  They are not very interested in living longer.  They are feeling emotional overwhelm with their children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, physical body and the world in general. The news. Life is bad. Who wants to live longer?

I know what they are feeling. There are those days when the world, when my brain, and my heart, and the weather feel way worse than yucky. It's all just too much.  We feel like we’d just as soon check out pretty quickly.

It’s in our chests and the pit of our stomachs.

It’s in the way we lie awake at night and think, How do I live in this world? How do I live in this body? How do I live with the fact that my life may end without it ever mattering?

A practice that pops up for me today is learning more and practicing more what is called “distress tolerance”, but I want to say upfront what some people fear when they hear those words:

Distress tolerance does not mean you stop caring. It's not anything goes. It does not mean you accept unfairness and injustice. It does not mean you sit on a park bench while your house burns down.

Distress tolerance means you stop panicking long enough to choose a wise course of action.

It is the deep wisdom of the Serenity Prayer:

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

courage to change the things I can,

and wisdom to know the difference.”

That’s the balance we’re after. Not resignation. Not rage. Not numbness.

But serenity and courage and wisdom.

And most of us need help living in that middle place.

Let me link this distress tolerance concept and practice to a recent event in our grandparent lives. It was a real story. But I’m going to mix it up and tell you an imaginary story of how it would go if it went the way I wish it would have gone...as I sit here on the other side of the experience.

So it's based on a true story that went wrong in our lives and I'm now offering an imaginary grandfather I’ll call Jim and his pretend granddaughter is Lily for my example of distress tolerance gone right.

Lily was nine, bright as a sparkler, and allergic to frustration. When she got distressed, it wasn’t a small pout. It was a whole-body storm.

One afternoon, homework turned into a scene. Pencil snapped. Paper flew. Tears came hot and fast.

“I CAN’T DO THIS!” she yelled. “I’M STUPID!”

And Jim felt his own distress rise right along with hers—because that’s what happens when you love someone. Their pain doesn’t stay politely on their side of the room. It reaches for you.

Now Jim could have done what many of us do, especially when we’re scared:

He could have tried to fix it quickly.

He could have said, “Calm down.”

He could have pushed harder.

He could have shut her down.

But instead, he did something surprisingly brave.

He stayed.

He sat beside her like a teammate, not across from her like a judge. He breathed out slowly—longer than he breathed in—and he said:

“This is a big feeling. We humans all get big feelings and emotions sometimes. But we are safe. And you don’t have to feel perfectly calm to do the next small thing.” Just calm enough to think about a good next step.

Lily looked at him like he had just spoken a foreign language.

“I don’t have to be perfectly calm?” she whispered.

“Nope,” Jim said. “Feelings can be loud. But they don’t get to drive the bus. You can learn to experience them and sit with them without getting carried away."

That moment was the real kind of distress tolerance being practiced by the grandfather and taught to his granddaughter.

It's the kind that makes a child feel steady enough to circle the numbers on the worksheet and try again.

And my friends—this distress tolerance thing is not just for children. It’s one of the major ways that many emotional and physical problems including our addictions and perfectionism are better handled.

We all need someone inside us who can do what Jim did.

Because sometimes we are the ones throwing papers emotionally—spinning out over the headlines, the diagnosis, the grief, the helplessness, the time passing. Sometimes we need to become the steady grandparent to our own nervous system.

For many of us right now, distress isn’t coming from a math worksheet.

It’s coming from:

• reading the news and feeling afraid or furious or overwhelmed and confused

• seeing our kids and grandchildren glued to their screens

• facing aging bodies, brains that aren't quite as sharp at times, and fragile health

• walking beside someone you love as they decline

• and for me particularly right now…cleaning out the clutter of almost 44 years in the same house.

• Seeing another and another gloomy, totally fogged in day.

  
  

  

And here is what distress does when we don’t know how to tolerate it:

It makes us frantic. Or numb. Or controlling. Or exhausted. Or reactive. It raises our blood pressure. It makes us sick. And just so you know, I can do all of these quite well.

Basically it makes us want to either scream - strike out in some way or do nothing.

But distress tolerance creates a third option:

Stay present.

Breathe (in and out slowly several times).

Experience the emotions all humans experience.

Choose mindfully.

Act where you can.

That is serenity and courage and wisdom working together.

Recently I saw the awesome film Song Sung Blue at Gateway, the story of a real couple who perform as a Neil Diamond tribute band called Lightning & Thunder. Hugh Jackman plays Mike, and Kate Hudson plays Claire. Spoiler alert…

In the movie, Claire is hit by a car while planting flowers and loses her leg below the knee.

And after that—because how could she not?—she falls apart. The family falls apart.

The film shows her struggling with depression, pain, addiction to pain medication, and conflict in her relationship.

That’s not weakness. That’s grief.

A body part is gone. A life she knew is gone. A sense of “normal” is gone.

And this is the part that is the magic for me: the story isn’t about a woman heroically immediately jumping up on one leg and “getting over it".

It’s about her learning how to experience grief and anger and wear a prosthetic leg and through that process be fully with her life again. Continue to sing. She learns to talk about her experience with a therapy group which looks something like her husband’s AA group.

“The accident took my leg, but I shouldn’t have let it take my singing away.” And she decides to live again. Sing again. Entertain people again. Be a mother and a wife again.

That sentence where she makes her confession is distress tolerance in its most profound form.

Not denial. Not pretending it didn’t happen. Not saying it didn’t hurt.

It’s the decision—after grief has had its honest say—that pain will not take everything.

And it’s the kind of courage the Serenity Prayer points toward:

Accept what cannot be changed.

Change what can be changed.

Claire could not change the accident.

But she could choose not to lose the rest of herself, too.

And little by little, that’s what she does—returning to music, returning to the stage, returning to love.

A grandchild at the kitchen table, a couple singing Neil Diamond, and a world full of sorrow and outrage…what do they all have in common?

This: Distress will visit us all. Song sung blue, everybody knows one.

And when it does, we will be tempted to do one of two things:

1. Avoid what’s real (our experience and our thoughts and emotions)

2. Overreact to what’s real

   
   

But distress tolerance teaches the third path:

Stay with what’s real… long enough to wisely discern how to go forward.

Jim didn’t deny Lily’s frustration. He didn’t shame it. He didn’t pretend it wasn’t hard.

He helped her stay with it and take a next step.

Claire didn’t deny her grief. She let loss be loss.

And then, when she could, she reclaimed what was still hers.

And in the same way, when we face a world that feels frightening—and a future that includes aging and death—we are invited into this mature, faithful stance:

• I will not look away.

• I will not be consumed.

• I will not give up.

• I will take my next right step. (And sometimes that is literally step outside in nature.)

  
  

  

Let me say this plainly, because I think it matters:

Distress tolerance is not giving up - passivity, it is steadiness.

It is how you keep your heart open long enough to be useful.

Because outrage without steadiness burns people out and makes them do crazy stuff. And numbness without steadiness makes people disappear and the world die.

But steadiness allows you to do courageous things sustainably.

Distress tolerance is what lets you look at many options:

• set boundaries without hatred

• speak truth without losing your soul

• stay informed without drowning in terror

• advocate without becoming venomous

• grieve without giving up

• face being human without dread.

  
  

It is courage with a grounded nervous system. Cortisol checked; oxytocin pumping.

Here are a few simple techniques to practice for “big life distress” that I’m trying on.

When the news breaks my heart…When aging scares me…When grief sits beside me like a stinky guest…

I (and you too) can experiment with these:

1) Acknowledge the feeling “This is grief.” “This is fear.” “This is helplessness.” “This is anger because I care.”

2) "I can tenderly allow myself to experience this feeling and emotion."

3) Breathe out longer than I breathe in (three times)Just enough to tell my body: I am safe.

4) Ask the Serenity question “What can I change today?” “What must I accept today?” “What is wisdom here?”

5) Choose one small action

• make the call

• write the note

• donate the amount I can

• volunteer once a week at the community meal

• stop doomscrolling for more bad news after 10 minutes

• go outside and reset

• hug my grandkids

• make the appointment

• apologize

• sing anyway

  
  

Small actions are not small. They are how people keep living.

I do not believe the goal is to live without distress. Song sung blue - everybody knows one as Neil Diamond says. It’s not possible nor even enriching to live with no cracks or bumps. And to fight it or run away from it keeps us stuck in the doldrums, wanting to leave it all behind... it drains life of its opportunities for growth and richness of experiencing all the 10,000 sorrows and 10,000 joys it offers. The bumps, the ups and downs, the journey that we will can, if we choose, turn into a song.

I believe the goal is to become the kind of people who can feel distress and stay steady...still full of love and life.

It reminds me of John doing his cold exposure. At first a few degrees of a cold shower or outside temperature really chilled him, but now, that discomfort is easily tolerated. It actually invigorates him.

We can be the kind of people who can tolerate distress, not abandon ourselves. Or our families. Or the world. We can grow and flourish even in adversity.

We can be the kind of people who can sit beside a frightened child—and also sit beside our own frightened heart—and say:

“This is hard.” “But we are safe enough right now.” “We will breathe together.” “We will experience what all humans feel sometime and take one next step.” “And we will do what we can.”

Because serenity isn’t giving up.

Serenity is what makes wisdom and courage possible. And courage—quiet, steady, wise courage—is still one of the most beautiful songs a human can sing.

How might we journey together to the Good Life by practicing distress tolerance?

Link to Neil Diamond singing Song Sung Blue (if you like Neil Diamond or stories of resilience, this is for you. Also available on Prime video.)