Therapists, counsellors, social workers, pastoral staff and parents supporting teenagers or adults may find this printable useful when someone needs a quick, practical DBT coping skill for overwhelm, anxiety, panic, anger or emotional shutdown. It is especially suited to young people and adults who already know they can become flooded by strong feelings and need a clear crisis survival strategy to use before making decisions or reacting impulsively.
The main handout presents TIPP as a distress tolerance technique with the phrase “change your body to change your mind”. It breaks the acronym into four parts: temperature, intense exercise, paced breathing and paired muscle relaxation. Each section gives a short explanation of what the skill is for, followed by a concrete action, such as splashing the face with cold water, raising the heart rate for a few minutes, breathing in for 4 counts and out for 6, or tensing and relaxing a muscle group.
The layout makes it easy to use as a visual reminder in a DBT skills group, individual therapy session, school counselling appointment, social work visit or emotional regulation plan. A practitioner could introduce it when creating a safety plan, a coping skills menu, a calm-down strategy sheet or a personalised self-regulation toolkit. Families could also keep it somewhere accessible so a young person has a prompt to follow when they are too distressed to remember steps independently.
The reminder section is particularly practical because it reinforces that strong emotions do not last forever, feelings do not always need to be acted on, and slowing down can create time before making choices. Those messages fit well with work around impulsivity, self-harm urges, conflict at home, classroom dysregulation, panic symptoms and other moments when the nervous system needs settling before problem-solving can happen.
The visible printable is a concise one-page DBT TIPP skills handout, with an additional information page about the source. The author named on the PDF is Edita Stiborova.
