How holding an ice cube can change your life when you have intense emotions

"Because I would experience major dysregulation of my emotions, in an attempt to feel better quickly,  I would take actions that made me feel better in the moment but that would shortly thereafter (and sometimes for the longer term) make my circumstances and overall feelings worse.

One skill that helped very early on with this issue is the DBT skill of holding an ice cube.  It may sound silly or very simple, but once you try it and find that it works, you may think there really is something to these DBT skills.

I held the ice as long as I could. It melted quite a bit into the sink before I let the rest of it go.  Holding the ice cube allowed me to put time and space between the initial intensity of my emotions/thoughts and any action I took as a result. It was an ice cube intervention, and it worked. "

See entire article @ My Borderline Personality Disorder (dot) com