TIPP Skills List: 10 Evidence-Based Coaching Practices

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For TIPP Skills List, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Practices that may help

1. TIPP: DBT’s Crisis Skill for Rapidly Lowering Emotional Intensity
   TIPP — Temperature, Intense exercise, Paced breathing, Progressive relaxation — is a DBT skill developed by Marsha Linehan for rapidly reducing extreme emotional arousal using physiological interventions. Unlike cognitive approaches, TIPP works on the body directly and can shift arousal within minutes, making skills that require reflective thinking accessible again.
2. Use TIPP to make other skills accessible again
   TIPP is not the endpoint — it reduces arousal so cognitive and interpersonal skills become usable.
   TIPP: DBT’s Crisis Skill for Rapidly Lowering Emotional Intensity
3. Combine TIPP components into a crisis sequence
   For very high arousal, run TIPP as a full sequence — temperature first, then exercise, then breathing, then relaxation.
   TIPP: DBT’s Crisis Skill for Rapidly Lowering Emotional Intensity
4. Understand TIPP — the full DBT context for this skill
   Temperature is one of four DBT crisis-survival tools (TIPP: Temperature, Intense exercise, Paced breathing, Paired muscle relaxation).
   The Dive Reflex, Made Practical
5. Use instructional self-talk for precision skill tasks
   Use short technical cues that direct attention to the key movement parameter rather than the outcome.
   Self-Talk Strategies, Made Practical
6. TIPP for crisis distress tolerance
   Use Temperature, Intense exercise, Paced breathing, and Paired muscle relaxation to drop overwhelming arousal fast.
   Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) Skills, Made Practical
7. Tip-of-tongue resolution practice
   When you feel you know something but can’t retrieve it, work the retrieval actively rather than giving up.
   Feeling of Knowing: Why Your Confidence Misleads You
8. Distress Tolerance Skills, Made Practical
   Distress tolerance skills, primarily from DBT, are short-term tools for surviving a crisis — intense emotional pain, overwhelming urges, or acute situational stress — without making things worse. They don’t solve the problem; they get you through the peak so problem-solving becomes possible again. DBT as a whole has strong randomized-trial support, particularly for borderline personality disorder and emotion dysregulation.
9. Tacit Knowledge: The Skill You Can’t Fully Explain
   Tacit knowledge, coined by Michael Polanyi, is the practical know-how embedded in action and performance that cannot be fully articulated — "we know more than we can tell." Expert cyclists cannot fully explain how they balance; experienced coaches cannot completely verbalize what tells them a client is ready to shift. Developing tacit knowledge requires practice-based immersion rather than instruction, and transferring it requires close apprenticeship rather than documentation.
10. Self-Talk Strategies, Made Practical
    Self-talk — the internal or external commentary we generate before and during performance — reliably affects performance outcomes, according to meta-analyses by Hatzigeorgiadis and colleagues. Instructional self-talk improves fine motor skill; motivational self-talk improves power and endurance tasks. The specific content and function of the self-talk matter more than whether it is positive or negative.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

• Every calming trick I know needs a clear head, and I don’t have one when I’m flooded→
• When I’m this far gone no single trick is enough→
• I’ve got one go-to thing I do when I’m overwhelmed and I lean on it for everything, but it doesn’t always land→
• On the fine, precise part of what I do my attention scatters at the worst moment and the same small technical thing keeps slipping→
• Right now I’m so far over the edge that talking or reasoning is useless→

Describe your situation in your own words to search the complete practice library.