Self-soothing do you do it?

What is Self-soothing?

Self-soothing is the ability to be able to calm oneself when feeling overwhelmed, stressed or emotionally off balance and upset.

This doesn’t come naturally to everyone, if you didn’t learn the skills in childhood because you were traumatised, experienced a lot of anxiety, grief or wasn’t allowed much of your own autonomy from controlling or inconsistent caregivers.  Chances are you’ve never even thought about self-soothing never mind know how to do it.

Its possibility you also suffer with a lot of anxiety as an adult because an inability to self-soothe also mean you didn’t learn how to regulate your nervous system and this is a sign of emotional dysregulation because self-soothing is key to activating your parasympathetic nervous system.  This system is responsible for calming and returning our nervous system to homeostatic, that is balanced, calm and regulated, known as Rest & Digest, rather than Threat & Protect i.e. fight, flight or freeze responses.

Self-soothing involves learning techniques to support and help your nervous system regulate your emotions promoting a sense of well-being and sense of being in control.

Here’s a few calming strategies to try:

Stop-Pause-Breathe take a moment or two to collect your thoughts and feeling get to know them and learn what makes you tick. STOP - PAUSE - BREATHE

Take a few deep breathes as you count to five in and out, in and out. Repeat a few time.

• Ground your senses anchoring yourself in the here and now and don’t let your mind wander away and fill up with negative thoughts. Affirm I am here, now.

• Recognise when you feel overwhelmed or stress and name that – say I am feeling stress, overwhelmed because -this will pass if I stop-pause-breathe

• Crying yes crying allowing ourselves to cry when needed provides a welcome release from all the tension and stress which has build up 0 this is natures way of lowering stress hormones, lowering heart rate and releasing during upsetting or frightening experiences.

• Stimulating your senses stimulating your senses will sooth your inner self,  listen to music, enjoying a warm bath, deep breathing or simply sit and listen to the sounds around you, smell different food stuff or suck a strong mint or smelling a diffusor or scented candle.

• Physical activity dancing, going for a walk in nature or gentle stretching releases endorphins improving your mood.

• Change the environment walk outside into your garden, a balcony or a different room for a few minutes can begin to regulate our emotions.

• Soothing imagery have a book on a coffee table full of soothing pictures of nature, mountain or forest scenes, the Northern lights or baby animals whatever feels calming to you and sit and flick through them.  Getting lost in the imagery and allowing your imagination to take over for a little while can release hormones and endorphins to calm and soothe.

• Hug yourself learn the butterfly hug and hug combined with tapping yourself for a few minutes.

• Massage your hands put some hand cream on your hands and mindfully massage it in.

Like all Mental Health tools, they need repetition to work and to be able to connect and build new neural pathways so these calming activities can have a  chance to rewire our brains circuits and become automatic when needed the most.

If you are struggling or in need of a supervisor I offer a free 30 mins video call so we can meet before our first session. Contact me at email: pendulumofpeace8@gmail.com text or Whatsapp message to 07867938630 and lets connect and realise your fullest potentials.