A long time ago in a womb far far away…we instinctively knew how to soothe ourselves. We opened our mouth and inserted a thumb.
Then parents and dentists intervened and took the thumbs out of our mouths…but they didn’t teach us a replacement tool for how to calm ourselves when we are in distress.
Enter the Dialectical Behavioral Therapy skill of Self Soothe: it works by giving your nervous system calming input through your 5 senses. When I am having a rough day, I will pull up YouTube videos of baby goats frolicking around in pajamas. It takes my mind off of what is distressing to me and gives me something pleasant to focus on. Maybe for you it’s pictures of friends, family, vacations or even looking at nature. The idea is just to let yourself fill your sense of sight with whatever is calming or positive to you. Then repeat this with the other senses of taste, smell, touch and sound.
Some days, all I need is a baby goat…other days, I might need a warm bath with scented candles, soothing music, baby goat videos and a chocolate cake. That’s stacking the sensory information to tip the scales in your favor.
Our 5 senses provide information to the brain about what is happening in our environment. Remember, the brain is locked away inside the skull, it only processes the information the senses give it. The problem is, if we are letting the mind wander, it can pull up old sensory information to play out to keep itself busy. This is why we can think about pink elephants and picture them in our mind, or smell cookies and remember a great memory with grandma. This can be an issue if your brain is recycling anxious, depressive or traumatic information. When this happens, we can become distressed and feel stuck.
Here is where Self Soothe comes in. The brain is like a puppy who wants to chew your shoes; in order to stop that behavior, you have to redirect the puppy to something you do want them to do. Swap the shoe for a chew toy. Here, we swap what the brain is fixated on with sensory information that it needs to process in real time…only, we control what information it gets.
By doing this, we take control of what our mind focuses on and use this to improve our mood in the moment. Try out this skill this week and see what it does for you!