Personal Perspective: Your own childhood soothing techniques might work best.
The Importance of Self-Soothing Techniques for Emotional Well-Being
Self-soothing advice is all over the internet, much of it in the form of warnings to avoid potentially damaging sorts like “shopping therapy” or bingeing on Ben and Jerry’s, or worse, vodka martinis. Instead, experts suggest using the “good” ones, which seem to run the gamut from stimulating your vagus nerve to hugging yourself. Among the University of Miami’s recommendations to faculty and staff in their current summer newsletter is “tapping.” One YouTube video suggests that viewers bounce “10, 20, 30 times” when you are upset, such as after a heated exchange with a noisy neighbor or getting bad work news that feels like a body blow.
Techniques like these do seem helpful for “emotional regulation,” as the professionals say. But I sense that they work best for people who’ve had sufficient soothing as children and learned by their caregivers’ examples and kind words. Maybe it’s finding a distraction (“Why don’t we read a book?”) or reinforcing a connection (“Oh, sweetheart, let me give you a hug”) or, for older children, encouraging them to share how they feel.
Moving from transitional objects, like teddy bears, to learning to say no, those children mostly develop into appropriately independent adults. Sure, they may need to tap occasionally. But those of us who haven’t had that tender guidance are more likely to gravitate towards the “bad” techniques. I certainly did.
In my early 20s, the only thing that would extinguish the despondency I felt over my social isolation was marijuana. As soon as I walked into my apartment after my commute home from work, I’d have a hit off the half-smoked joint in my ashtray. It was the only way I could face another solitary evening, and I had a lot of them because I was pretty socially awkward. Then, too, I’d have a toke on the few occasions when I had somewhere to go and was too anxious to face socializing without it. If someone had suggested I bounce on one of my long weekends alone, I would have laughed at them.
Read More: Butterfly Hug Method: 6 Benefits of Self-Hugging for Anxiety Relief
For people in a lot of emotional pain, proposing such popular techniques is like offering a cup of tea to a heart attack victim. Stronger medicine is needed. For me, it took two psychoanalyses before I could use those methods. First, I had to get to a normal emotional range, which happened, if slowly. In projecting my dejection over inadequate nurturing onto my analyst, who, despite being deeply caring, seemed insufficiently so to me, my anguish gradually dissipated as my projection proved illusory.
What I discovered towards the end of that analysis, though, was a different self-soothing technique–one that I must have found for myself as a small child. It was so much a part of me that I was entirely unaware of it until once, having taken a strong enough dose of psilocybin that I was terrified by hallucinations, I found myself rocking vigorously back and forth. Somehow, I knew that the rocking would see me through until the effect of the drug wore off. And although there were other people around, I wasn’t embarrassed. To the contrary, I felt like I’d discovered gold.
After that experience, I began to notice how often I actually rocked; for example, when I was in physical pain or I became claustrophobic in the middle seat on a 12-hour plane ride. Yes, it seemed childish, but so what? I figured rocking probably sustained me as the child of otherwise preoccupied parents. Moreover, since rocking was a technique that I had discovered for myself, it seemed tailor-made for me.
I’d never seen a discussion of such self-generated soothing techniques, or maybe they live in the shadows. Most socially created ones come with social acceptance. These others, associated with impulses, may seem unacceptable, even shameful. In fact, they may be a better help in dealing with emotional assaults.
Read More: 8 Steps To Regulate Your Emotions When They Drive You Crazy
After asking around, I learned that many people use such unspoken techniques and, like me, never thought of them as techniques. One woman quietly sang to herself in difficult moments; I can recall hearing the almost subliminal voice of a kindergartener singing the same simple song over and over. Someone else told me, as if he were discovering it right then, that he often rubbed an earlobe between two fingers. Another friend said masturbation was her go-to, proudly adding, “I was an early masturbater.” My daughter, who as a toddler sucked her thumb while holding onto our very patient Lhasa Apso’s long hair, now has a tiny “service dog” she carries everywhere. So do a lot of people.
Me. I celebrate these sorts of comforts. Getting past the embarrassment, people might happily find the very soothing that eludes them in those learned techniques. Others might compromise, using their personal ones in high-stress circumstances and the socially approved ones in daily life. That’s pretty much what I do.
Now, along with many other people, I, too, attend to my vagus nerve and give myself a hug twice a week in yoga class, which provides a bonanza of popular self-soothing techniques. Whatever ails me, two hours of oms and alternate nostril breathing, stretching, and twisting, and I float out the door at ease for the rest of the day.
References
Soothing Your Heart and Feeling Connected: A New Experimental Paradigm to Study the Benefits of Self-Compassion. Clinical Psychological Science. Feb 2019. H. Kirschner, et al.
University of Miami Emotional Regulation Through Self-Soothing Techniques
You Tube: 4 Self-Soothing Techniques
Written by: Joan K. Peters Ph.D. Originally Appeared on Psychology Today
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