Self-Soothing Isn’t Going to Fix Your Life

“Self-soothing” is a term we hear time and time again, from talking about babies learning how to self-soothe to learning how to do so as an adult. As a licensed mental health counselor, I work within a world that talks even more about self-soothing. In fact, in Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), there is an entire skill set centered around it.

I have worked with countless people who have complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, who struggle to manage their emotions, who have the desire to kill or hurt themselves, or who struggle with impulsive behaviors like addictions. One thing the research says? DBT works for those people. It’s true, it does! However, a common complaint I hear is that some of the skills help for a moment, but don’t seem to help long term.

There is one module in DBT called “Distress Tolerance,” where the ideology is somewhat straightforward: learn to tolerate your distress. Some people are in immense emotional pain, and the only way they feel they can get out of that pain quickly is to engage in some potentially destructive behavior. Oftentimes, it feels so impulsive that it doesn’t even feel like a conscious choice.

The Distress Tolerance module is a set of skills aimed at helping people deal with that deep emotional pain without acting on potentially destructive urges, or, in other words, tolerate their distress.

And this is important: the goal is not to eliminate distress. The goal is to tolerate it without making things worse.

Within that Distress Tolerance module, there is a skill called Self-Soothe With the Senses. This skill breaks down how to soothe your activated body and mind using your senses. In fact, many of the first few Distress Tolerance skills are targeted at this same idea: get through the moment and soothe your body. They are called crisis survival skills.

Every time I teach this module in a DBT skills group, someone will say something like, “Okay, I get it, but when I’m panicking and I want to call my ex (or hurt myself, drink, smoke, spend all my money, yell at someone... any behavior, really), the last thing I want to do is go smell some lavender and drink a cup of tea.”

To that I will always say, of course. I get that. Let’s talk about why that could be happening.

You’re conflating self-care and self-soothing

Self-care feels good after. Self-soothing feels good during.

Think about self-care: exercise, cleaning your space, accomplishing a task, going to therapy, checking up on your friends. These things may not feel particularly rewarding while you are doing them. Sometimes they are downright annoying. But afterward, you may feel accomplished, connected, healthier, or more grounded.

Self-soothing is different. Self-soothing is like emotional dessert. It’s comforting, it feels nice, and it makes the moment easier. In babies, it might be sucking their thumbs. In adults, it might be relaxing in bed, binge-watching TV, taking a nice shower or bath, listening to music, or, yes, smelling some lavender and drinking a cup of tea.

Too much self-soothing and not enough self-care can leave you feeling unfulfilled, unmotivated, and generally down. We need to feel accomplished and active. We need to do things that build our lives, not just make the current moment more comfortable.

And, yes, sometimes something is both. A massage, for example, can be soothing in the moment while also continuing to feel good and helping your mind and body for days afterward.

The distinction matters because self-soothing isn't meant to be used to fix your deepest problems or address the root causes of your distress.

In fact, it may not even be the ideal skill for every moment of distress.

Sometimes you need to soothe yourself and feel your feelings

In DBT-land, we use self-soothing as a crisis survival skill. A crisis is a situation in which you are about to do something that will make a situation worse for you in some way at some point.

That means self-soothing is particularly useful when you need to get through the next few minutes, hours, or even days without acting on an urge that could create bigger problems.

But if you are really honest with yourself, is it possible you are sometimes using self-soothing as a way to distract from or avoid doing something hard?

Sometimes we need to self-soothe alongside feeling rather than instead of feeling.

Maybe you need to wear your coziest, most soothing hoodie and listen to calming music while also taking the time to journal and reflect, without judgment, on what is keeping you stuck in the same behavior patterns.

Maybe you need to take a hot shower before having a difficult conversation, not instead of having it.

Maybe you need to curl up in bed and watch your favorite show for an hour before you can tolerate thinking about what happened.

Self-soothing can help you become regulated enough to actually do the thing you need to do. It just isn't the thing you need to do forever.

“Fine, I did the self-soothing steps, but then I wanted to hurt myself again.”

Of course you did!

I hear this a lot. Someone uses their distress tolerance skills, feels a little better, and then later the urge comes back. They conclude that the skills didn't work… But the skills did work.

If lavender and tea fixed maladaptive coping mechanisms, I’d be in the wrong career path.

Self-soothing helps you get through the moment so you don’t do something that will make things worse. That way, when you are feeling a little better, you can actually explore what is happening underneath the urge.

What does the behavior do for you? What does it help you avoid? What need does it meet? Why do you keep coming back to it? How well is it actually working? What are the short-term and long-term consequences? What would you need to learn or change so that you don't keep ending up in this same place?

Those are much bigger questions. They require reflection, willingness, practice, and often therapy. Self-soothing was never supposed to answer them.

“But I don’t want to self-soothe.”

Sometimes the problem isn't that the skill doesn't work. Sometimes you're struggling with willingness.

You might be thinking, “I don't want to smell the stupid lavender and drink the stupid tea.” And honestly? Maybe you don't.

Are you struggling with willingness to tolerate your distress? Willingness to be effective? Willingness to attempt to soothe yourself even though you know it isn't going to magically make you feel wonderful?

It is also worth asking what your relationship with self-soothing is in the first place. Was it modeled for you? Were you soothed as a child? Were you allowed to have big feelings without someone immediately trying to shut them down? Were you empowered to learn how to soothe yourself?

For some people, self-soothing feels foreign. For others, it can feel almost insulting. “I'm in this much pain and you're telling me to take a bath?” I understand why that can feel invalidating.

However, there is another question worth asking: Do you actually want to feel better right now?

Sometimes dysregulation is validating. Being overwhelmed can be a very real reflection of how much emotional pain you are in. Sometimes, on some level, a part of you does not want to feel better yet.

Maybe feeling better feels like letting someone off the hook. Maybe feeling better feels like admitting that what happened is over. Maybe feeling better feels scary because you don't know what comes next. Maybe staying angry, depressed, dysregulated, or stuck is serving a purpose that you haven't fully understood yet.

That doesn't mean you are choosing to suffer. It means there may be more going on than simply “I know this skill, but I don't want to use it.”

“I did it, but it didn't work.”

Another possibility is that you are doing the skill halfway and then deciding it doesn't work.

You might expect self-soothing to make you feel completely better. Then you try it, realize you are still sad or angry or anxious, and think, “Well, that didn't work.”

But the goal isn't necessarily to go from a 10/10 distress to a 0/10. Sometimes the goal is to go from a 10 to an 8. Sometimes it is to go from an 8 to a 7. Sometimes it is simply to make yourself comfortable enough to wait.

Some of these skills are about making yourself as comfortable as possible until the wave passes. They are about getting your physiological reactions under enough control that you don't make the situation worse and can then use another skill effectively.

Here’s where I will direct people to other DBT skills: Maybe once your body has calmed down a little, you can practice mindfulness of your emotions or thoughts. Maybe you can work on willingness or effectiveness. Maybe you can use DEARMAN, GIVE, or FAST. Maybe you can cope ahead for the next time this situation happens.

Self-soothing is not supposed to be the entire treatment plan. It is one tool that helps you get to a place where you can actually use the rest of your toolbox.

Sometimes we need to give ourselves credit for feeling better a little bit. It matters that you feel a bit better, if even for a moment.

We live in a world obsessed with feeling good

Our lives often become so centered around comfort, optimizing, and feeling good all the time.

We have social media feeds filled with people's best moments. We are constantly exposed to advertisements telling us how to make our lives easier, more comfortable, more beautiful, more productive, and more enjoyable. We have access to entertainment, food, shopping, social connection, and distractions almost instantly.

On top of all of that, we have a very natural desire to feel good. Preferably, we would like to feel good quickly. But emotional health isn't the absence of discomfort. Sometimes the healthy thing is to tolerate discomfort long enough to do something that matters, to feel sad instead of immediately distracting yourself, to have the uncomfortable conversation, to sit with the urge without acting on it.

And sometimes the healthy thing is absolutely to put on your softest hoodie, make some tea, watch something comforting, and wait for the wave to pass.

The point is knowing the difference.

So, soothe yourself!

All in all, soothing yourself is meant to be short-term and useful in situations where you cannot do much to solve the problem right now. It is not meant to stop the patterns from repeating because stopping those patterns requires deeper reflection. It is not meant to make you feel better long term because long-term change requires deeper work. It is certainly not meant to replace self-care, problem-solving, emotional processing, or therapy.

So, soothe yourself!

Take the bath. Put on the hoodie. Drink the tea. Smell the lavender.

Just don't expect the lavender to do the deeper, lasting work for you.