This technique is well known in Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) as a helpful tool of distress tolerance, but I find that many of us utilise it without knowing its origin, and you don’t have to be DBT savvy to use it. It has to be the most effective form of self-care I know, and I would love to share it with you.
Self-Soothe uses any five of your senses: vision, hearing, smell, taste and touch. It is the act of nourishing, comforting and being kind to yourself. When you feel anxious, worried, stressed, angry or overwhelmingly sad, when you experience any negative emotion that makes you feel out of control or unsafe, take one of these five senses of self-soothe to retrain your mind into a place of calm.
Let’s take smell as an example. Have you ever walked passed a bakery and taken a deep, indulgent breath? There is nothing quite as lovely as the smell of freshly baked bread or pastry. Similarly, when we spray perfume or light a scented candle, there is a moment of sheer pleasure that accompanies these acts. Usually the pleasure is fleeting, or momentary, and as quickly as it came we are hurrying out of the door or thinking of something else.
Self-Soothe is the act of sitting mindfully with those sensations, and using them to distract from feelings of worry or fear. When that wash of crippling anxiety catches you, learning to whip out some scented hand-cream or a perfume is a wonderful way to soothe those feelings before they become overwhelming. I personally always carry these items in my bag. When I feel those worries begin to claw at the edges of my mind, I take out the cream and spend 5-10 minutes rubbing it into my hands, focusing on the smell and the texture, and thinking about the ways it is nourishing and conditioning my skin. This is touch self-soothe, combined with smell. If you can learn to focus for those minutes on a simple task like this, using your senses, you’ll notice the worry easing away.
It is not always an instant fix. Sometimes you may be too upset or too worried to focus. But doing these acts anyway is a trick that re-trains your mind to believe that, when the anxiety comes, there is possible relief. Part of the anxiety itself is the fear of it never going away, or being ever-present and always at the edge of your mind. Eventually, with much practice, you can do these exercises unconsciously. It might even be best to try it when you are calm and steady, like when you finish having a shower. Rubbing essential oils or body creams into your skin after a shower is a luxurious sensation of self-care. Why not do this mindfully? Think about the way your skin is soaking up the moisture, and how lush it feels afterwards. Think about the smells and the textures of the creams and oils. Think of it as a treat for yourself, well deserved, an act of taking care of yourself.
Or, after a long day at uni, light a scented candle or liberally squirt a room spray around your home. Take a moment to sit down and breathe in those scents that you love. Associate those scents with calm and comfort. Remember that no matter how bad your day is, these scents and these feelings of calm will always be available to you. Your home is your sanctuary, your safe-place. We often take this for granted. Throw down your heavy bag, fling off your coat and settle into those wonderful smells. Take as long as you need: you deserve those minutes of peace. And, if you are worried that there simply is no time to indulge in exercises of self-soothe, consider that more often than not we are able to accomplish tasks far better when we are calm. That pressing deadline or urgent reading will be better achieved with a steady and focused mind.
These acts can be achieved at any moment in time, whether you are in a seminar you feel unprepared for, waiting for a train you know will be packed, receiving a deadline reminder that sets your heart racing anxiously, forgetting your laptop charger, talking to someone you don’t like. It doesn’t matter what triggers your anxiety or fear, as often it is these small things that draw us back into the deeper, chronic worries. If you have a hand-cream in your bag, a delicious hot pastry, a strong chewing-gum, a favourite song, a stress-ball, a body spray, a bar of chocolate, any item that connects to any of your five senses can be used as an act of self-soothe.
So, as reading week is fast upon us and the stress of mid-semesters takes precedence, why not try this clever trick? To all my worried goddesses out there, I wish you the best of luck with this technique, and I hope it brings some small (but nonetheless important) calm in the coming weeks.