I’m trying to find healthy self-soothing mechanisms for myself but I can’t think of any no matter how hard I try. So I was hoping that my blog readers could help me by sharing the ones they use.
What is a self-soothing mechanism?
Say, you get an email telling you that your article has been rejected. You freak out and do X.
Or on the first day of class you find out that the copy center forgot to complete your order and you now have no syllabus to give to the students. You freak out and do X.
Or you arrive at the airport and discover that all flights have been cancelled due to bad weather. This means you will not make the connecting flight and will miss your conference. You freak out and do X.
X stands for a self-soothing practice. It can be overeating, drinking alcohol, smoking, shopping. Self-soothing practices not only help to deal with stressful situations. They also help to organize one’s existence. A smoker and a drinker always are on the lookout for an opportunity to smoke or drink. Wherever a drinker goes, s/he will always take care to find a good place to drink. The same goes for a compulsive shopper and overeater. This provides a sense of constancy and cohesiveness to one’s life. A compulsive shopper is not just somebody who shops too much. It’s a person whose existence is in many ways conditioned by the need to shop. Or take a weed smoker. It isn’t simply a person who smokes weed. There is an identity, a community, a special language, and a way of being involved here.
This is one of the reasons why quitting things like gambling, drinking, overeating, smoking, etc. is so hard. For hard-core practitioners (as opposed to the occasional ones), these activities fulfill an important psychological function. Just weaning oneself off a physiological dependence is not enough. One needs to find a substitute for the soothing and identity-building part of the addictive practice. To give an example, I had a colleague who was a heroine addict. He managed to quit and instead of snorting heroin he started drinking huge amounts of alcohol and smoking like a chimney. Which, I guess, is healthier than heroin.
So my question is: what do you do to self-soothe? Please share. You will be helping me out enormously.
P.S. I know that sports and all kinds of athletic activities are the best self-soothing practices in existence. But let’s be realistic, people, in my case, this isn’t happening. I can force myself to do such activities but I’ll never find the process soothing.
Clarissa's Blog 
Going for a walk or doing some other kind of exercise works for me. If I am alone, I may scream aloud. Lots of people I know find soaking in a bathtub of hot water to fill this need. It is not always readily available, though. Same for sex, which is another option.
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I do find that freak-out situations never happen in any context where sex is available. 🙂
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I remember your awesome post about practicing psychological hygiene. You mentioned reading trashy novels, playing video games, etc. Can’t you use the same activities here?
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The trashy books and video games do disconnect the brain, so that aspect of them works. But they don’t have an identity-building component. And I’d also like something with an oral component, ideally. When I was a child, I used to eat books. I ate entire pages after reading them. That was good.
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eating is mine, but it’s not good for my health… so I seek alternatives. As a child, I ate my nails, handerchiefs, chewed my fingers… If I’d been cool enough to take up smoking as a teen, I’d be a lot thinner than I am today! I suppose chewing gum is out of the question for some reason? (I don’t like the taste of gum once the flavour is going, and I once had a dental filling come out in a piece of gum which means that gum chewing is now an anxious event not a soothing one!)
I find Sudoku puzzles good, but get through a LOT of pencils because I chew on them whilst doing the puzzle.
Have you tried singing? It’s oral, it has many of the physical effects of exercise without actually being, you know, exercise (exercise brings up PE class emotions, especially if I’m already stressed. PE class = my idea of hell-on-earth as a child, and those feelings get very deeply engrained and hard to override!). It has all sorts of social and identity aspects. It helped me a lot until I had laryngitis two winters running, and now have almost no singing voice (sulk. Am told it will come back if I am patient. I am not patient.). It’s not the easiest thing to do in public, though…
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I’m the worst singer in the world, though. I can’t inflict myself on people! 🙂
“I suppose chewing gum is out of the question for some reason? (I don’t like the taste of gum once the flavour is going, and I once had a dental filling come out in a piece of gum which means that gum chewing is now an anxious event not a soothing one!)”
– I wonder why I never considered the gum. Maybe because it isn’t culturally ingrained? I think I should try.
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Chewing gum has been extremely soothing for me and I managed to get totally addicted to it during stressful periods of my life.
As a long-term result, my body is now used to use the teeth to get rid of stress, and I now gnash my teeth at nights and my jaws hurt most of the mornings. It also causes migraines, so I sorely regret my past chewing gum addiction.
However, I have also not found a good replacement unfortunately.
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For me it’s sewing by hand. Singing also works for me when I can get away with it.
I think this lady feels the same about knitting:
http://crap.jinwicked.com/2007/02/08/100-acrylic-crack/
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Going for a walk, eating some chocolate, listening to good music, dancing to loud music in wild extravagant ways (harder to do this in public if you don’t want to scare people and embarrass yourself), writing in general or writing about your frustrations more specifically (just typing all the frustrations up in a Word document you’ve called StressDumpingGround.doc can be of help, and this can include long pointed letters addressed to individuals who have stressed you out which of course you’ll never send to them), putting a chokehold on your pillow, playing an instrument, rocking back and forth when sitting down, talking to someone whose voice and presence calms you, watching clips from old movie musicals on Youtube, tidying your desk and shredding up old papers.
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Ok, this is very interesting. Tidying the desk and shredding papers really resonate with me.
Thank you, I will be trying these ones out.
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Cooking a very involved and never-before-tried recipe, so you really have to focus on what you are doing.
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Cooking is definitely the best self-soothing practice. I agree! But that only works when one experiences a freak out while at home.
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The best one I’ve found so far is to take a couple of days off and go camping. You don’t see any Internet or TV for two days.
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I’ll need to visit a psychiatrist if I’m forced to go camping. 🙂
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Mine is painting my nails. Base coat, two coats of color, fast dry top coat, then I often paint on designs with tiny nail art brushes and do a final top coat. Petting one of our cats is also soothing.
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Nail painting? OK, this is genius. I totally need to try this.
I am SO glad I have written this post and asked for suggestions. I’m thinking about it and painting my nails could totally work. THANK YOU!!!
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I read aloud when I’m especially panicky. If that’s not an option, I’ll rock or pace, or contact a close friend. If it’s not the issue in the first place, I’ll practice saxophone. This year I also took up the habit of wandering the library before an exam (physics exams were at night, so I had some time to freak out beforehand). All the different titles would distract me, and now I have the added benefit of knowing where everything is.
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Wandering in the library? Interesting! OK, I’ll try and report my findings. 🙂
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// listening to good music, dancing to loud music in wild extravagant ways
That works.
Re oral – eating nails may work too, but better not to adopt this practice.
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When confronted by a problem my mind goes into overdrive to find a way to solve it. Once I’ve done that it calms me down. If there is no solution I give up, but there is usually one somewhere. There’s usually a silver lining too which is what I search for next. I’m an eternal optimist.
If I need to calm down I’ll try and distract myself either by reading or watching tele or getting immersed in the internet. Or I’ll pick up the phone and call a friend to moan about it. A problem shared and all that.
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It depends on when I need it. If it’s right then and there that I need to calm down I focus on my breathing and make a specific hand gesture. Sometimes just focusing on your breathing and putting your hands in a specific grip helps. Think of those anime shows with the ninja’s make crazy hand seals. They did stuff like that to give them a sense of constancy in some potentially stressful scenario’s. At least that’s what I’ve read and it does seem to work…
Plus the monk that taught me it was really cool :).
If it’s something that I need to clear up later I’ve found sometimes just writing with no filter and starting with the sentence “all I want to say is” leads to interesting results. If it’s something I can understand better by modeling it in a spreadsheet I do. While probably talking through the problem out loud.
Anyways this is my first post here I like your blog. 1 of 2 I read with any frequency. Keep up the good work.
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It’s great to have you here, Mark! Thanks for interesting suggestions!
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What Sarah Hague says above seems to me absolutely spot on.
To take your examples:
1) Article is rejected: after brief interlude for self-righteous rage and/or self-pity, the best thing to do is to try to figure out why; in other words, is the best response to rewrite the thing or just send it somewhere else, or both?
2) Copy center forgot your syllabus: after brief freak-out (see above), figure out what to do in class instead (e.g., tell students what happened, read and discuss syllabus aloud, making them take notes, syllabus will be distributed next time). This sort of unexpected problem, faced with equanimity, often makes class more interesting than it would have been otherwise. In case #1 too, rewriting the rejected article may well yield improvement (even if the rejectors are a bunch of assholes, as they necessarily are)(barring rare exceptions).
3) All planes cancelled at airport. If the problem here is that you’re trying to get to a conference, after brief freak out the thing to do is to figure out whether there is any other way to get to the conference, e.g. train or other airport, hitchhiking etc. If so, and if you feel it’s worth it, do whatever it takes. If not, then contemplate how you now have several days in which to do whatever you like instead of having to deal with conference, and go home. But if the problem is that you’re now stuck in the airport waiting for flights to resume, see my all-purpose boredom and stress relief program below:
–Always, always make sure to have at hand: a good book (a large 18th- or 19th- century novel may be best, depending on tastes), a notebook and a pen. Yes, fine, an e-book if you like, but the thing about actual books is that they never break down (they may eventually fall apart, but they never break down), they never run out of power, and no safety procedure will ever require you to turn them off. If you finish the book you can start it again (and if you’ve chosen well this will only be more interesting), or you can turn to the notebook and take notes on the book, plan your next article/book/class/project for world domination. With a book and a notebook and the right frame of mind you are essentially boredom-proof, and the knowledge that your time is not being wasted goes a long way toward making you stress-proof as well.
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My friend, I do all of the things you suggest. The article gets resubmitted and the syllabus gets redone while the students and I laugh about it. The problem is that brief freak-out moment, those 10 minutes when I’m in the stress mode and when I’ve trained myself to do things that my health cannot withstand any longer. I know what to do after ” brief interlude for self-righteous rage and/or self-pity.” It’s what I can do during it that is the problem.
I love the “all-purpose boredom and stress relief program”! 🙂 🙂
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Ah, I see. Yes, ten minutes is a long time for freakout response. Well, I guess this is one reason cigarettes are so hard to give up, despite all the health warnings in the world.
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And coffee. Every health issue I research, the very first suggestion that comes up is, “Stop drinking coffee!!!”. And I just can’t. Life without coffee is not a life I think I can enjoy.
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I just read that coffee drinkers actually live longer, no one knows why. Researching health issues is probably unhealthy in the long run, because most of them contradict each other in the end (alas, seems unlikely for tobacco though).
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That’s a perspective I like! 🙂
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Coincidentaly, today I read this blog post about coffee, very appropriate: 🙂
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“Coincidentaly, today I read this blog post about coffee, very appropriate:
http://roamaboutmike.com/2012/05/04/caffeinated-ambrosia-or-how-this-blog-runs-on-coffee/”
– It’s a great blog! Thank you for the recommendation!
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For me, books are my “habit” – but reading prevents me from doing a lot of other things I’d like to accomplish in my free time – such as blogging or writing my own fiction. It’s so much more enjoyable to read a novel instead.
Also, eating chocolate. And drinking Starbucks chai. It is cheaper to make myself a cup of tea, which soothes a little, but it is not nearly as effective as buying chai from Starbucks.
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I know what you mean about reading!
And I will be trying out Starbuck’s chai since you recommend. 🙂
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