Self-Soothing

When life happens in a way that is overwhelming on a large scale, or when we are experiencing the usual ups and downs of day to day living, it is so important to have strategies for staying grounded. Today I want to highlight a psychological concept that is key in this regard: self-soothing. The importance of soothing goes back to our childhood days and the need for a kind of warm, caring, and protected experience when we encountered the unpredictabilities and stressors of the world.

Soothing is as much about attitude as it is activity

While soothing might be an ideal response toward children when they are distressed, what we each experienced (or not) as responses at home may not always have been ideal. In part, this is why many people do not really know how to go about self-soothing—it may simply not have been modeled. In addition, as children develop and grow (unfortunately, especially so for boys), they may get social messages that equate soothing to being infantile. But soothing is a normal and healthy response to distress and has nothing to do with gender or age. In fact, it is just as essential to have this strategy in our toolbox as adults!

In therapy, some clients will comment that they soothe themselves by doing something like exercise or watching T.V., or using alcohol or drugs; as such, they are confusing soothing with distraction. Distraction can indeed be a useful strategy for some situations, but soothing involves a connection with the self, whereas distraction takes us away from ourselves. As such, it tends to be of limited usefulness, particularly in the longer run. Often, we rely primarily on distraction as a means to cope with distress, we will end up feeling like we have to keep running from part of ourselves.

So, how can you go about incorporating soothing into your life? First, consider all the different ways you can be gentle and nurturing to yourself. Soothing is not just about “doing something”—like having a warm bath. It is equally about the attitude you pair with the activity. Soothing requires that you tune into what you are saying to yourself and ease away from being critical. Now is the time for permission and easing up any restrictive self-talk. Acknowledge the sense of distress—move away from blaming yourself to being more responsive to yourself. 

Second, consider some possible activities you could try—going for a walk, visiting a place you feel safe and positive associations with, brewing hot tea, talking with a trusted friend, asking for and receiving hugs, and writing in a journal are a few ideas to consider. See if you can come up with a list of things you already do and add a few new ones in! Experiment and practice building your self-soothing capacity.

Building Intimacy

Building intimacy is an ongoing process!

Developing connected relationships with those around us is a critical part of having a meaningful life. As much as many of us might like the idea of emotional intimacy, it isn’t always easy to create. One reason for this is that intimacy is all about being known—and that entails some vulnerability through sharing about who we are, how we feel. Intimacy is also about knowing the other person, hearing and seeing another’s perceptions, experiences, places of commonality and those of major differences, including perhaps things that are hard to hear.

Intimacy can also be challenging because people are not static beings—we are ever changing and having more life experiences. So in a sense, intimacy is not just about getting to know another and be known by him/her, but about the ongoing process of knowing ourselves, knowing others, and the sharing of that experience relationally.

So how do we go about building greater intimacy in relationships with those around us? Courage and curiosity are essential qualities you need to call upon. Have the courage to risk some sharing of yourself, and have the curiosity to reach for the other person’s experience through your questions. Ulitmately, you want to ask questions and listen to what it is like to be the other person, and help them to know what it is like to be you in the world.

When couples in my counselling practice are looking to build their intimacy, here are some examples of questions I might give for homework. The questions should be asked of and shared by each partner about how they see things in a back and forth dialogue together.

Relationships: Closeness and Intimacy are Not the Same

Both closeness and intimacy are vital ingredients to a sustained healthy connection. Often we hear these terms used in reference to relationships as though they are the same. But in fact, they refer to different facets of our connections with others. 

Closeness has to do with our experience of feeling drawn towards another person, and the expression of that feeling. We can have feelings of infatuation, passionate desire towards someone we have only recently met. We may yearn for closeness—wanting to be physically close or near someone we care about. In closeness, we draw together. Examples of closeness on a larger scale include: responses of communities pulling together after a natural disaster, or fans congregating in support of their favorite sports team.

Intimacy is related but different. It has to do with the experience of knowing another person and being known by him/her.  Intimacy is all about your knowledge and understanding of a person, and the degree to which that person knows you in return.  Intimacy continually develops as we mutually share about ourselves and are open to receiving others’ sharing in a relationship.

This distinction between intimacy and closeness is important because you could have a relational connection with someone where you spend a great deal of time together (closeness) but do not really know each other (lack of intimacy)—or perhaps that you stop knowing each other because you have been around each other for a time and feel familiarity “fills in the blanks”.

Familiarity is really the name we give to something when we begin to make assumptions. The wonderful thing about familiarity a relationship is that it can provide a sense of comfort, predictability, and ease in a relationship. This is true of any kind of connection with someone, not just a romantic relationship. For example, office workers, sports teams, and emergency response personnel thrive on the predictability that comes with familiarity.

But familiarity’s assumptions also bring with them a less visible problem: we cease intimacy. In other words, we no longer are curious because we feel we “know” the other person. The problem here is that none of us are static beings—who you and I are now is different from last week, last month, last year—even though many things are still the same. In relationships, it’s important to continue getting to know your partner.

Another aspect to intimacy is that knowing someone also means knowing things about your partner that are hard to hear, or that trigger some of your own frustrations or disappointments. But true intimacy is knowing another person as who he/she is, a complex being, not just a simplified image that we may hold of the person, or latch on to because it is safer or more pleasing.

So, in this sense, intimacy is vulnerable, intimacy is joyous, intimacy is risky, intimacy is truth, and intimacy is the basis of respect and love, because we cannot fully love someone who we do not know.

Now that you know about the difference of these ideas, in my next blog update, I will be sharing with you some tips on how to build greater closeness and intimacy with those around you.