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Practical Approaches to Self-Soothing

This section provides a detailed, step-by-step guide to implementing self-soothing strategies, helping you personalise your approach and develop long-term emotional resilience. Here, you’ll learn how to create a self-soothing toolkit, engage in specific practices, and build lasting emotional strength through daily routines and support systems.

A. Creating a Self-Soothing Toolkit

A self-soothing toolkit is a personalised collection of resources that you can turn to in moments of emotional distress. The goal is to gather tools—both physical and cognitive—that help calm your nervous system and bring a sense of balance and comfort.

Identifying Your Triggers and Responses

To personalise your toolkit, start by identifying what tends to trigger distress for you. Jealousy, for example, might be triggered by specific situations in ethical non-monogamy, such as your partner spending time with someone else. Emotional triggers can also be linked to past experiences, fears of inadequacy, or feelings of insecurity.

Equally important is understanding how your body and mind respond to these triggers. Do you feel tension in your chest? Do your thoughts race? Recognising your physical and emotional responses helps you choose self-soothing techniques that address both mind and body.

Building Your Toolkit

Once you’ve identified your triggers and responses, you can begin to gather resources for your toolkit. These might include:

Physical items: Such as a comforting blanket, a favourite scent, or a stress-relieving object like a smooth stone or stress ball. These items help engage your senses and ground you in the present moment.

Cognitive techniques: These include thought restructuring from CBT, mindfulness techniques, or grounding exercises. Choose the practices that resonate with you, knowing that different situations may call for different tools.

Activities: Engaging in activities that calm or uplift you, such as going for a walk, listening to music, or practicing yoga.

The key is to build a diverse set of tools that address both your physical and mental states. The next part of this section will explain how to use these tools in real-time situations.

B. Step-by-Step Guide to Implementing Self-Soothing

While having tools is valuable, knowing how to implement them in moments of emotional distress is crucial. Here’s a step-by-step approach to effectively self-soothe when you feel overwhelmed by jealousy, anxiety, or other intense emotions.

Recognise and Name the Emotion

The first step is recognising what you’re feeling and naming it. This technique, known as affect labelling, helps reduce the intensity of the emotion by activating the prefrontal cortex. Instead of being swept away by a wave of jealousy or anxiety, pausing to say “I’m feeling jealous right now because my partner is with someone else” can create enough emotional distance to begin soothing yourself.

Engage in a Self-Soothing Practice

Once you’ve recognised and named the emotion, choose a technique from your toolkit to calm yourself. The technique you choose will depend on your emotional and physical state at that moment. Here are some effective options:

Breathing Exercises: Diaphragmatic breathing, as introduced in Section III, helps calm the nervous system. Focus on breathing deeply into your abdomen, then exhaling slowly. This activates the vagus nerve and helps shift you into a relaxed state.

Grounding Exercises: Grounding exercises engage your senses and bring you back to the present. One simple method is the 5-4-3-2-1 technique: identify 5 things you can see, 4 things you can touch, 3 things you can hear, 2 things you can smell, and 1 thing you can taste. This exercise brings immediate focus away from overwhelming thoughts.

Physical Movement: Sometimes, releasing built-up tension requires movement. A short walk, yoga, or even shaking out your limbs can help dissipate physical stress and reset your mind.

Cognitive Techniques: Thought restructuring from CBT helps challenge negative thought patterns. For instance, if you find yourself thinking, “My partner will leave me,” you can restructure that thought into something more balanced, like, “My partner values me, and they’re capable of loving more than one person.”

These practices can be applied as needed in real time, depending on what helps you the most in a given moment.

Reflect and Adjust

After engaging in a self-soothing practice, take a moment to reflect on its effectiveness. Did it help reduce the intensity of the emotion? Which techniques worked best for you? This reflection helps you fine-tune your toolkit and identify which practices are most effective for specific situations.

It’s important to note that not every practice will work every time. Some days, you may find that grounding exercises are more helpful than cognitive techniques, and vice versa. The key is to stay flexible and open to adjusting your approach based on your needs.

C. Long-Term Strategies for Emotional Resilience

While self-soothing is crucial for managing acute emotional distress, long-term emotional resilience is built through consistent, daily practices. This section explores how to incorporate self-soothing into your daily routine, create a support system, and maintain emotional balance over time.

Daily Practices: Building Emotional Strength

Regularly practicing mindfulness, journaling, or other calming techniques strengthens your emotional resilience over time. This can include daily mindfulness meditation to train your brain to stay present and regulate emotions, or keeping a journal to track and process your feelings.

By making these practices part of your daily routine, you create a foundation of emotional well-being, making it easier to manage intense emotions like jealousy when they arise. For example, practicing mindfulness meditation for just 10 minutes each day can significantly increase your ability to stay calm and present during difficult situations.

Cultivating a Support System

While self-soothing is an internal process, external support plays a crucial role in emotional resilience. Surrounding yourself with supportive people—whether friends, partners, or therapists—provides a safety net when emotions become overwhelming.

In ethical non-monogamy, having open communication with your partners about your emotional needs and self-soothing practices can foster mutual support. Letting your partners know what techniques help you and how they can offer reassurance creates a more compassionate, transparent dynamic.

Regular Check-Ins: Assessing Your Emotional State

Finally, regular self-reflection helps you stay in tune with your emotional health. Set aside time each week to check in with yourself. Are there unresolved emotions that need attention? Are your self-soothing techniques still effective?

By staying proactive in managing your emotional state, you can build resilience and be better prepared to handle distressing emotions when they arise. This regular self-assessment can also help you adapt and adjust your toolkit over time, ensuring that your practices continue to support your well-being.

Overview of this Guide

Introduction

The Neuroscience of Self-Soothing Understand how the brain processes emotions and how self-soothing techniques can help rewire emotional responses.

Therapeutic Models and Self-Soothing Techniques Explore structured approaches like CBT, DBT, mindfulness, and somatic practices to manage overwhelming emotions.

Practical Approaches to Self-Soothing Learn step-by-step methods for building a self-soothing toolkit and applying techniques during emotional surges.

Understanding and Integrating Your Experience Discover how to use self-reflection, journaling, and self-compassion to understand emotional patterns and improve resilience.