One DBT crisis survival skill is called self soothe.
The central idea behind self soothing is to actually be nice to yourself during times of crisis. For some people self soothe comes pretty naturally, though for others, there are a couple of obstacles that can get in the way. One obstacle is having the belief that if you're in crisis, or if other people are in crisis, you don't deserve soothing at this time.
Another obstacle is when you have the belief that other people should soothe you, believing I shouldn't have to soothe myself.
Both of those things get in the way of practicing this skill. Do your best to recognize when those obstacles show up and do the skill anyway.
A way to remember things that you might do to soothe yourself is to think about your five senses, sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch, and find soothing things to do in each domain. With vision, you can think about images that are soothing to you. You can look out a window, you can look at the night sky, you can find a picture of a painting online, you can look at photographs, you can go for a walk and really just take in the vision of nature.
With hearing you can put on soothing music, music that you really love. You could hum or sing a soothing song, you can play an instrument, you can listen to other people playing instruments, you can make a mix of songs that all soothe you in a particular way.
With smell, think about using cents that are soothing to you. Candles with cents or spices, cooking smells or using lemon oil or even cleaning products that may have a nice smell. Make a cup of coffee or walk into a coffee shop and inhale the aroma. Smell freshly cut wood or pine needles or go out and take a walk and notice the smells of nature or fresh air.
With taste. This is often everyone's favorite. soothing yourself with taste is eating some of your favorite foods, drinking teas or other beverages that have strong and soothing flavors. eating something that is soothing for you from your childhood in moderation of course, or also with candy or a little bit of special food that you don't normally spend money on.
These are all ways to soothe yourself with taste. And with touch taking a long hot bath or a shower, petting an animal getting wrapped in a blanket that's really comfortable for you or sheets that are cool. giving yourself a massage, hugging a pillow. Feeling clay, putting on your favorite sweat pants that have soothing texture, or putting lotion on and just noticing the sensation of the lotion on your skin.
Ultimately, we're thinking about these five senses as a way to generate activities or items that give us a sense of pleasure, and also just promote this intent of being kind to ourselves. That's the skill self soothe that will help us manage our crises more effectively.
