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Did you know?
You are doing a great job. Life can be hard and painful and it’s okay if you have big questions and big feelings. There is no one right way to move through it. Your way is the right way. Keep going. You’ve got this.
Sometimes we just need soothing, a soft place to land. When my insides feel turbulent, within is the last place I think to go. I’ll go everywhere but inside.
Yet when we need soothing, inside is the only truly useful place to go.
Which often means we must head straight into the fire.
It’s the age-old monster-under-the-bed solution: screw up your courage, kneel on the floor and point the flashlight straight into your fear.
Grounding ourselves requires one essential component: ourselves. If we flee the scene, move outside our bodies or lodge ourselves in our monkey minds, there is no one home to soothe us, to attend to our very real needs.
And then, in addition to being stressed, we also feel lost.
Authenticity: Unconditional Allowing of Ourselves
Do you ever look around at all the chaos and pain in the world and wonder if we’re all just wounded children stumbling around trying to get what we need? That if conflict, hatred and war are just symptoms of our own (often unconscious) fear and hurt?
What would happen if we each gave ourselves what we need? What if it was no one's job but our own.
Perhaps healing the world requires us first - and maybe only - for us to heal ourselves.
There are endless ways to heal. For me, the first step is always to turn toward myself. (This is also the hardest step with the most resistance.) Sometimes this can be done with curiosity or compassion. Other times, if we've been at war with ourselves, we need an olive branch to extend a truce.
No matter where we are, we can always meet ourselves there. It’s one of the hardest, bravest and most essential things we can ever do.
The goal is not to do it perfectly. Nor is it to access some idealized version of self. The aim is to embrace whatever is authentically us in the moment.
Our true self is who we are without our conditioning, whereas our authentic expression is all of who we are in any given moment. Our authentic self always includes our true self but is also be a mash-up of emotions and states of being.
For instance, being authentic for me would be to own right now that I'm experiencing: self-love, anxiety, hope, anger, sadness, grounded and jealous.
Yep, all those, at the same time.
It’s all allowed. Authenticity isn’t perfection. Authenticity is about truth.
Self-Soothing Inner Dialogue
Because I’m so oriented toward language, words are a powerful way for me to build a bridge to myself.
If I find the right words, I feel an immediate calming of my parasympathetic nervous system (where our fight or flight response lives). I typically combine this with various nervous system regulation techniques (breathwork, meditation and somatic practices) to help soothe all parts of me.
I share my words with you in case you, too, need them.
This is what self-soothing for stress sounds like inside my head:
(For me, it helps to do it in the 3rd person, like I’m attending to a specific part of myself.)
I love you. I know this is hard. It makes sense that it’s hard. You’ve been through a lot recently. You are doing such a good job. Be gentle. Go easy on yourself. Anyone in your shoes would need extra rest and tenderness. You deserve that.
Nothing is going wrong here. You are growing and expanding and sometimes that feels scary and painful. It’s proof you are on the right track. Don’t give up on yourself. You are doing so well.
You are so worthy of love. Trust the process. Let yourself off the hook. Everything is working out for you, just as it always has. You know your truth and how to own it. It’s no one else’s business how you feel, how you express yourself or who you are. Your only job is to be you, exactly as you are in any moment. You are allowed, just as you are.
There is no one to please, no specific way you need to be. Perfection isn’t required and isn’t even possible, so stop trying. The only thing you can be is you and that is everything. It’s okay to let people see you as you are. That is powerful self-ownership and teaches others how to see and treat you. Set the tone for them; love yourself first. Love yourself most of all and watch that love grow.
Additional Soothing Techniques
Other soothing techniques might include guided meditation, spending time with a loved one, therapy, time in nature, mindfulness and any of the time-honored stress management techniques such as exercise, nutrition, decreasing stimulation and recreational time.
What works for one person might not work for another. What works for you on one day might not the next.
I follow my intuition about what practices or modalities will best serve me in the moment. But when it comes to my inner dialogue, I typically use some version of what I included above. General, kind, compassionate, I’m-on-my-own-side kind of thoughts.
Is it easier to put your head in a phone rather than breath consciously for ten minutes? Absolutely. We get a dopamine hit and a momentary break from our discomfort. And sometimes, that is exactly what is called for.
When avoidance becomes our norm, we can lose the sacred and essential connection to ourselves. Self-soothing becomes impossible because we are not “there” and are instead relying on external sources of soothing which are a highly unreliable and ineffective ways to care for ourselves.
Ultimately, we don't get our needs met.
If we all moved just 10% closer to ourselves, I wonder how profound the shift would be in our world.
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