When you’re deep in the throes of intense emotions, it can be difficult to calm yourself down.
Many adults struggle to self-soothe, or the ability to calm themselves when feeling anxiety, anger or sadness. Many people turn to unhealthy coping mechanisms such as substance abuse and overeating when they can’t regulate their emotions, says Jennifer Bedoy, a licensed professional counselor based in Chicago.
“Self-soothing is the ability to calm yourself down when you’re stressed or upset or anxious,” she said. “It helps us manage our emotions in a healthy way without relying on others, unhealthy habits or shutting down.”
4 questions with Jennifer Bedoy
How can people use mindfulness to calm themselves down?
“I’m a big fan of mindfulness, just because it does help us kind of get into a more stable state. It’s really important to just allow ourselves to get ourselves in a stable space. Something that really helps is just slowing down, slowing down your breathing, slowing down when you’re talking because that helps your nervous system become kind of back into that regular state, which helps us think better, helps us talk better, and it helps us do basically everything in a better way.”
How can deep breathing help self-soothe?
“I like to recommend when I’m working with children or even people who need something tactical, is to trace like a square in the palm of your hand. It just helps your brain to focus on what is going on. So it’s just like remembering that you are breathing for four seconds, holding it for seven, and exhaling for eight.”
How can engaging the five senses help people ground themselves?
“When you focus on what’s around you by naming five things you see or four things you touch or three things you hear, two things you smell, or one thing you taste, you focus on what is happening around me right now. It allows us to ground ourselves and to bring us back into reality. And again, it helps our brain kind of understand that you are not in danger, no physical danger. There’s no tiger in sight. You are just upset about something, and that’s all.”
How can staying in the present help regulate emotions?
“Our brain automatically takes us to the future, and sometimes, actually, when we have anxiety, it’s because we want to control the future. And as you know, none of us have that ability. None of us have the ability to control our future. So when we stay in the present, we understand that right now, I can do XYZ, but I don’t know what’s going to happen in the future. I do not have control about what’s going to happen in the future, so you can only focus on what you can do here and now, today.”
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Samantha Raphelson produced and edited this interview for broadcast with Micaela Rodriguez. Raphelson also adapted it for the web.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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