Valuable lifetime skill: Self-soothe

The way we effectively self-soothe is not a popular topic to discuss, and is not often talked about. However, it is one of the most important tools a human can utilize when feeling strong and potentially painful emotions. For many people, we learnt to self-soothe from the behavior of our parents; listening with empathy, lying still beside one another and just being emotionally present. Those that can be thought of as emotionally neglectful parents, do not have the capacity to pass along effective strategies for self-soothing, thus their children never learnt these techniques. The good news is that if you weren’t taught how to self-soothe during your younger years, you can still learn today. Remember that this is a self discovery process and everyone self-soothes in a different way! 

Check out the next post for steps on how to learn to self-soothe.