Self-Soothing: Build a Five Senses Kit You Will Use
Self-soothing is the dialectical behavior therapy skill of deliberately comforting yourself through the five senses when distress is high. This page covers why it counts as a skill rather than an indulgence, where the line between soothing and numbing falls, and gives you a planner for assembling a kit before the next hard evening arrives.
Reviewed byMichael Callans, MSWRelated tools & tests
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About this tool
Self-soothing is a distress tolerance skill from dialectical behavior therapy: you deliberately give one of your five senses something kind, with your full attention, when distress is high. Marsha Linehan put it in the crisis survival set as self-soothe, alongside skills for getting through a difficult hour without making the situation worse. It differs from grounding, which uses the senses to pull attention back to the present during panic or dissociation. Self-soothing is not about orienting, it is about comfort. Grounding Techniques covers the orienting use; this page is the planning tool for the comforting one.
The skill sits in the distress tolerance module of Linehan's DBT skills training, first described in her 1993 treatment manual and laid out for practice in the 2015 skills manual and handouts. The other crisis survival skills in that module are worth knowing, because they are designed to be used in sequence rather than as alternatives: TIPP for bringing extreme arousal down fast, distraction, self-soothe, improving the moment, and weighing pros and cons. DBT Distress Tolerance (TIPP) gives the overview of how they fit together and when each one is the right move.
What these skills are for is narrower than people expect, and the narrowness is the point. A crisis survival skill is not meant to solve the problem, change the feeling, or make you happy. It is meant to get you through a stretch of high distress without doing the thing that makes tomorrow worse: the message you cannot unsend, the drink, the walkout, the thing you cannot take back. Judged by that standard, an evening where you sat with a hot water bottle and a familiar album and nothing got worse is a success, not a failure to feel better.
People resist this skill more than any other in the module, usually on the grounds that it is soft or self-indulgent. That reaction is worth taking seriously rather than arguing with. Many people learned somewhere that comfort has to be earned, that needing it is a weakness, or that attending to your own body is selfish. The practical answer is mechanical: high arousal makes every decision worse, and lowering it slightly, by warmth, by a familiar smell, by something soft, buys back the few degrees of judgment you need to not act on the worst impulse available.
On evidence, be precise about what is established. Dialectical behavior therapy as a whole treatment has substantial trial support, particularly for borderline personality disorder and for repeated emotional crises. Skills training delivered on its own, without individual therapy, has its own smaller literature: Valentine and colleagues reviewed those studies in 2015 and found benefits across a range of presentations, with the usual caveats about small samples and varied designs. No trial isolates the self-soothe skill by itself. So the honest claim is that self-soothing is one component of a well-supported treatment, not that it has been shown to work alone.
Doing it properly means one sense at a time. The standard mistake is a sensory pile-on: a bath, a candle, music, chocolate and a film at once, which produces about as much comfort as a loud room. Pick one sense, give it something pleasant, and put real attention on the sensation for thirty to sixty seconds. Notice the temperature of the water, the specific texture of the blanket, the way the smell changes as it fades. Attention is the active part. Doing a soothing thing while scrolling through your phone is not practicing the skill.
The difference between soothing and numbing is worth getting right, because most people reach for numbing first and then conclude the skill does not work for them. Soothing is done with attention, in a dose that ends, and it leaves you more able to act. Numbing is done to stop awareness, tends to escalate to keep working, and leaves the problem exactly where it was plus a cost: alcohol, hours of scrolling, eating past full, sleeping through the day. This is not a moral distinction. Numbing is a reasonable strategy that charges interest, and the test is simple: afterward, could you do the next thing?
A kit is what turns the skill from a good idea into something you actually use, because at the moment you need it nobody wants to go shopping or make a decision. Pick a box, a drawer or a bag and put in one item per sense: a photo or a view you like, headphones with a saved playlist, a scent that means something, a small specific treat, and something with a texture worth touching. Then build a travel version for your bag or desk, and a phone version, since your phone is the one thing you will definitely have.
Two situations call for something else first. If distress is at the very top of the scale, soothing is usually too subtle to register, and the DBT answer is to bring arousal down with temperature, intense exercise or paced breathing before trying anything gentle: TIPP Skills is the sequence for that. And if you are using crisis skills most days, that is a signal rather than a personal failing. Skills that get you through the evening are not designed to carry a situation for months, and Emotional Dysregulation Test is one way to put some structure on what has been happening.
Adapt the senses to your own wiring. Plenty of people find strong smells intrusive, certain textures unbearable, or music too occupying to be comforting, and that is information rather than a problem to override. Drop any sense that does not work for you and double up on the ones that do. Keep one item in the kit that costs nothing and needs no preparation, for the days when even the easy version feels like too much. And if low mood, anxiety or overwhelming emotion is shaping most of your week, a licensed therapist who works in DBT can teach the whole skill set properly: the Psychology.com directory is free to search.
References
- Linehan MM. Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder. Guilford Press; 1993.
- Linehan MM. DBT Skills Training Manual. 2nd ed. Guilford Press; 2014.
- Linehan MM. DBT Skills Training Handouts and Worksheets. 2nd ed. Guilford Press; 2015.
- Valentine SE, Bankoff SM, Poulin RM, Reidler EB, Pantalone DW. The use of dialectical behavior therapy skills training as stand-alone treatment: a systematic review of the treatment outcome literature. Journal of Clinical Psychology. 2015;71(1):1-20.
- Neacsiu AD, Bohus M, Linehan MM. Dialectical behavior therapy: an intervention for emotion dysregulation. In: Gross JJ, ed. Handbook of Emotion Regulation. 2nd ed. Guilford Press; 2014.
Cite this source
Psychology.com. (2026, November 6). Self-Soothing. Psychology.com. https://psychology.com/tools/self-soothing
Self-Soothing FAQ
What is self-soothing?
Self-soothing is a dialectical behavior therapy skill: you give one of your five senses something kind, with your full attention, when distress is high. Sight, sound, smell, taste and touch each get their own options, and you use one at a time rather than all five at once. The aim is to get through a difficult stretch without making it worse, not to fix the problem or stop feeling bad. In DBT it is one of the crisis survival skills in the distress tolerance module.
How do I self soothe when I am upset?
Pick one sense and one specific thing, then slow down enough to actually notice it for thirty to sixty seconds. Warmth across your shoulders, a scent you like as it fades, one square of chocolate tasted properly, an album you know by heart. Attention is the active ingredient, which is why doing a soothing thing while scrolling does not count. If distress is at the very top of the scale, something gentle will not register: bring arousal down first with cold water, intense movement or slow breathing, then soothe.
What is the difference between self-soothing and numbing?
Soothing is done with attention, in a dose that ends, and it leaves you more able to do the next thing. Numbing is done to stop awareness, usually needs to escalate to keep working, and leaves the problem untouched plus a cost: the extra drinks, the lost evening, the eating past full. The test is practical rather than moral. Afterward, could you make a reasonable decision? Numbing is a strategy that charges interest, and knowing which one you reached for matters more than feeling bad about it.
What goes in a self-soothe kit?
One item per sense, specific enough that someone else could fetch it: a printed photo or a view you like, headphones with a downloaded playlist, a scent on a tissue or in a small tin, one particular treat, and something with a texture worth holding. Then make a travel version for your bag or desk, and keep a version on your phone, since that is the one thing you will definitely have. Add one item that costs nothing and needs no preparation, for the days when the easy version feels like too much.
Is self-soothing the same as grounding?
They use the same five senses for different jobs. Grounding uses sensory detail to pull attention back to the present during panic, flashbacks or feeling detached, so the prompts are neutral: name what you can see, feel your feet on the floor. Self-soothing uses the senses to comfort you when you are in emotional pain, so the prompts are pleasant rather than neutral. Both are worth having. If you are not sure which you need, ask whether you need to feel present or need to feel cared for.
Is self-soothing backed by evidence?
Dialectical behavior therapy as a whole treatment has substantial trial support, and skills training delivered on its own has a smaller supporting literature, reviewed systematically in 2015 with the usual caveats about small samples. No trial has isolated the self-soothe skill by itself, so the accurate claim is that this is one component of a well-supported treatment rather than a technique proven to work alone. That is a reasonable basis for using it as a coping skill and not a basis for treating it as a treatment.
Is anything I type here saved?
No. Everything you write stays in your own browser. Nothing is uploaded or stored on our side, and the PDF is generated on your device. A page refresh clears the planner, so download the PDF and keep it with the kit, or photograph it and set it as a note on your phone. The plan being findable in the moment is most of its value, because nobody wants to make decisions about comfort in the middle of a bad evening.