What is self-soothing?

Self-soothing is calming your own body and emotions during stress without relying on another person, a substance, or a screen. It's considered a learned skill rather than a fixed trait, one that typically develops through a caregiver's comfort in early childhood and then gets practiced and strengthened, or not, throughout adulthood.

Is self-soothing something you're born knowing how to do?

No. Psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott's 1953 work on the "transitional object" describes it as a capacity that starts outside you, in a caregiver's comfort, and is gradually internalized. If that early comfort was inconsistent, the skill can take longer to build, but it isn't fixed at whatever level it reached in childhood.

What's the difference between self-soothing and self-regulation?

Self-regulation is the broader skill: managing thoughts, emotions, and behavior across all kinds of situations. Self-soothing is one part of it, specifically the calming techniques used in a moment of stress or overwhelm. You could think of self-soothing as one tool inside the larger self-regulation toolbox.

What are examples of unhealthy self-soothing?

Binge eating, heavy drinking, drug use, compulsive scrolling, and overspending are common examples. They spring from the same underlying urge to escape a hard feeling as slow breathing or a warm bath, just through a route that causes harm. Psychiatrist Edward Khantzian's self-medication hypothesis argues people often reach for whatever substance best mutes their specific distress.

Can adults learn to self-soothe if they didn't as a child?

Yes. The skill builds through repetition at any age, the same way it originally builds in childhood, just starting later. Techniques like bilateral stimulation, slow breathing, or the five-senses method are a concrete starting point, even if your early environment made this harder to learn the first time around.

Self-soothing: definition and healthy examples

Self-soothing is the skill of settling your own body and emotions during stress, without needing another person, a substance, or a screen to do it for you. Psychologists trace it to infancy, when a caregiver’s comfort gradually becomes a capacity you can use alone. Healthy versions include slow breathing and touch; less healthy ones include bingeing or substance use.

Where does the term “self-soothing” come from?

The idea has roots in mid-20th-century developmental psychology. Pediatrician and psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott described how infants lean on a “transitional object,” a blanket or soft toy that stands in for a caregiver’s soothing presence, in a 1953 paper in the International Journal of Psycho-Analysis. When caregiving is “good enough,” in Winnicott’s phrase, that outside comfort is gradually internalized into a skill the child can use alone.

When early caregiving is less consistent, that internalizing process can stall or take longer, a pattern our guide to attachment wounds explores in more depth. The same handoff shows up in co-regulation: another person’s steady nervous system calms yours first, before you learn to do it alone.

What’s happening in your nervous system?

Psychologist Paul Gilbert describes a specific “soothing system” in the brain, one of three systems alongside threat and drive, in a 2014 paper in the British Journal of Clinical Psychology. Turning it on favors calm and connection over alarm.

Touch has a specific mechanism behind it too. A 2014 review in Frontiers in Psychology found that gentle, non-painful touch and warmth trigger oxytocin release, which the researchers link to lower stress and a calmer body. That’s part of why a hand on your chest or a warm bath can settle you, even alone in a room, and keep you inside a workable window of tolerance instead of tipping into overwhelm.

What does healthy self-soothing look like?

Simple, body-based habits tend to hold up best: slow exhale-focused breathing, cold water on your face, or self-soothing touch like a firm hug across your own chest. Alternating that touch side to side, as in the butterfly hug, adds bilateral stimulation, the rhythmic left-right input EMDR is built on. Psychologist Marsha Linehan’s DBT Skills Training Manual teaches a related five-senses version, deliberately soothing sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch one at a time.

For a fuller technique breakdown, see self-soothing for adults. If you’d rather have that bilateral rhythm paced for you, EmEase, a self-guided EMDR app, offers on-screen and audio versions at app.emease.com.

When does self-soothing become unhealthy?

The same drive can misfire toward less helpful routes. Psychiatrist Edward Khantzian’s self-medication hypothesis, first proposed in a 1985 paper in the American Journal of Psychiatry, holds that the substance isn’t random: people tend to reach for whichever one best mutes their specific, hard-to-tolerate feeling. The same logic extends to bingeing, compulsive scrolling, or shopping.

The practical test isn’t the activity itself but the pattern. A five-minute walk to shake off anger is self-soothing; reaching for the same escape every time a feeling shows up, in a way that crowds out sleep, money, or relationships, isn’t anymore. If that sounds familiar, it’s worth naming to a licensed professional rather than managing it alone.