Self-Soothing as a Vital Need
„I know my picking is about self-soothing“, my client said angrily, „but why should an adult man need to self-soothe?! I should be able to handle life without having to treat myself as a baby!“ This was yesterday, December 7th, anno domini 2023.
My clients have differing opinions about self-soothing as a need, but I don’t hear a harsh judgment like this one quite every day. If there’s anything that stands out in that sentence as truly problematic is the use of the word „should“. Our psychological needs don’t care about what we think they should be. If you need soothing, then you need soothing. But one thing I can’t argue with is that self-soothing in some ways does include treating ourselves as babies. The difference between my client and I is that self-soothing doesn’t mean anything negative to me, and neither does its infantile nature. Perhaps I’m a weird guy and perhaps it’s because I’m a psychotherapist, but I don’t feel the need to judge my needs as this or that. I mainly think in terms of dealing with them within the framework that my values allow.
Self-soothing, indeed, can be seen as a primitive form of emotional regulation. When I use the word „primitive“ here I mean old and poorly differentiated, not bad. It’s not a value judgement. What makes it primitive is that it doesn’t involve utilizing a sophisticated semantic system to position emotions and process them accordingly. In other words, it’s a blanket way of dealing with upsetting internal experiences that doesn’t take the details into account. Self-soothing doesn’t care if we describe an emotion as „anxious“ or „happy“ or „guilty“ or „afraid“. It is not concerned with messages emotions have for us or their meaning. Instead, self-soothing encompasses a wide range of behaviors all geared towards producing a calming effect by reducing physiological arousal.
Before we adopt language and before we necessarily become enculturated, shaped by our families and their values, the times and countries we live in, all we have at our disposal is our body, both as foundation for our existence and as means of communicating with others. Self-soothing predates all of these complex processes and focuses on our body and regulating its arousal. I called it primitive, but it’s also fundamental.
Self-soothing behavior is not exclusively the domain of human beings. When a kitten is separated from its mother too early, it may learn to self-soothe using kneading movements, even adopting a blanket as its security blanket! Dogs may self-soothe by licking their lips, yawning too frequently. Shaking off is a way for your dog to release tension, or something that humans who struggle with BFRBs might recognize – dogs may sometimes start scratching their necks. Every living being capable of experiencing arousal also develops ways of self-soothing.
Human infants self-soothe in many different ways, even crying being one of them; perhaps not the most pleasant one. This type of behavior is both learned and innate. We experience catharsis when we cry, so we soothe ourselves. We change our breathing pattern, and we go back to a calmer state of mind. These mechanisms rely on biological mechanisms that only later, when we grow up, get negative meanings attached to them: grown men don’t cry, crying is for babies, needing self-soothing is weak, etc. Biology doesn’t care about our judgements; it cares about what works and what doesn’t.
When we are born, our parents are in charge of soothing us. They do that in many ways, by rocking us, giving us a pacifier, holding us and walking around, etc. Most of the things they do are focused on our bodies and largely repetitive movements – does this ring any bells?
The parental approach to a baby matters quite a bit because of its potential consequences. Crying is practically the only means of communication a newborn has. And by using that one way, a newborn expresses everything: discomfort, hunger, tiredness, loneliness, frustration, etc. This puts parents in a very difficult position. Their job is to figure out what their child needs through trial and error. And this is not just a matter of soothing the child successfully, but a matter of giving the child a way of understanding their own needs. What do you think the child will do to self-soothe if every instance of crying is met with breastfeeding? And what do you think an adult will do when they get upset? Well, what else will be there except eating?
Babies first learn to self-soothe at the age of 6 months, still long before they start speaking. Once again, before it is able to differentiate emotions cognitively. Even after that age, how a parent treats their own emotions and their child’s determines to a large degree what kind of a system for dealing with emotions will the child develop later on. If a parent isn’t very good at dealing with their own emotions, they are very likely to be unable to teach their child to properly deal with theirs. This makes self-soothing all the more important.
When a parent doesn’t know how to deal with their own emotions, the child might grow up with a rather simplified view of their emotional life. Instead of learning to differentiate between different needs or feelings, one grows up thinking in terms of stressed/ not stressed, agitated/ calm, etc. Furthermore, a parent might react angrily to the baby or a child crying, our of sheer helplessness and accidentally sending a message: this behavior is not OK. What does one do when the message coming from a parent is „you can’t cry, you can’t ask for self-soothing“? One finds alternative ways, body-focused repetitive behaviors being some of them.
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Self-soothing is, therefore, almost always, in one way or another, oriented around the body. It predates language acquisition, so whatever we utilize to self-soothe is likely going to act on a level that is nonverbal and repetitive. Repetitiveness gives us a sense of safety and focus, whereas focusing on the body helps us produce a calming effect.
Research has shown that skin-to-skin contact along with other forms of tactile stimulation may provide self-soothing effects in both humans and animals. For example, it was demonstrated that massages reduce blood pressure and heart rate in healthy adults, but also anxiety and measurably lower cortisol levels in test subjects’ blood. Cortisol levels can roughly be correlated with stress levels in healthy patients at least (there are medical conditions that can affect cortisol levels too). Other studies have shown that receiving hugs provides similar effects: lower blood pressure and self-reported anxiety levels and even faster recovery times from common cold!
Touch, especially touch from others in the form of grooming, or consoling through gestures such as hand-holding hand-stroking or hugging communicates proximity, a sense of benevolence, acceptance. What we might term loving-kindness (metta) with an additional sense of safety.
There is some evidence to suggest that touch stimulates oxytocin secretion, a neuropeptide, for example, connected to the process of mother-child bonding. Another physiological effect of touch is increased vagal activity, overall reducing bodily arousal.
Self-touch provides similar soothing effects, while at the same time being an expression of self-compassion.*
Skin picking, hair pulling, and other body-focused repetitive behaviors are quite effective self-soothing mechanisms, although obviously not healthy ones. Their efficiency comes from the fact that they include skin-to-skin contact, and their repetitiveness provides a sense of safety. Another way in which babies self-soothe that I didn’t mention above is through sensory stimulation. Rough hairs or smooth skin may provide just that.
If your takeaway from this blog is that BFRBs are hard to deal with then it’s a very accurate takeaway, although one that you probably know from your own experience. The takeaway that I actually want you to get is that there is nothing wrong or pathological about needing self-soothing. You need it, your dog needs, your neighbor’s cat and your cousin’s horse alike. There is no use in being frustrated with yourself for having a perfectly normal and nearly universal need.
There is a possibility that you need more self-soothing than other people and you can consider the following explanations:
· Your lifestyle requires adjustment so that you reduce your stress levels
· You don’t know how to differentiate and process your emotions, so you reach for self-soothing.
If you want to develop healthy ways of self-soothing and, if you’re in the BFRB Club, presumably you do, then consider something that will have the three following components:
1. It involves the skin/ touch (or: has physiological calming effects such as breathing exercises)
2. It’s repetitive in nature
3. It involves sensory stimulation
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