Self-Soothe in a Crisis Using the 5 Senses

When we hit a crisis, it’s awful. It’s scary, overwhelming, and we are out of control. Our ability to respond normally is lost to us. Thankfully, we have options to self-soothe ourselves.

What Is a Crisis?

But first, let’s explore what kinds of situations are crises. Crisis situations are incredibly intense. We have a high arousal reaction, which means that our emotions are unusually strong and our body is likely also having a strong response. Here’s an example: I have a girlfriend who found out her husband was cheating on her. At that moment, she lost all capability to manage her emotions. She was short of breath, crying, and even started hyperventilating. Her skin was flushed, and her pulse was high. The intensity of her emotional response was severe, and she was unable to self-soothe and calm herself down.

Next, crises are short-term. They don’t last forever. With my girlfriend, finding out her husband cheated created a short-term crisis. There was a bigger problem that she needed to solve longer-term, but the crisis itself was momentary and in reaction to the revelation.

In addition to being short-term, crises have a defined trigger. We can look back and determine what caused us to go into crisis, although it may take some work to uncover it.

Finally, crises create intense pressure in the immediate moment, even if it’s an unrealistic or inappropriate solution. My girlfriend’s reaction was to declare that she was divorcing her husband and kick him out of the house. While understandable, she wasn’t thinking in her Wise Mind. There were other options and possible solutions, but the pressure to fix the situation caused her to react without thinking. It would have been better had she been able to self-soothe and calm herself.

We Can Self-Soothe to Improve Our Crisis Responses

For some of us, our backgrounds cause us to live in crises. When we live with chronic stress or trauma, our brain rewires itself, jumping into crisis mode over smaller triggers. The good news is that we can work to rewire our brains back into a more healthy response mode, reducing our sensitivity to triggers and the severity and frequency of crises.

Learning to self-soothe helps us move from crisis mode into a more relaxed mode, where Wise Mind can come forward, and we can start to problem-solve the situation. This is one reason a common piece of advice to someone in a stressful situation is “just breathe;” the act of intentional, deep breathing helps us get more oxygen into our systems and slow our heart rates back within normal range.

However, there is more we can do than simply breathe. In fact, we can employ all five of our senses to help soothe us when we are in a crisis. These are more effective for “milder” crises; if you’re in a severe crisis and need to jump out of Emotion Mind fast, start with the TIP skill.

Visual

I like to start with the visual sense, first. The idea here is to find something calming and soothing to rest your eyes on. If you want, keep this simple: try looking at the stars, or a picture that brings you joy, or watch a flame dance on a candle.

Or, you can take it up another notch and go to a new place, and people watch or check out an art gallery or museum. Taking a walk or hike and looking at the nature around you is another reliable option. The essential idea is to find something you enjoy looking at and using it to help you calm yourself.

Sound

From vision, I like to move on to sound. When I’m in a crisis, I’m feeling very overstimulated and that nearly always means noise. If I can reduce the amount of sound around me, it removes a stimulus and helps me regain my composure.

However, when I’m stressed or sad, I listen to music. In fact, I have a couple of playlists I use to help me feel encouraged, and one that I call “Mood Changer” because every time I listen to it, my mood improves. (Usually, I’m singing along by the third track.)

Some people like to listen to water running down a stream or gurgling in a fountain, or listen to children playing in a park. If you are a musician, playing music is an excellent option.

Scent

Our sense of smell is acute. Many of us are familiar with scents that we think of as comforting or invoking warm memories. (The smell of chocolate chip cookies is one for me.) Aromatherapists and those who swear by essential oils can list off many benefits from smelling something pleasant.

Finding something nice to smell can calm us. It doesn’t always have to be a “memory scent,” like my chocolate chip cookies example. It can be anything that you find pleasant or comforting, like smelling roses, for example. Some people like the smell of coffee beans or boil cinnamon.

One of my favorite ways to invoke this scent is to walk among pine and redwood trees. There’s something about the smell of the dried needles on the ground that gets me every time. My shoulders loosen up, and my breathing deepens in response. I love it.

Taste

The term “comfort food” wasn’t created in a vacuum! Many of us have favorite foods or foods that soothe our souls, even in a small way.

Obviously, we have to be careful with this one. We want to avoid foods that we will naturally over-indulge in so that we don’t gain weight and exacerbate an already challenging situation.

I remember when I was working through a particularly difficult story from my past in therapy. It all came pouring out of me in a mad rush, words tumbling upon words, tears streaming down my cheeks faster than the Kleenex could catch them.

My emotional turmoil was severe enough that my therapist held me over to help me calm down so I would be safe driving home. (In retrospect, I still probably shouldn’t have gotten behind the wheel, but I made it home safely.) While the initial crisis subsided while I was in his office, the full crisis took me longer to make my way through.

I spent the next week curled up on the couch, eating Drumstick ice creams. Something about those treats hit me emotionally where I needed, and I credit them (and my patient and compassionate family) with helping me make my way through that crisis.

Touch

I think everyone loves the feel of getting into a bed with fresh sheets, freshly washed by a shower and having brushed your teeth. (No? Just me? Good to know.) Touch is one of the ways we experience the world, and I think it is easy to dismiss or ignore how it can impact our mood and experience and help us self-soothe.

One of my love languages is touch, and my husband works extended days. I’ve gone six days without seeing him only to have him come home and sleep on the seventh, then turn around and take off again for another six days of work. I need human touch sometimes, and I’ve found an alternate way to get it in the form of a massage. Because I have a tight budget, I go to a Chinese foot massage place – $20 and I always feel better when I leave (massage schools are another fantastic option).

I have a friend who loves driving with the top down on his convertible, and another who likes to wave his hand in the firm air outside the open window of his car. Something else I enjoy when I’m feeling particularly vulnerable is to wear a particular hoodie I have; the big collar on it makes me feel like I’m wearing a hug. I don’t care how hot it is, that hoodie soothes me.

Some Experiences Incorporate More Than One Sense

There’s nothing that says we have to limit our self-soothing to one sense at a time. We can incorporate multiple senses in a single experience and see what that does for us.

One thing I’ve found helps me when I’m all wigged out from a crisis is to spin yarn. It hits most of my senses at once: the scent of the lanolin in the wool, the sound of the spinning wheel whooshing in motion, the feel of the fiber moving through my fingers and the rocking sensation as I treadle the machine, and the act of watching everything come together to create something new is immensely soothing for me. I could always add taste to the equation by having a favored drink sitting next to me, too.

Going for a walk is another way to hit multiple senses at once. The sight of our neighbors’ yards, the sounds of the neighborhood, the smell of the air, and the feel of a breeze on our face is nearly a complete sensory experience.

Learning to self-soothe by using the five senses is one of the best tricks I’ve learned to help me calm myself when I’m in a crisis situation. Sometimes, we may have to repeat the experiences because our emotional state is so extreme. That’s OK. Keep repeating it until you are either able to solve the problem (and end the crisis altogether) or until you are calm and back in Wise Mind again.

How do you handle a crisis? What is your favorite technique to self-soothe yourself?