What’s your signature self-soothing method?

Part of adulting is being able to rely on our go-to tactic for self-regulation when things get a little hairy. Got offended? Center. Nerves on stage? Breathe. Stuck in a rut? Shake. These are all tools you’ve trained (consciously or not) to calm those runaway emotions so you can respond tactfully….(hopefully). Hells yeah. I got this. But what happens when you get too good at self-soothing??

Take a 5 minute break….

INSIGHT
(what we need)

Self-soothing could become too much of a good thing. 

Our epidemic of isolation is creating the conditions for a plethora of services, real-world and virtual, to soothe our sense of habitual emotional dysregulation. The pendulum has swung to close the gap on our parasympathetic nervous system dominance. Didn’t grow up in a household where your caregivers were present enough to meet your regulation needs?  Well, now as an adult you have your pick of training your preferred calming modality to test your interoceptive prowess. From controlled breath work, to meditation, to mindful movement, to somatic therapies, to contrast therapy or even geeking out on learning polyvagal theory and quick recovery tactics. The basket of goods is plentiful to meet this increasing need to manage your own regulation and comfort when the chaos gets too great. 

Ironically, neuropsychology is now pointing to the isolation itself being one of the main reasons our nervous systems are in disarray. We are all born with survival and regulation needs from our caregivers — who offer the first training ground to understand these interoceptive signals that help us connect a sensation to a feeling to an action (ie. tummy growl - hunger - eat). As we grow up, we independently learn how to read these signals to meet our own needs. Beyond survival, these needs also include adaptive behavioral strategies to the stress responses that challenge our very sense of self.

However, if we only practice pulling our awareness internally, self-soothing can lead to developing an escapist tendency.

The desire to detach when discomfort gets too hard to handle or escape and flee from people or situations that are non-threatening (but feel so in our systems) can isolate and disconnect us from people just because we disagree with them (hello cancel culture) or because we can only feel truly autonomous alone.

In reality, we are co-regulating all the time (even if it’s the dissociated inverse). As social-emotional creatures wired to attach to others’ nervous systems, we find a sense of our mutual regulation and adapt the necessary strategies to respond skillfully instead of escaping. This teaches adults to “stand their ground” in their sense of self despite fight/flight signals going off in their bodies. It also teaches us to lean in and connect — perhaps even to help regulate someone else’s distress — as a calm and comforting presence. The interplay of self-reliance and connecting with others without over-attachment is a delicate human practice we are becoming less skilled at in our attempt to manage our emotions at a distance or create removed avatars of ourselves online.  

An adequate metaphor for this might be the difference between a single potted plant nourishing alone in its own soil versus a forest of trees intertwining their root systems in tandem to thrive together. The communicative super powers of plants and fungi to “warn” further systems of oncoming infestations and temperature shifts is truly an incredulous phenomenon of a connected network. And we’ve kind of lost this as humans — no longer living in tribes, far from our families, and trying to make sense of a continually fractured society of myopic silos. We’ve lost our roots and we’re watering our own leaves hoping they’ll grow just as green and healthy. 

Self-soothing is of course important, and key to becoming a healthy functioning adult that can create the necessary separation needed for autonomy. However, swinging too far on this spectrum and we end up disconnected, isolated and lacking the resources to connect and respond. When we rely on self-soothing only, we ignore the parts within us that are a part of a greater system that, for better or worse, influenced our ability to co-regulate: those who raised us, our ancestors, the places that influenced our DNA, the sociology-political environments that shaped us, and our general sense of ‘placement’ within the connected whole.  We need a way to retrain co-regulatory faculties as adults that train us to fully embody this extended sense of self to skillfully connect, collaborate, create and commune our shared human reality. 

INSPIRATION
(what we want)

Thyself: be guided through emotional blocks so you can self-soothe. 

• A personalized ai guide that works with you through interactive talk sessions to unravel emotional knots in a safe and supportive environment.

• Trained to help you work through negative thoughts, struggles with connecting, and buried emotions that are blocking you from your desires.

• Designed to offer immediate help with real-time conversations which offer reflective insights and supportive cues to regain calm.

• Not considered a replacement for therapy, but a non-judgmental guide that non-judgmentally reflects your experience for personal growth. 

• Resolve negative thoughts or blocks immediate with each conversation and begin to train a level of automaticity to catch these same trigger cues yourself.

INNOVATION
(what we wish for)

Assemble: a monthly family gathering facilitated by an ‘ai space holder’ that creates the conditions for witnessing, connection and co-regulation. 

• Family units (of two or more adults) sign up willing to be connected members of the family despite conflict, disagreements, or disconnects. 

• Acts not as a family therapy session but a co-regulation process to bring family members into more familiar behavior of witnessing, allowing, regulating and connecting as separate parts of a system.

• Frequent sessions begin to build the emotional family tree over time so the ai knows where to place emphasis for each continued conversation.

• Option to pre-record family history so that the ai has a bank of data to draw from regarding themes of unresolved trauma.

• Sessions focus on moving or harmonizing existing disharmonies rather than resolving deep historical wounds (where the ai may recommend a therapist to work with in tandem). 

• Designed to function as a healing family gathering that exercises new ways of showing up differently so members can retrain co-regulation.

• An affordable, less therapy-heavy way for families to come together with a desire to reconnect their nervous systems in a new way.