How to self-soothe when you're overwhelmed

The quickest way to self-soothe is to do for yourself what a kind friend would do if they were sitting next to you. Slow your breathing, put a warm hand on your chest, wrap up in something soft and talk to yourself in a gentle voice. Self-soothing works through your body first, and your thoughts tend to settle after it. Knowing how to self-soothe matters most when nobody else is around, and most of what follows takes two minutes or less, on a bus, at your desk or in bed at 2 a.m.

What self-soothing means

Self-soothing is calming your own distress with comfort: warmth, touch, a kind voice, a slower breath, something pleasant to look at or listen to. You've probably heard the phrase about babies learning to settle themselves to sleep. It's the same skill, grown up. A baby who gets held and rocked slowly learns to settle with less help. Adults still need soothing too. We just have to be able to give some of it to ourselves.

Self-soothing won't solve whatever set you off. Its job is smaller and more urgent: turning the volume down enough that you can think, sleep or decide what to do next. That makes it different from distraction, which moves your attention somewhere else, and from grounding, which pulls a drifting mind back into the room. If you tend to space out or feel unreal rather than wound up, these grounding techniques that bring you back to the present will suit you better.

To tell healthy soothing from the other kind, check how you feel the next day. Scrolling until 3 a.m., another drink or texting the person who hurt you can all feel soothing for ten minutes. Good self-soothing leaves you no worse off tomorrow.

Self-soothe techniques you can use anywhere

These ways to self-soothe are quiet enough for a meeting, a train or a family dinner.

1. Hand on your heart. Rest one hand flat on your chest, or one on your chest and one on your belly. Feel the warmth and the small rise and fall. In a 2021 trial with 159 young adults, people who used a self-soothing touch like this, or got a hug, had lower cortisol, a stress hormone, after a standard stress test than people in the control groups. They didn't report feeling less stressed, though. The difference showed up in their bodies. So keep your hand there even if it seems like nothing is happening.
2. Hold something warm. Wrap both hands around a mug of tea and let the heat soak into your palms. No mug? Tuck your hands under your arms or press them together until they warm up.
3. Soften your face. Unclench your jaw, let your tongue drop from the roof of your mouth, lower your shoulders and smooth your forehead. Tension hides in these spots, and letting it go sends your body a calmer signal.
4. Hum. A low hum on the out-breath, or a song you know under your breath. It stretches your exhale without you having to count.
5. Say one kind sentence. "This is hard, and I'm handling it." "Of course you're upset. Anyone would be." Silently counts.

Soothing your five senses (the DBT self-soothe skills)

Self-soothe is one of the distress tolerance skills in dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), an approach built for people whose feelings hit hard and fast. Distress tolerance skills are for getting through a painful moment without making it worse. The self-soothe skill asks you to comfort yourself through each of your five senses, slowly and on purpose.

• Sight. Light a candle and watch the flame. Look at photos of people, pets or places you love. Step outside and look at the sky for a full minute.
• Sound. Play music that settles you, rain sounds or a voice note from someone you love. A review of 104 randomized trials with 9,617 people found music interventions lowered stress both in the body, with the biggest effect on heart rate, and in how stressed people felt. A slow playlist you already know is the easiest version.
• Smell. Hand cream you love, fresh coffee, a lavender sachet, a clean towel from the dryer, the hoodie that smells like home.
• Taste. A cup of herbal tea, a square of dark chocolate, a peppermint, warm soup. Eat or drink it slowly enough to notice the taste.
• Touch. A hot shower or bath, a soft blanket, fuzzy socks, a pet's fur, clean sheets, a heat pack on your stomach.

A few things make the DBT self-soothe skills work better:

• One sense at a time, with full attention. Chocolate eaten while scrolling doesn't count. Chocolate you actually taste does.
• Write your list on a calm day. Pick one or two items per sense, so there's nothing to decide when you're upset.
• Expect it to feel a bit silly. A candle can seem too small for a feeling this big. Do it anyway. You don't have to earn comfort.

How to self-soothe anxiety in the moment

When anxiety spikes, your body is braced for a threat. Self-soothing for anxiety tells it, through the body, that it can stand down. Try these in order, and stop when you feel the edge come off.

1. Name it. "This is anxiety. It rises, it peaks and it passes." A name puts a little space between you and the feeling.
2. Make your out-breath longer. Breathe in through your nose, take a second short sip of air on top, then let it all out slowly through your mouth. This is called cyclic sighing. In a month-long Stanford study, five minutes a day of this exhale-focused breathing improved mood more, and slowed breathing more, than the same five minutes of mindfulness meditation. Two or three rounds help in the moment.
3. Talk to yourself by name. "Okay, Sam. You've felt this before and it passed. Breathe out." Across seven studies with 585 people, those who talked themselves through a stressful task using their own name or "you" instead of "I" showed less distress, and performed better when making a first impression or giving a speech.
4. Get warm. A hot shower, a hoodie, a heat pack or both hands around a hot drink.
5. Give the energy somewhere to go. Walk around the block, or squeeze and release your fists a few times.
6. Turn the input down. Dim the screen, step out of the loud room, put one calm song on.

Self-soothing with anxious attachment

If you have an anxious attachment style, the hardest moments usually involve one person: a reply that hasn't come, or a partner who seems distant. Your nervous system reads distance as danger and reaches for one fix, reassurance from them. Learning how to self-soothe anxious attachment means giving yourself the first dose of calm before you ask anyone else for it. You can still ask. You'll just ask from a steadier place.

1. Put the phone down, face down, out of reach. Set a 15-minute timer. Checking every 30 seconds keeps the alarm going.
2. Soothe your body before you touch the story. Hand on your chest, three long out-breaths, something warm to drink. The urge to send five texts comes from a body in alarm, and it fades as your body settles.
3. Talk to yourself the way a secure friend would. Use your name: "Jess, they're at work. One slow reply isn't a verdict on you. You're allowed to want closeness, and you'll be okay this next hour either way."
4. Do one thing that belongs only to you. A walk, a call with a friend, an episode of your show, ten minutes of a hobby. It reminds you that your life isn't on pause until they reply.
5. Then decide. If you still want to reach out after the timer, send something warm and simple, like "Thinking of you, talk later?" A calm message tends to get a calm answer.

For where the alarm comes from and how to ask for reassurance well, read more about anxious attachment style and what helps.

How to comfort yourself when you're alone

Comforting yourself alone is hard because the natural move is to reach for someone. When nobody's around, treat yourself the way you'd treat a friend who turned up at your door upset.

• Make the room kind. A lamp instead of the overhead light, a blanket, socks. Put the kettle on before you've decided whether you want tea.
• Give yourself a hug. Cross your arms, hold your upper arms and squeeze gently for a few breaths. In the touch study above, both a self-soothing touch and a hug from someone else beat the control groups on cortisol. Your own hands count.
• Put it into words. Say it out loud to the empty room, write it in your notes app, or type it to an AI chat that answers back. Once a swirling feeling is in sentences, you can see what it's actually about and what might help.
• Write back to yourself as a friend. Ask, "What would my best friend say if they saw me like this?" Then write it down in their voice. If being kind to yourself feels unnatural, these self-compassion exercises for the hard days make it easier.
• Put on something familiar. An old favorite show where you already know how it ends.
• Plan one bit of contact for tomorrow. A text to a friend in the morning, a coffee, a call. Being alone tonight doesn't mean being alone.

Building a self-soothe kit for hard nights

A self-soothe kit is a box, bag or drawer of things that comfort you, packed on a good day so you don't have to think on a bad one. When you're overwhelmed, choosing is the hard part. The kit chooses for you.

• Something soft: fuzzy socks, a heavy blanket, an old hoodie.
• Something to smell: a hand cream you love, a lavender sachet, a candle (a flameless one if you might fall asleep).
• Something to taste: herbal tea bags, hot chocolate packets, mints, a bar of good chocolate.
• Something to hold: a smooth stone, putty, a stress ball, a microwavable heat pack.
• Something to look at: a few printed photos, a card someone wrote you.
• Something to hear: earbuds and a playlist called "soft landing," saved for offline listening.
• A card in your own handwriting with what you need to hear. For example: "You've made it through every hard night so far. This feeling is temporary. You can text Maya in the morning."
• A short plan: "If I'm still awake and wired after 20 minutes, I'll get up, make tea in low light and breathe for five minutes."

Make a phone version too: a note titled "Hard night" with your list, a photo album that makes you smile, your playlist and a breathing exercise with a timer. Keep the physical kit by the bed, and reach for it on medium-bad nights as well, so it's a habit before you really need it.

If everything has felt like too much most days for two weeks or more, tell your doctor. It's common and very treatable.

Quick answers

What does it mean to self-soothe?

To self-soothe is to calm yourself when you're upset, using comfort rather than willpower: touch, warmth, a slower breath, a kind voice. It's the adult version of what babies learn when they start settling themselves to sleep. The goal is to take the edge off so you can think clearly again.

How do I self-soothe when I'm overwhelmed right now?

Put a hand on your chest and breathe out slowly, longer than you breathe in, for a minute or two. Then say one kind sentence to yourself using your name, and get warm with a blanket, a hot drink or a shower. Once the edge is off, deal with just the next small thing.

What are the DBT self-soothe skills?

They're a distress tolerance skill from dialectical behavior therapy: comforting yourself through each of your five senses. Sight, sound, smell, taste and touch each get one small, pleasant thing you pay full attention to. Writing a list for each sense in advance makes the skill much easier to use mid-storm.

Breathe and talk it through with Moodu

A breathing exercise with a timer is one of the fastest ways to self-soothe, anywhere, because you don't have to count while you're upset. Moodu has breathing and grounding exercises built in, each paced by an on-screen timer: the physiological sigh (the double in-breath from the anxiety section), box breathing, 4-7-8 breathing, a 3-minute breathing space and 5-4-3-2-1 grounding. Here's how box breathing works and why it calms you down.

When you want to talk as well as breathe, Meditation Journey, its guided conversation for slowing down, opens with: "Let's slow down together. Would you like a 2-minute breathing exercise, or to talk about what's been noisy in your head?" From there it helps you put the noise into words and find one small thing to do next. You can type, or tap the mic and say it out loud. A one-tap mood check-in shows you, over a few weeks, whether the hard nights are getting fewer.

Chats are encrypted before they're saved and never used for ads. Moodu is $39.99 a year after a 3-day free trial, or $4.99 a week.