Self-care and self-soothing are important skills that strengthen emotional well being and resilience. Here are some practical strategies to help strengthen both skills.
Updated: May 25, 2026
Self-soothing and self-care are skills that help people manage stress and emotional discomfort. Self-soothing helps you feel calmer in the moment, while self-care builds habits that support long-term emotional and physical well-being. Both can improve resilience and help you cope more effectively with stress.
Modern life can make it easier to focus only on deadlines and responsibilities. As a result, we neglect to take the time to care for ourselves, which can leave us feeling stressed and burned out.
Engaging in self-soothing and self-care is like refilling the gas in your tank. They help you perform better and for a longer time. Even if you face an emergency situation, you will be more equipped to cope because you’ve got a full tank!
Self-Soothing
Self-soothing is doing things that feel pleasant and comforting. It can provide relief from stress and help you feel a sense of calmness.
How to self-soothe
Self-soothing is a skill that gets easier with practice. The ideas below are most helpful if you try them repeatedly — fine tune them over time, and get them to work for you.
One of the best ways to self-soothe is to anchor your efforts to the five senses. Focus on the specific experience of your senses and avoid distractions. Check out the list below, try different suggestions, and find some that work for you!
Self-Soothing Activities to Try
Vision
- Watch a sunrise or sunset
- take a walk in a park and watch the leaves fall
- look at the stars at night
- watch your pet
- looking at pictures of your loved ones
Hearing
- Listen to calming music
- rainfall
- waves
- leaves rustling
- the sound of city traffic if that soothes you
Smell
- Use scented soap or lotion
- light a scented candle
- smell coffee
- lavender
- baked goods
- flowers
Taste
You can also soothe yourself by tasting your favorite foods! We often eat so fast that we don’t actually take the time to savor the foods we are eating. Taste your foods fully and enjoy the flavor and texture. Remember for the sake of this exercise you’re just allowing yourself a taste — not eating a whole meal.
Touch
- Take a hot bath
- Get a massage
- Brushing your hair
- Wrap yourself up in a blanket
- Pet your dog or cat
- Give yourself a hug
Self-Care
Self-care is doing things deliberately to maintain your emotional and physical health, knowing they will help you. Self-care is an important habit to practice regularly.
Self-care can make you less vulnerable to stress and negative emotions and can increase positive emotions. It can also help your self-image: when you take care of yourself, you increasingly think of yourself as worth taking care of. This is an emotionally important thing!
Ideas for your self-care checklist
Self-care activities need to be planned and scheduled. They require time and effort. It’s helpful to anticipate resistance to engaging in self-care when you are not in the mood. The trick is to get yourself to do it anyway — it’ll be worth it!
Self-Care: Physical Health
How you feel physically has a direct impact on your mental health. Therefore, it is important to develop a healthy lifestyle to improve your physical and mental well-being.
- Scheduling and attending your medical, and dentist appointments as well as routine check-ups.
- Following a nutritious and balanced diet
- Getting a sufficient quantity and quality of sleep. Lack of sleep can lead to a variety of mental and physical issues, including concentration difficulties, memory impairment, weight gain, and increased risk of serious cardiovascular problems. Try to get an adequate amount of sleep, usually between 7 to 9 hours. (See also our suggested sleep hacks to help you sleep better.)
- Being physically active. Exercise is beneficial for both physical and mental health. For many people, exercise can enhance mood and reduce anxiety and stress. Exercise also lowers the risk of heart attack, stroke, and developing type 2 diabetes.
Self-Care: Mental and Emotional Health
Taking a break from your busy schedule and engaging in pleasant activities can improve your mood and reduce anxiety and stress. Therefore, it is important to carve out time to engage in activities that you find meaningful and fun.
- Do at least one pleasant thing a day to increase positive experiences and emotions. The activities you engage in can be anything that prompts joy, enjoyment, or calmness. Some examples of pleasant activities include spending time and talking with friends/family, watching a movie, engaging in a hobby, laughing, playing with your pets, or reading a book.
- Focus your attention on pleasant events as they are happening. The pleasant activity will not work if you are distracted by something else and don’t fully attend to the experience.
- Keep in mind that engaging in one or two pleasant activities is unlikely to make a drastic difference in how you feel, but over time they will add up to a noticeable difference!
- Everyone’s self-care routine is going to be different. It is important for you to try different things and find the one that works for you.
Valuing yourself helps you be who you want to be
Self-care is not about doing whatever feels good in the moment. It involves making choices that support your well-being over time, even when they require effort. It shows that you are important and worthy. By taking care of yourself, you can function better, be more present for your loved ones, and feel your best.
Now that you know how to be awesome at self-soothing and self-care, don’t just file the information away. Make a plan to integrate these tips into your life starting today! Habits take repetitions to get established — delaying won’t help. Good luck!
Frequently Asked Questions
What is self-soothing?
Self-soothing is intentionally doing things that feel pleasant and comforting. It can help you feel calm when you’re starting out frazzled or angry or otherwise dealing with strong emotions. Self-soothing is an important skill for all of us.
What’s the difference between self-soothing and self-care?
Self-soothing focuses on helping you feel calmer in the moment, while self-care involves habits and routines that support long-term emotional and physical well-being.
Is self-soothing part of DBT?
Yes, self-soothing is one of the distress tolerance skills. More specifically, it’s considered one of the “crisis survival” skills. It’s meant to be used in times when you’re feeling emotionally distressed or strong emotions. It can help you get through that tough time until wise mind returns.
Can self-soothing help anxiety?
Yes, if you’re feeling anxious, self-soothing may reduce the severity of those feelings. However, if anxiety is chronic for you, you may need to use other strategies to help you reduce the frequency of your anxious episodes.
What are examples of self-soothing activities?
Common helpful self-soothing activities include: taking a warm bath or shower, smelling coffee or flowers, listening to calming music, or looking at something peaceful and beautiful like the stars at night, or a sunset.
This article was completed with contributions from Grace Anderson, Ph.D.
