Why Learning to Self-Sooth is Imperative for Male Survivors
The Purpose of Self-Soothing
The main reason why you, as a male survivor, benefit from learning how to self sooth is that it gives you options to take care of yourself in any situation. It gives you the ultimate freedom, that of choice. Even though you may make some decisions that have negative impacts, you can learn to re-trace your steps; to notice a method of self-soothing that would have helped you in that circumstance.
The Reason Why Survivors Sabotage Themselves
As a survivor you had to find methods to survive and withstand the abuse you experienced. When your past trauma gets triggered you may react with the tactics you use to alleviate the pain or stress you endure are based in fear.
Even though you may want more balance and integration in your life you may sabotage opportunities and relationships for the fear that if you obtained joy or peace there would be a price. That the happiness will end in a destructive manner or that somehow you don’t deserve love.
What is Self-Soothing?
Self-soothing is a method of learning alternative ways to take care of yourself in any situation. Repeating habitual patterns keeps you from living a full life. You can consciously choose ways that allow you to open new possibilities for growth and transformation.
How do you learn to self soothe?
Many survivors of sexual abuse have developed unhealthy strategies to cope with their complicated feelings. Unfortunately this can result in developing a self-abusing pattern that lessens the current pain but creates a new spiraling down of negative behavior.
Instead of choosing addictive tendencies to dull the pain you can find healthy ways to be with difficult situations based in nurturing and self-care. The point is to notice when uncomfortable feelings arise and have methods at hand that allow you to take care of yourself the way a healthy adult would comfort a child in need.
In many ways you are developing a system of re-parenting yourself in the way you wish you had been protected. The goal is to minimize the impact of the pain, to consciously choose another way of approaching difficulty.
What are some methods of self-soothing?
Each individual will have his or her own way of self-soothing. From breathing exercises to going for a walk, to free writing or other creative activities, what is right for one person is dependent on who you are and what you respond to.
This is a good way to find out what will work for you:
• Choose a person or an animal that you have limitless compassion for. You don’t need to know them. What is important is that if you knew this being was in pain you would want to bring him/ her comfort.
• Imagine that this being is having a difficult time whether it is physical, emotional or psychological. Notice what the pain is like for them and see how it affects you. They do not deserve this pain. In this situation you may feel drawn to go to them and comfort them but resist this impulse.
• See how you can help this being from a distance. What will work best? Imagining their pain disintegrating, surrounding them a healing light, drawing what the pain looks like, taking deep breaths as you might encourage them to do. What seems best will depend on the being you see in pain.
• Once you go through this process start again from the beginning choosing a different being to focus on. Write down how you held compassion in each instance and then use this list when you get triggered. Carry it with you, put it on post-it notes in different places. Let it be a guide to helping you choose healthy ways to self-soothe.
Remember: you can do this from a joyful or neutral feeling state as well.
Each individual situation you encounter will require different methods to ease the pain, to create a self-soothing tool kit.
Retracing the Steps of a Difficult Situation
You will come across situations where you sabotage yourself, however, you can retrace your steps and see how you could do it differently. There may be several different ways in which you could have handled the situation. You can pinpoint the moment when you got angry or fearful or how you acted on impulse. You may have daily activities that are habitually painful.
Allow yourself the space to look at the situation as you would in the exercise above. As if you are watching yourself about to make a choice that will not benefit you pause the scene as if it were a movie. How would you change this scene if you were directing it?
In Summary
At times it is easier to give comfort or have compassion for others or people we don’t know. We can see that a cashier is having a hard day and we make small talk or offer a smile of appreciation. It is important to do the same for yourself when painful instances occur. Even if you cannot do it at the time, you can retrace your steps and see what self-soothing method would have worked best.
This may not be easy but it doesn’t have to be difficult either. Stay simple and practice it a few times a day when you are not experiencing a hard time. See how you can give nurturing to yourself despite your mood or situation.
As a survivor you were put into compromising situations that are not your fault. It’s never too late to create a healthy paradigm of self-care that helps you regulate your emotional state and gives you the ability to live your life in joy.
What’s Next?
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