GUIDE · DBT

The self-soothe skill in DBT: comfort for a moment you can't fix yet

The argument ended an hour ago, and your chest is still buzzing. Nothing can be settled before morning, so you wrap up in the softest blanket you own and hold a warm mug while a familiar song plays. That's self-soothing, a distress tolerance skill from dialectical behavior therapy (DBT): you comfort yourself through your senses so a painful stretch passes without you making it worse.

What self-soothing means in DBT

Marsha Linehan developed DBT, first for chronically suicidal people diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. Its skills fall into four areas, and one of them, distress tolerance, is about getting through painful situations without making them worse. Self-soothing is one of its crisis survival skills, along with STOP and TIPP.

Linehan's teaching notes define self-soothing as doing things that feel pleasant and comforting and that bring relief from stress or pain. She also calls it being gentle and kind to yourself. The tools are the five senses: vision, hearing, smell, taste and touch. A slow body scan counts too, and the version for teens by Jill Rathus and Alec Miller adds a sixth sense, movement, which adults can borrow.

Self-soothing may help you calm down, but its real aim is narrower. Linehan writes that crisis survival skills are ways to survive painful emotions and aren't designed to end them. Any relief may not last. If time has passed and you haven't done anything to make things worse, the skill worked, even if you don't feel better.

When self-soothing fits, and when it doesn't

Self-soothing fits a painful stretch you can't change right now. Linehan's handout on crisis survival skills names intense pain that can't be helped quickly. It also names the urge to act on your emotions when acting would only make things worse. That might be the night after a breakup or the hours before test results come back.

One of her teaching examples is a parent who realizes, one evening at home, that they made a big mistake at work. Nothing can be done about it until morning. They play games with their daughter, then soak in a hot bath with music on and a book that has nothing to do with work.

It's the wrong tool for a problem you could start solving now. The same handout says crisis survival skills aren't for everyday problems. When a task can't wait, Linehan suggests soothing first to bring the emotion down, then getting the task done.

It's also the wrong tool when you aren't safe. If you're thinking about suicide or about hurting yourself, a hot shower and a playlist aren't a safety plan. Reach out for help now, using the crisis contacts at the bottom of this page.

Self-soothe examples for each of the five senses

Linehan's handout lists plenty of ideas for each sense, and her notes ask people to check the ones they're willing to try and add their own. Use the examples below the same way, and keep only what feels gentle and pleasant to you.

Vision: watch a candle flame or the light change at sunset, or look through photos from a trip you loved. Make one corner of a room pleasant to look at, and sit there when a hard evening hits.

Hearing: make a playlist for hard nights before you need one. Try rain or ocean sounds, a podcast host whose voice you like, or humming, which you can do anywhere.

Smell: open a bag of coffee and breathe in, rub in a lotion you love, or simmer a cinnamon stick on the stove. Linehan's notes also name lavender and vanilla. Skip any scent tied to a painful memory.

Taste: sip herbal tea or hot chocolate slowly, let a peppermint melt on your tongue, or eat one square of chocolate and notice the flavor. The teen handout calls for a nonalcoholic drink and warns against overdoing it, which is good advice at any age.

Touch: take a hot shower, change into your softest clothes, or pet a dog or cat. Clean sheets and a heavy blanket count. Your own hands work too: rest one on your chest and the other on your belly, and notice the warmth and pressure. That's the self-soothing touch tested in the studies further down this page.

Movement: rock gently in a chair, stretch slowly, dance in the kitchen or walk around the block. If sitting still makes you more restless, reach for movement first.

Body scan: move your attention slowly from your toes to the top of your head, noticing each area as you go. Linehan's notes say a full scan takes up to 30 minutes, and a short one covering two or three areas takes 5 to 10.

Build your self-soothe kit

Put the kit together on a calm day, so you don't have to come up with ideas in the middle of a bad one. Rathus and Miller's teen handouts suggest a shoebox, sturdy bag or basket at home. For school or work, they suggest a smaller kit that fits in a pencil case or lunchbox.

1. Pick two containers. Keep the big one at home and the small one in your bag or desk drawer. A note on your phone can hold whatever won't fit.
2. Go sense by sense. Read through the examples above, mark the ones you're willing to try, and add your own. Aim for at least one item per sense, plus one way to move.
3. Keep it gentle. Soothing items should feel comforting, like soft fabric, a warm drink or a quiet song. Strong jolts such as ice or very sour candy belong to distraction and TIPP, so keep them separate if you use them.
4. Add a card for empty-handed moments. Write down three moves that need no supplies, such as a hand on your chest, a slow stretch or humming a song you know. Add two people you could call or text.
5. Set a time limit and a next step. Decide how long you'll soothe before you check in with yourself, say 30 minutes, and write what comes after: the email, the dishes, bed.
6. Rate it before and after. Each time you use the kit, rate from 0 to 100 how well you can tolerate the distress without making things worse, the scale Linehan uses. Getting through counts as a success, even when the number barely moves.
7. Practice on ordinary bad days. Try one item after a rough commute or a tense call, so it feels familiar before a real crisis. Linehan's worksheets build from two practices between sessions to several a day.
8. Refresh it every few weeks. Take out what you never reach for and replace scents or snacks that have gone stale. If an item starts pulling you toward too much, like a whole bag of candy, swap it for something else.

Keep the home kit where you'll see it on a bad night, by the bed or the couch, rather than in the back of a closet.

How self-soothing differs from distraction, grounding and TIPP

Distraction, the Wise Mind ACCEPTS skill, works by cutting down your contact with whatever set off the emotion. Mostly it moves your attention to a chore, a puzzle or someone else's needs. Its last letter, Sensations, uses intense ones, like holding ice or blasting music, to pull your attention away from the distress. Self-soothing uses gentle, pleasant sensations you can settle into.

Grounding uses the same senses for a different job. The 5-4-3-2-1 exercise has you name what you can see, hear, touch, smell and taste, pleasant or not, to bring your attention back to the present. Self-soothing picks something comforting on purpose. You can use both: ground yourself first if you feel far away or flooded, then reach for the kit.

TIPP changes your body chemistry fast with cold water, intense exercise, paced breathing and paired muscle relaxation when an emotion peaks. For moments when you feel overwhelmed, Linehan's notes suggest a TIPP skill first, then problem solving, with soothing saved as a reward. STOP is the pause before you act on an urge, and self-soothing can be how you spend its step back.

Where self-soothing goes wrong

Soothing can slowly turn into hiding. Linehan stresses that crisis survival skills are for short stretches. Used to avoid every unwanted feeling, they leave problems unsolved. Her examples of coping that turns harmful when overused include eating, ignoring problems and going to sleep. Watch for comfort that has slid into numbing out, like hours in bed with a show you aren't really watching. Cap the soothing at a set time and name what comes next. Emotion regulation skills help once you've come down, and for pain that can't change, radical acceptance is the longer-term skill.

Food, drinks and shopping can stop being soothing. Linehan's notes warn that every item on the self-soothe handout can cause problems if used to excess. Soothing through taste means a small amount, eaten slowly, and a binge doesn't count even if it starts with one cookie. Alcohol is the clearest trap: a 2021 meta-analysis of 229 studies found that drinking to cope was one of the two strongest predictors of drinking problems. Window-shopping is on Linehan's list for the eyes, and the looking is the soothing part. If browsing keeps ending in purchases you regret, drop it from the kit.

Comfort can feel like something you don't deserve. Linehan's notes describe people who feel guilty or ashamed when they soothe themselves, and others who think comfort should come from someone else. For them, she treats self-soothing as opposite action and writes that it gets easier in time. A 2011 study linked fear of being compassionate toward yourself with self-criticism, depression, anxiety and stress. Begin with something neutral, like clean sheets, and let the guilty thoughts be there without obeying them.

Relaxing can make some people more anxious. Linehan's notes mention relaxation-induced panic, which can come from expecting to feel calm, and say you're free to stop a body scan at any point. Keep your eyes open or switch to movement.

How strong the evidence is

We couldn't find a study that tested DBT's self-soothe skill on its own. The research covers DBT as a whole, or its skills as a package.

That package has real support, mostly for self-harm and suicidal behavior. A 2019 meta-analysis of 18 controlled trials found that DBT reduced self-directed violence, such as suicide attempts and self-injury, and cut the use of psychiatric crisis services. Its effect on suicidal thoughts wasn't significant. A 2015 trial enrolled 99 women with borderline personality disorder and recent suicide attempts. The versions of DBT that included skills training reduced self-injury and depression more than the one without.

Which skills did the work is still an open question. A 2010 analysis found that rising skills use accounted for drops in suicide attempts and depression, but it averaged all the skills together. Skills training without the rest of DBT has less behind it: a 2015 review of 17 trials called the evidence preliminary.

The studies closest to self-soothing aren't about DBT. A 2021 lab study put 159 healthy young adults through a stressful mock job interview. Those who took 20 seconds of soothing touch just before their speech, mostly a hand on the chest and one on the belly, had lower cortisol afterward than a control group. Their heart rates and their own stress ratings didn't differ. In a 2026 trial, 78 stressed university students did five minutes of the same touch or a brief meditation each morning for two weeks. Both eased stress after each session by about the same amount, and neither changed scores on end-of-study questionnaires.

Two broader reviews point the same way. A 2020 meta-analysis of 104 randomized trials found small to moderate stress reductions from music. A 2023 review of 18 studies found that sensory rooms on psychiatric wards likely reduce patients' distress.

None of this tested self-soothing the way DBT teaches it, in a real crisis. It's reasonable to try, judged by Linehan's test of getting through without making things worse. It doesn't treat any condition, and it doesn't replace therapy.

Plan your kit with Helpy

The chat below runs with Helpy, the site's AI assistant. Tell it when your hardest moments usually hit and where you are when they do. It can help you choose an item for each sense and plan what you'll do once the worst has passed.

Evidence and sources

• Distress Tolerance chapter (teaching notes), Linehan, DBT Skills Training Manual, Second Edition (Guilford, 2015): the definition of self-soothing, the five senses and body scan, feeling undeserving, overuse, and the 0 to 100 rating. Teaching notes from a sample chapter the publisher posts, not a study.
• Wesleyan University Counseling and Psychological Services, Crisis Survival Skills handouts: a university's copy of Linehan's 2015 handouts on when to use crisis survival skills, ACCEPTS and self-soothing. Not research.
• DBT Center of San Diego, adolescent DBT handouts: a clinic's copy of handouts from Rathus and Miller's DBT Skills Manual for Adolescents (Guilford, 2015), with the six senses, including movement, and the crisis survival kit. Not research.
• Linehan Institute, What are DBT and DBT Skills?: names Linehan as DBT's developer, notes it was first built for chronically suicidal people with borderline personality disorder, and lists the four skill areas. It doesn't mention self-soothing.
• DeCou, Comtois and Landes, Behavior Therapy, 2019 (PubMed): a meta-analysis of 18 controlled trials; DBT reduced self-directed violence and crisis service use, with no significant effect on suicidal ideation. DBT as a whole; we read only the abstract.
• Linehan et al., JAMA Psychiatry, 2015 (PubMed): 99 women with borderline personality disorder; versions with skills training reduced self-injury and depression more than DBT without it. No single skills were tested, and we read only the abstract.
• Neacsiu, Rizvi and Linehan, Behaviour Research and Therapy, 2010 (PubMed): in 108 women from three trials, rising skills use accounted for drops in suicide attempts and depression. Self-reported use, averaged across all skills; we read the full text.
• Valentine et al., Journal of Clinical Psychology, 2015 (PubMed): a review of 17 trials of DBT skills training without the rest of DBT found preliminary evidence. Study limits rule out strong conclusions; we read only the abstract.
• Dreisoerner et al., Compr Psychoneuroendocrinol, 2021 (PubMed): 159 healthy young adults; 20 seconds of self-soothing touch or a hug before a stressful speech meant lower cortisol than a control task, with no difference in heart rate or self-rated stress. Mostly psychology students, one lab session.
• Maier et al., Stress and Health, 2026 (PubMed): 78 stressed, mostly young female students; daily five-minute self-soothing touch lowered momentary stress about as much as brief meditation. Neither changed end-of-study questionnaires, and the meditation control may have worked on its own.
• de Witte et al., Health Psychology Review, 2020 (PubMed): a meta-analysis of 104 randomized trials; music interventions cut physiological and psychological stress by small to moderate amounts. Not a test of music as a crisis skill; we read only the abstract.
• Haig and Hallett, International Journal of Mental Health Nursing, 2023 (PubMed): 18 studies of sensory rooms on adult psychiatric wards; likely less distress, but no clear evidence on violence, restraint or seclusion. We read only the abstract.
• Bresin and Mekawi, Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, 2021 (PubMed): 229 studies; drinking to cope and drinking for enhancement were the strongest predictors of drinking problems. Few studies followed people over time; we read only the abstract.
• Gilbert et al., Psychology and Psychotherapy, 2011 (PubMed): in 222 students and 53 therapists, fear of self-compassion went with self-criticism, depression, anxiety and stress. Questionnaires that show links, not causes; we read only the abstract.

Read next

Distress tolerance: the TIPP skill for getting through an unbearable momentAnother crisis skill from DBT5-4-3-2-1 Grounding: Get Back to the PresentThe five senses, used for groundingThe STOP skill in DBT: a pause between the urge and the actionA pause before acting on an urgeWise Mind ACCEPTS in DBT: seven places to put your attention until the worst of it passesDistraction on purpose in a crisis momentIMPROVE the moment in DBT: seven ways to make a painful stretch easier to bearSeven ways through a painful momentStress eating: why you crave food when you're stressed, and how to stopEating to calm down

← All CBT guides