Absolutely Nothing

by

Dr. Ken Tangen

There are times in life when you want to feel absolutely nothing. You are stuck in a situation beyond your control, facing intolerable consequences and overwhelmed with negative emotions.

I’ve been there. And I hated it. I wanted peace, calm and happiness but I would have settled for nothing. It was too big of a jump to go to the opposite of where I was. I would have settled for the middle ground. I wanted to take a break. I wanted to just not feel.

What I really needed was better self-soothing skills.

What Is Self-Soothing?

Self-soothing is the skill of emotional control. It is calming yourself down, all by yourself. It is thinking, feeling and doing things that nudge and force you to be calm and relaxed. Sometimes a nudge is enough. Sometimes brute force is required to gain emotional equilibrium.

Self-soothing may be the most important thing you can teach yourself and your children. Babies don’t come with the ability to control their emotions. They have to be taught how to settle down. Parents should help their babies learn to calm themselves, instead of letting them cry themselves to sleep. For more on teaching infants to self-sooth, click here. But for the moment, remember that when it comes to emotions, we’re all babies.

You need to self-sooth too. The key to maximizing happiness is the ability to calm yourself and control your thoughts. Everything occurs in a context, so it is not possible to think of absolutely nothing. But you can focus your attention on some aspects and defocus on others.

List All Your Routines

Notice all the routines you have in your own life. When you get up in the morning, you probably have a preference for which shoe you put on first. People have left- or right-foot preferences. We are creatures of habit.

You have a routine for when you drink coffee, shower, exercise and get dressed. You probably put on your socks before your shoes. You exercise before you take a shower, etc. You have a set way of doing things. We make a logical progression from one activity to another.

If you have children, use your experience with them to help design your own morning and evening routines. Make their routines a sub-portion of your routine and then add to it. After the kids are in bed, set a routine for your bedtime. Turn off the electronic screens and notifications. Read, relax and review your day. Make a logical progression for busy to calm. Create and maintain a de-activation routine.

There Are Limits

Keep in mind that self-soothing isn’t a cure-all. It won’t work on everything. There are times you will feel overwhelmed and times when you handle stress well. Past success doesn’t guarantee future success but neither does past failure predict future failure. Even if you’ve never been good at it in the past, you can learn to ease your anxiety in the present and in the future.

Like any habit, calming yourself takes practice. It is not an innate ability. And it is not instant. People vary in how quickly they learn to ease their anxieties. But for most people, it takes years to get really good at it.

In my HOW TO BREAK HABITS course, I show that there are four ways to break a habit. These four techniques are the same steps you need to take to self-sooth. The four techniques are based on Edwin Guthrie’s FITS model. FITS stands for Flooding, Incompatible Response, Threshold and Sidetracking. For the longer version, click here to register for the course. It’s free.

The short version is that the best approach is to distract and replace.

DISTRACT & REPLACE

Distraction for stressful or unwanted thoughts works temporarily. But on its own, it doesn’t provide long-term relief. We tend to start with pushing away unwanted thoughts worries and anxiety. But they always bound back in. The more you push them out, the stronger they comes back.

To prevent rebound, add a counterpunch: replacement. When a worry hits you, distract yourself AND replace it. Block the hit with distraction and uppercut with replacement.

You have a lot of replacement options. Here are some of my favorites:

People

You can replace worry with talking to your friends and family (about something else). You can replace anxiety with conservation. The trick is to not converse about anxiety; talking about being anxious can lead to being more anxious. Instead, create a current experience and talk about it. Play board games, chat about TV shows, argue about politics, laugh about your neighbors. Replace your self-talk with actual talk.

Hug your teddy bear and whisper secrets. Teddy bears are people too. If normal people aren’t around, drag all your childhood toys out of storage, line them up and have summit. Act out your own Toy Story. The release is in the telling, not in who listens.

Animals

Pet a dog, ride a horse, bathe a cat. Do something fun or challenging.

Replace By Doing

Take the offense and do something good. In addition to distraction, doing provides replacement. Replace unwanted thought and emotions with doing simple tasks. Rake a pattern in the sand. Husk corn, shell peas, or peel potatoes. Sweep the porch, weed the garden and water the plants. Interact with your environment.

Replace By Not-Doing

Change your focus to the present moment. Put all of your attention on Now. Not the past, not the future. Focus on your senses and develop a sense of mindfulness.

Some people like to focus on breathing. In through the nose, out through the mouth. But other senses work too. Listen to all the sounds around you. Focus on being still.

Relax your muscles and center yourself. Tighten each muscle and then relax it. Start with your feet and work your way up. Relax.

Compare the pros and cons of where you’re at. Focus only on now. What is good in this moment? What would you prefer? “I am safe and dry. I would prefer it warmer but I am all right the way it is.”

Have A Preventative Plan

Trouble is going to come, so be prepared. Make a plan for how you will handle it. Make a list of emotional emergency contacts. Decide what you’ll do and how you’ll do it. Make a checklist and post it somewhere easy for you to spot.

Have An Emotional Emergency Kit

Further prepare by making an emotional emergency kit. Store some favorite snack in the freezer. Make a little box or backpack of items you’ll need. Here are some things you might include:

• candle and matches
• inspirational book
• list of favorite quotes
• list of favorite tunes
• list of emotional contacts
• something soft and cuddly
• blanket
• silly slippers
• toothbrush
• handkerchief (cloth feels better than paper; and you can pretend it’s the 1940s)
• favorite photo book
• paper and pen
• crayons & coloring book
• anything that makes you feel loved

Summary

Self-soothing is important in everyday life, and even more important when emotional emergencies pop up. But it is doable. You can calm yourself down all by yourself.

Put your focus on the present context. Limit your thinking to now. Sort through your feeling, deferring worry and anxiety for tomorrow. Shift your attention to your breathing, your pulse, and your muscles.

Be prepared. Create your plan and collect the materials you’ll need. And practice. A daily practice of quieting, calming, prayer or mediation can help you practice the activities that get you through tough times.

When in doubt, be nice to yourself.

© 2017 Ken Tangen