How Early Experiences Can Affect Our Capacity to Self-Soothe

27 Jan

In the previous blog post, we explored what self-soothing is — how it involves calming the body, becoming present and relating to ourselves with kindness rather than judgment. For many people, however, soothing does not come easily. Even when we understand what might help, offering comfort to ourselves can feel unfamiliar, awkward or as though there is a block in the way.

This difficulty is not a personal failing. Often, it has roots much earlier in our lives.

Learning How Comfort Works

From infancy, we learn about soothing through our relationships with others, most often our primary caregivers. In an ideal situation, when we were distressed as children, someone would have noticed, acknowledged our feelings, spoken gently and helped us to settle and calm.

But not everyone received this consistently. Many of us grew up in environments where emotions were dismissed, criticised or met with harshness. Others learned that they needed to manage their feelings alone, stay quiet, minimise their needs or “be strong.” In these contexts, there may have been little space for emotional attunement, reassurance or comfort.

As a result, we may not have fully learned how to feel soothed — either by others or by ourselves.

Attachment and Internal Soothing

Over time, the ways we were soothed — or not soothed — become internalised. We develop an inner relationship with ourselves that often mirrors our early relational experiences.

If we were met with care and understanding, we may find it easier to offer these qualities inwardly. If care was limited, inconsistent, critical or absent, our inner world and emotions may feel harsher, quieter or more distant. When emotions arise later in life, we may block them out, feel overwhelmed by them, or struggle to regulate ourselves, because the experience of being comforted was never fully internalised.

This is why compassionate self-talk, presence and nervous-system regulation can feel so challenging at first. We are not doing something wrong — we are gently building an internal experience that may not have existed before.

Building the Capacity to Feel Soothing

The ability to soothe ourselves is not fixed. It can grow slowly, through repeated experiences of safety, patience and attunement — both with ourselves and, at times, with others.

This might involve:

Using grounding or breathing practices to help the body feel safer and calmer
Practising staying with sensations or emotions for short periods, rather than pushing them away
Offering small, believable words of kindness to ourselves, rather than forced reassurance
Taking in moments of safety and connection within other relationships and allowing it to register

Over time, these experiences can begin to reshape our internal world. Soothing becomes less effortful, less foreign and more accessible.

Closing Thoughts

If you struggle to comfort yourself or regulate your emotions, it does not mean there is something wrong with you. It means you adapted in ways that once made sense, developing strategies to help you stay safe, connected or accepted in your early relationships and experiences.

Learning to soothe yourself now is about offering yourself the care, safety and understanding that may not have been available before, and gently allowing room for relationships that can offer this too.

If reading this blog post feels relevant to you and you feel a bit stuck or would like extra support in navigating past experiences or managing difficult emotions, feel free to reach out to me and we can explore whether having sessions together feels right for you.