When Joy Feels Impossible: How to Self-Soothe in Hard Moments

Queer Joy Practice #12

This is How To Queer Joy, a newsletter dedicated to LGBTQ+ mental health and joy practices, written by queer psychologist Kiki Fehling.

This week's queer joy practice: self-soothing. When you’re feeling overwhelmed or numb, engaging with your body's senses—even in small ways—can help you practice self-compassion and reconnect.

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When Joy Seems Inaccessible

Earlier this week, I went through a really tough time. It was one of those life experiences that completely knocks you out. For about two days, I was grieving, anxious, and exhausted. Somehow I felt both completely despondent and completely numb.

This same kind of experience—feeling intensely agitated or upset, while also feeling numb or empty—can happen for many different reasons. Whether you’re facing a distinct loss or struggling with chronic burnout, joy can feel impossible during these times. It’s like there’s too much cold, shame, loneliness, or hopelessness.

Whenever I feel this way, I’ve found that it’s most useful to not try to feel better, and instead try to feel present. My goal becomes: Reconnection. Contact. Touching back into my actual lived experience.

Now, let me be clear: numbness is not “bad.” Dissociation can be very protective during very painful moments.

Distraction can be super helpful when things feel totally overwhelming. But staying in distraction or dissociation only is not helpful. Consistently suppressing or avoiding emotions causes problems. It’s important to let yourself actually be in the moment, in the emotions, in your body—as scary, painful, or difficult as it can be.

During the two days when my grief was strongest, I played a lot of video games. They distracted me from the painful physical sensations, emotions, and thoughts. But, I also periodically took time to feel my grief. When I did, I intentionally used tools to stay connected to the moment in a way that felt less overwhelming. For me, that primarily was through self-soothing.

Self-Soothing as Reconnection

Here, I’m talking about self-soothing as it’s defined in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT). In DBT, self-soothing is a distress tolerance skill for getting through difficult times by purposefully comforting yourself through your physical sensations.

Pretty straightforward, but still very powerful—particularly during the terribly painful moments I’m talking about here. And, I’d argue, particularly for queer people.

These painful moments are often marked by disconnection. When we’re numb, we’re often disconnected from our bodies, ourselves, our experience. When we’re agitated and overwhelmed (feeling intensely, rather than numb), we’re often disconnected from our inner sense of wisdom or groundedness.

LGBTQ+ people often rely on coping strategies like emotional suppression, avoidance, or dissociation—possibly related to the discrimination and LGBTQ-specific stressors we experience. So, during intense moments of pain, we may cope in ways that disconnect us from pain but then (unfortunately) further disconnect us from ourselves.

How Self-Soothing Helps

Self-soothing is a coping skill that can help alleviate suffering while keeping you connected to your embodied experience. It’s one option for coping with painful emotions without abandoning yourself. It can help you re-contact the present moment when you feel numb.

In my experience, self-soothing in these worst moments does not help me feel relieved, per se. But it makes it a bit easier to cope. And it make it easier to remember and believe some important truths: that I am supported, that life is beautiful and worth living even when devastating, and that this pain too shall pass.

This week, between the video-game-playing, when I would let myself feel my grief, I’d crawl into bed and cover myself with my weighted blanket while I cried. I’d appreciate the weight, how it held me. Self-soothing, even in this smallest of ways, reconnected me to myself and to the potential of joy—even if only the idea or future possibility of it.

Self-soothing in any moment can help you take care of yourself, practice self-compassion, and build the foundation for accessing queer joy in the long-term.

How To Practice: (Micro) Self-Soothing

In difficult moments, self-soothing as reconnection looks like:

1. Sensing: Intentionally introducing a comforting sensory experience.

2. Centering: Intentionally being mindful of the sensory experience.

To Sense:

Think about your senses—sight, smell, taste, hearing, touch, temperature, movement, position, pressure, etc.

Think about what sense experiences feel comforting, pleasurable, nourishing, positively nostalgic, or just good.

Then do something to access one of these sensory experiences. When you’re struggling, you’re often looking for small, simple, micro self-soothing options. For example:

• Turn off bright lights, and turn on soft, warm, or moving lighting.

• Put on noise-blocking headphones, and listen to silence or your favorite music.

• Stretch, fidget, dance, or move your body.

• Wrap yourself in a weighted or fuzzy blanket.

• Put a warm or a cool pack on your neck or face.

• Open a window for fresh breeze or spray your favorite scent.

• Eat comfort food—maybe just one bite—or sip a healing drink.

To Center:

Pay attention to what you’re physically feeling.

• You might gently describe to yourself what you’re sensing or experiencing. “I feel held by the sensation of the blanket’s heaviness against my arms and chest.” “I noticed tension in my shoulders that lessened as I moved.” “This scent reminds me of happy memories; I like it.”

• If painful emotions come up, let yourself feel them. Keep soothing yourself as you do.

• If distracting or upsetting thoughts come up, bring your attention back to the physical sensations as best you can.

• If you’re able to feel pleasure or relief from the sense experience, let yourself feel that and savor it.

If no pleasure or relief comes, that’s ok.

Remind yourself: This is about reconnection, not happiness. Self-soothing is you taking care of yourself, the way you’d take care of a loved one. This moment is hard, and it will pass. You’re taking care of yourself, and that is enough for now.

Let Small Things Count

Self-soothing can help you practice self-compassion in any moment—building the foundation for accessing queer joy long-term.¹

But, in painful moments, remind yourself that small is OK. The smallest self-soothing action can create a shift—and even a small shift can make a huge difference when you’re suffering.

A final note: another huge way to reconnect to the present moment is through connecting with other people. That includes finding a therapist, if you’re chronically struggling and no coping skills seem to help. But, really, I’m talking about connecting with friends and queer community, sharing your joys and pains as they happen. But that topic is for another week.

As always, let me know if you have questions or want me to know how this practice goes for you.

And if you also are going through hard times right now, please know you’re not alone, and I’m sending you lovingkindness.

Kiki

I find these ripples in snow to be incredibly soothing to look at. (Photo mine.)

1. It’s been life-changing for me to learn more about my sense experiences—my sensory preferences, aversions, sensitivities, etc—and make changes based on them. So I created a self-assessment resource to try to help other people with this same process. If you’re interested, you can download it for free here.