Self-Soothe with the Five Senses (DBT)
A worksheet for building a personal self-soothing plan using sight, sound, smell, taste, touch and movement, based on the DBT distress tolerance skill Self-Soothe.
About this resource
Self-Soothe is a crisis survival skill in the distress tolerance module of Marsha Linehan's DBT skills training. It teaches the client to reduce the intensity of painful emotion by deliberately engaging the senses with comforting, pleasant experiences: vision, hearing, smell, taste and touch, with movement added in the second edition of the skills manual. The aim is not to solve the problem or make the emotion disappear, but to get through a difficult period without making it worse.
Many clients with emotion regulation difficulties have never been soothed reliably by others and have not learned to soothe themselves, or believe they do not deserve comfort. Building a concrete, personalised list in advance means the client is not trying to think of options while dysregulated. This worksheet structures that planning, sense by sense, and asks the client to assemble a physical kit.
The professional version adds notes on the common obstacle of guilt about self-care, on avoiding soothing strategies that shade into avoidance or that have side effects (food, spending, alcohol), and on pairing Self-Soothe with TIPP when arousal is very high.
How to use it
- Introduce Self-Soothe as a way of getting through distress, not fixing it. Distinguish it from distraction: soothing is about comfort and calm rather than occupation.
- Work through each sense in session and help the client generate at least two or three specific options per sense. Push for specificity: 'music' becomes a named playlist; 'a nice smell' becomes a particular hand cream.
- Watch for options that carry risks or that the client uses to avoid (large amounts of food, alcohol, online shopping). Steer toward items that are safe, available and affordable.
- Ask the client to assemble a self-soothe kit at home and, if possible, a small portable version. Review at the next session.
- If the client says they do not deserve comfort, treat this as a belief to be examined rather than an obstacle to work around. Self-validation and self-compassion resources can follow.
References
- Linehan, M. M. (2015). DBT Skills Training Manual (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.
- Linehan, M. M. (2015). DBT Skills Training Handouts and Worksheets (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.
- Rathus, J. H., & Miller, A. L. (2015). DBT Skills Manual for Adolescents. Guilford Press.
