Self-Regulation for High-Functioners
Why Childhood Patterns Still Shape How You Cope Today
Why It’s Not Just a Bubble Bath, and What Childhood Has to Do With It
Let’s start with the obvious:
Self-soothing is a term that gets thrown around a lot, especially on social media. One minute it’s bubble baths and chamomile tea. The next, it’s being told to “journal through it.”
But if you’ve ever felt overwhelmed, anxious, or stuck in a loop of self-sabotage, you know this:
Those things don’t always work. And when they don’t, it’s not because you’re doing them wrong. It’s because most of us never learned how to truly self-soothe in the first place.
And yeah, there’s a reason for that.
What Most People Get Wrong About Self-Soothing
Here’s the mistake I see over and over:
People think self-soothing = distraction.
Scrolling your phone, binge-watching a show, having a drink, eating to take the edge off, those feel like self-soothing because you get a dopamine hit, but they’re usually self-escaping.
They quiet the discomfort for now. But the tension? The restlessness? The shame spiral after? Still there. Sometimes louder.
Real self-soothing doesn’t disconnect you from yourself.
It brings you closer.
And that’s where things get tricky.
How Childhood Shapes the Way You Cope as an Adult
Let me walk you back for a second.
When you were a baby, you had zero ability to regulate your feelings. That wasn’t your fault. It’s just how brains develop. Your nervous system depended entirely on someone else to help you feel calm, safe, and attended to. This is called co-regulation.
So if the adults around you were warm, attentive, and emotionally available, you likely learned how to internalize that comfort over time.
But if your parents were struggling to manage their own emotions and were distracted, emotionally distant, reactive, or critical? You probably had to figure things out on your own. You had to adapt.
You might’ve learned:
Numb out (with food or social media)
Don’t have needs to avoid being disappointed or invalidated
Achieve and over-function so you don’t expose any vulnerability
Ignore your feelings to avoid feeling shame for having them
Stuff your feelings down (i.e. internalize them)
At the time, that was smart.
It helped you survive in an environment where your emotions weren’t always welcome.
But those same patterns?
They don’t work in adulthood. At least not if you want real peace, connection, or growth.
What Real Self-Soothing Looks Like (And What It Doesn’t)
Self-soothing is the learned ability to stay with your emotions, without shutting down, spiraling, or needing someone else to fix it for you.
It’s the quiet skill of noticing what you feel, naming it, and being with it without panic, judgment, or shame. Think of it like emotional scaffolding. This is the support you should’ve gotten as a kid to help you handle big feelings — like sadness, fear, or frustration — without shutting down or freaking out.
It’s how you learn to feel things without being overwhelmed by them.
Think of emotional scaffolding like training wheels for your feelings.
When you're young, you need someone steady — a parent or caregiver — to help you feel safe while your emotions come up.
Over time, that support teaches your brain: “We can handle this. This feeling won’t break me or last forever.”
If you didn’t get that kind of support, your brain never built the inner tools to handle emotions on your own. So now, even little things can feel too much — because they were back then.
Examples of Self-Soothing That Actually Help
Here’s what self-soothing does look like:
Saying “I feel lonely” instead of “I shouldn’t feel this way”
Pausing to check in before reacting to a trigger
Breathing in a way that keeps you present with your body
Putting a hand on your chest and saying “You’re not alone”
Letting the tears come instead of apologizing for them
Journaling to stay connected to the feeling and allowing it to pass through you
Reminding yourself that an old fear is being stirred up, not a current danger
It doesn't always feel “productive.”
It’s not about fixing anything fast.
It’s about staying with yourself in the hard moments, and building up the self-trust to know you can handle these feelings when they arise.
The Real Goal of Self-Soothing (Hint: It’s Not About Being Calm)
Most people assume the point of self-soothing is to “calm down.” That’s actually a side effect, not the goal.
The real goal is to stay connected to yourself, even when things feel messy and uncomfortable.
It’s the ability to say, “This is hard, but I don’t need to run from it. I can stay with it. I can stay with me.”
This matters because if all your coping tools are designed to make the feeling stop, you’ll miss the insight that lives inside that emotion. And that’s where change actually happens.
Self-soothing teaches your brain: “You don’t have to abandon yourself through avoidance anymore.” That message lands deeper than any meditation app ever could.
Why Self-Soothing Feels So Hard, Especially If You’re “High Functioning”
Most people don’t struggle with emotions because they’re weak.
They struggle because they were trained to ignore their internal experiences early on.
If no one showed you what healthy soothing looked like, especially during stress, sadness, or fear, then your adult brain doesn’t have that built-in model to fall back on.
That’s why this isn’t just about coping techniques.
This is about re-learning what it means to feel safe with your own emotions.
And look, I won’t sugarcoat it, it takes practice.
It’s not always comfortable. It doesn’t come naturally if you’ve been conditioned to survive by disconnecting. But it is possible.
Want to Go Deeper?
If this resonated, especially around how childhood patterns still shape your anxiety, perfectionism, or emotional reactions, my book Unpacked can help.
In it, I break down how subconscious beliefs from childhood affect how you think, feel, and relate in adulthood.
We talk about self-soothing. But we also go further, into emotional triggers, relationship patterns, and why your brain clings to things that no longer help.
If you're self-aware but still stuck in patterns that aren’t working, Unpacked was written for you.
