quote:

big hug (if you want and if it helps)

I do and it does. Thanks!

My P just brought up self soothing this week, so I did a search on here and found this thread.

I'm confused about what exactly is involved in self soothing. My session this week was a non-talking one on my part so I didn't ask him what he meant. He said that people with traumatic childhoods often never learned to self soothe, so when situations arise that cause stress/discomfort, they become more distressed because they can't calm themselves down.

So what I'm wondering: Is self soothing something that is a mental task, like talking myself down, or something physical? I found this website, but what it describes seems different from what people on this thread describe.

Also, how do I "teach" my children to self soothe? All the baby sleep-training books say this is so important, but then they tell me to let my kids cry themselves to sleep all alone in their rooms and this somehow teaches them to "self soothe"!?! This goes completely against my gut instincts and I've never been able to do it. (And yes, they're horrible sleepers.)