Self-Soothe with the Five Senses: A Distress Tolerance Kit
The DBT skill for calming the body through sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch
Self-Soothe with the Five Senses: A Distress Tolerance Kit
The DBT skill for calming the body through sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch
Self-Soothe with the Five Senses: A Distress Tolerance Kit
The DBT skill for calming the body through sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch
Self-soothing is the distress tolerance skill that most people already half-know and rarely use on purpose: doing things that feel pleasant and comforting, that give relief from stress or pain, and that amount to being gentle and mindfully kind to yourself (Linehan, 2015). It works through the senses, because sensory input reaches the nervous system faster than argument does. The skill is to build, in advance, a short list of things that reliably comfort each of the five senses, and to reach for them deliberately when distress is high but not yet a crisis. Many clients resist it: soothing feels undeserved, or self-indulgent, or like giving up. That resistance is worth naming in session, because it is usually the same voice that keeps the distress going. This sheet gives examples for each sense and the guidelines that keep the skill from sliding into avoidance. It sits alongside IMPROVE the Moment and ACCEPTS as the three crisis survival strategies for getting through a hard hour without making it worse.
Building the Kit
- Sight Something to look at that settles rather than stimulates. A window with a tree in it, a photo, a candle flame, a particular painting, the pattern of light on a wall.Example: A client keeps three photos from a trip in a phone album named 'Look' and opens it on the train home.
- Sound Music chosen for calm rather than mood matching, a recorded rain track, a familiar voice, the sound of running water. Notice the difference between sound that soothes and sound that fills silence you are afraid of.
- Smell The fastest sense to memory. A specific soap, coffee, a scarf that smells of someone, cut grass, a spice jar. Keep one within reach at work and one at home.
- Taste A hot drink held with both hands, a strong mint, a piece of good fruit, a meal eaten slowly. Taste is the sense most often confused with bingeing; the guideline is one thing, attended to fully.
- Touch Warm bath or shower, a weighted blanket, a pet, the texture of a particular sweater, hands wrapped around a mug, cold water on the wrists. For the fast version under acute distress, see the temperature skill in TIPP.
Using It Well
- One sense at a time, fully The skill is attention, not consumption. Choosing one thing and noticing it completely does more than five things at once.
- Practice when calm A kit built in a crisis is a poor kit. Test each item on an ordinary evening and keep the ones that actually work, which are often not the ones that sounded good.
- Soothing is not avoidance The goal is to get through the distress without acting on an urge, then return to the problem. If self-soothing becomes the way a problem is never faced, it has become avoidance, and problem solving or Opposite Action is the next skill.
- Watch for the judgment 'I do not deserve this' and 'this is stupid' are the two thoughts that stop the skill. Note them, let them pass, and do the thing anyway. The Wise Mind sheet explains where that voice sits.
- The body scan is self-soothing too Linehan lists a slow body scan as a special form of self-soothing through touch and attention. Body Scan Script is the guided version; it works well as the wind-down after a sensory kit has taken the edge off.
References
- Linehan, M. M. (2015). DBT skills training manual (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.
Related DBT Worksheets
View all DBT →The ACCEPTS Framework for Crisis Survival
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DBTUnderstanding Borderline Personality Disorder
What BPD is, what it isn't, and what actually helps
DBTCheck the Facts: Testing Whether an Emotion Fits the Situation
The DBT emotion regulation skill for separating what happened from what the mind added
See also
Clinical guides that use this worksheet
Common Questions
What is the Self-Soothe with the Five Senses: A Distress Tolerance Kit worksheet?
Self-soothing is the distress tolerance skill that most people already half-know and rarely use on purpose: doing things that feel pleasant and comforting, that give relief from stress or pain, and that amount to being gentle and mindfully kind to yourself (Linehan, 2015).
How do I use the Self-Soothe with the Five Senses: A Distress Tolerance Kit worksheet?
Read through this resource to learn key concepts. Share with your therapist or use as a study reference. You can print this sheet or bookmark it for quick access later.
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