We all resort to any manner of behaviors to deal with our anxiety. Generally speaking, these behaviors might be referred to as self-soothing. Some self-soothing behaviors serve more strategically than others. Some patients will choose to exercise, cook a good meal, meditate, take a warm bath, get a good night’s sleep, or contact an old friend to comfort themselves when anxious. Others will go on a shopping spree, overeat, drink alcohol to excess, masturbate compulsively, or shoplift.
These behaviors seem rooted in trying to settle a deeper anxiety. Attempting to understand the particular nature of the anxiety will help to make sense of the choice of self-soothing behavior, thus facilitating the transition to healthier patterns of adaptation.
Shop-ping sprees might help someone feeling cheapened or ugly to feel worthy and glamorous; binge eating can lead to feeling less empty or more fed by a provider from childhood; drinking may provide a temporary reunification with an old love; masturbation may stave off feelings of abandonment or smallness; and shoplifting may be an attempt to seek the punishment and humiliation one feels he deserves for wanting so much and feeling so greedy.
Rick’s comments:
Both the productive and self-destructive things I do to self-soothe work to decrease my anxiety, at least in the short run. The difference is that when I do something positive, such as involving myself in a worthwhile activity, the anxiety stays lowered. When I do something harmful to myself, such as binge eating, the effect lasts only as long as the activity does, and then I find myself more anxious than ever. I know that recovering alcoholics say that when you have a problem and drink over it, you then have one more problem.
My drug of choice is food, and I can attest that the results are pretty much the same as for the alcoholic: a problem plus one! The term that I use for the less fortunate choices I make to decrease anxiety is “self-medicating,” but self-soothing also describes it pretty well. I like the fact that self-soothing can also apply to my positive ways of warding off anxiety and I’m going to add it to my vocabulary.