Creating a Resource Team for Self-Soothing

One of the things I find so healing in therapy is learning how to be with our emotions, especially our big, intense emotions, in a way that brings understanding, comfort, compassion, and presence to that emotional experience instead of trying to resist, shove, or ignore that experience. Often times we have been taught that to have emotions, especially big ones, is “bad” and therefore we strive to try to make them stop or go away. But this doesn’t work, because we are feeling beings.

I often tell my clients that I am not able to make them stop feeling and we will continue to get stuck if that is the goal they are trying to accomplish in therapy. But the goal that I can help them with is to learn to safely feel their feelings. This process is inviting someone to grow in intimacy with themselves by learning to understand their feelings and comfort themselves. While I believe this process is both helpful and beautiful, it can also be scary, especially at the beginning.

A technique I often use to help develop this ability internally is by creating a resource team. This team is created by thinking of mental images of aspects of yourself or other individuals you either know or imagine that embody the characteristics that you need in moments of intense emotions such as care, kindness, compassion, understanding, comfort, protection, presence, validation, etc. The important part of this exercise is not necessarily that you have a visual in your mind but more so that you experience the felt sense in your body that is activated when thinking of these figures.

For me, my resource team consists of my Compassionate Self, God, my therapist, a close mentoring friend, a beloved colleague friend, and Mr. Rogers. When I am struggling emotionally, whether that be that I am scared or deep in grief or overcome by shame, I imagine bringing one of these figures into a space with the vulnerable part of me that is having a hard time. I image what that particular figure would think, say, or do with my vulnerability inside of me that has come up. And then I often times sense a relaxing and releasing overcoming me, having heard what I needed or felt the comfort and safety I needed in that moment to helps me move through that feeling and come out the other side. It is not always perfect but with more practice, it definitely has helped and at times have been really powerful for me.

The reason I believe this works is because emotions dissipate once they have been felt in the presence of safety. Bringing in mental images of support helps us have that felt sense of safety which then helps build neuron connections in our brain around adaptive and helpful ways to help us feel our feelings. It is helping us build in the ability to self-regulate through developing felt experiences of co-regulation. Using our imagination and felt sense also helps us tap into our emotion brain which is where the healing is needed and that cannot always be accessed through logic and cognition. With practice, we start to build our confidence to know we are capable of feeling our feelings. This helps us soften and relax into our feelings, allowing them to pass through us which helps us gain confidence knowing we can make it through hard feelings.

Here are a few different things to ask yourself to create your own resource team:

-Who in your life have you been an especially supportive caregiver for, either past or present (this could be a person, pet, or even plant or garden)?

What aspects or qualities of yourself helped you be able to do that?
How does the idea of this resource feel in your body? (You are looking for a resource that helps your body feel cared for, comforted, protected, safe, or relaxed in some way)
How would you visually like to represent this resource for yourself? What image comes to mind that represents this aspect of yourself? (could be an image of you with the energy of the quality you pick surrounding it or another image that comes to mind that feels like it represents this quality)
What would you name this part of yourself? (ex. Compassionate Self)

-Who in your life has been an especially supportive caregiver for you- either past or present (this could be a person, pet, or supportive/comforting object)?

What aspects or qualities of this figure helped you feel cared for? (no one is always one way so try to focus on just the aspects that feel helpful for creating your resource figure)
If they were to be present with you during difficult moments, would that feel good to you? In what ways?
How does the idea of this resource feel in your body?
How would you visually like to represent this resource for yourself? (could be the person or another image that represents them)
What simple name would you like to give this resource (could be the person’s name or whatever name helps you remember just the caring, nurturing, or protecting qualities of the person that feel helpful).

-What inspirational public figure, celebrity, fictional character from a book/movie/show, or spiritual/mystical/archetypal being have you felt (or could feel) nurtured and supported by?

What aspects of qualities of this person helped you feel this way about them?
If they were to be present with you during difficult moments, would that feel good to you? In what ways?
How does the idea of this resource feel in your body?
What simple name would you like to give this resource (could be the person’s name or whatever name helps you remember just the caring, nurturing, or protecting qualities of the person that feel helpful).

Let yourself get creative with this process and really connect with what it feels like your heart, vulnerabilities, and emotions need during moments of difficulty. It can be helpful to come up with 2-3 figures so you can create a team of support. And if you really get into it, let yourself draw or create in some way your different resource figures to have actual visuals of them. Or connect them to scents, little trinkets, or sounds that remind you of the figure. Connecting sensations of calm and comfort to scents can be really powerful as that sense in our brain is the closest to our memory center so strong associations can be created.

And to anyone on an emotional healing journey, know that I am rooting for you!

Blog by: Malinda King, MA, LPCC
Photo by: fauxels from Pexels