How to Hold Your Own Hand Through the Hard Stuff (What Self-Soothing Actually Looks Like in Real Life) | #172

Self-soothing is a skill — and if nobody taught it to you growing up, you've probably spent a lot of your life waiting for someone else to fill that role. In Daily Dose of Dawn #172, resilience coach Dawn Super breaks down what she calls "holding your own hand through the hard stuff" — what it actually means, why it matters for your nervous system and immune health, and what it looks like in a real-life moment when a stranger comes at you on a beach and you have to find your way back to peace anyway. This one is for the feral children who practically raised themselves.

Watch the Video Here or Read the Script below

Yesterday I mentioned holding your hand through the hard stuff and today I'm going to talk about what that looks like and how you do it.

This dose is for any other feral children who practically raised themselves didn't really have adequate supervision at home growing up. The bulk of everything you've learned was from TV or books. And one thing that helps me every day now wasn't in any of those.

So if you've spent a lot of time with no one on your side, including you, welcome in to your daily dose of Dawn at Dawn videos designed to expand your thinking.

Many people get it as babies, but I did not. I'm talking about self soothing. Self soothing is a skill and I call it holding my own hand through the hard stuff. It's having my own back. It's being OMOS - on my own side. And you've definitely already done it in one way or another because when life hits the fan, there's always one person there. who's always there to hold your hand through the hard stuff and that's you.

Maybe it was the sleep deprivation or the anxious avoidant attachment. But I spent a good portion of my life waiting for someone else to fill that role for me. And they say you have to love yourself before you can love others. And that's kind of a piece of that.

And what's really cool is if you do that, if you keep your calm, if you become no drama llama, you're rewarded with peace. And peace means your nervous system is regulated. And that means your immune system is working on healing instead of preparing you to fight the person who offended you.

I was bullied for seven long years as a kid and it made me very scrappy growing up and it took me a long time to understand that acting scrappy invited more scrappy. And eventually I learned that acting peaceful, being peaceful invites peace.

So the next time you feel like you need to defend yourself against anything or anyone, ask yourself, is it worth giving up my peace for?

If you follow me, you know I'm living with four decades of sleep deprivation. So I consider anything I manage to accomplish a huge victory. It took me five decades to get here where I like myself. I love myself. I love my life. I'm a happy person. I'm going beyond coping every day with the multitude of things that are wrong with me. And the majority of that came from being on my own side, remembering happy matters, and staying peaceful.

So, what does this look like in real life? Well, I go to the beach a lot and there's still a lot of rusty metal from the Palisades fires that I've been picking up for like a year now and I see a lot of dead birds and trash and things that are buried in the rocks and the water and the sand because I'm looking for that.

At this particular beach, there's an area with runoff. So the water comes up and mixes with like the ground water that's come down the mountain and out the icky pipes. And there's even a sign there that says there's a lot of bacteria in this water. So one day I was there and there was no sign. It got covered by the sand or taken by the waves or whatever. And there was an infant sitting in the running water with a baby shovel smacking the water and eating the shovel.

So, I went over and I mentioned something to the mom about the bacteria in the water and the dad went ballistic, telling me it's just ocean water and I'm wrong and really coming at me hard when I was just trying to keep his baby from getting the runs.

I'll be really honest with you. I was glad that I was wearing sunglasses because I was not expecting a stranger to come at me for trying to be helpful. So, I just immediately, "Thank you so much for telling me. Okay, great. Have a great day. All right. Thank you." Like, I have no skin in this game whatsoever. So, it's easy for me to tell Mr. Crazy, "You got it, buddy."

I walked away and started processing letting it go. I didn't go over what he said or what I did or what happened. I just focused on what thoughts are in my head now and how do I get back to where I was before I interacted with this complete total stranger. And that was a peaceful place, walking the beach, looking for rusty metal, listening to my music.

And through doing those things, holding my own hand, I was able to completely let the interaction with that person go and continue after some tears to get it all out. Never be upset if you cry when you argue with someone because crying means you're able to let it go.

So now I'm just happy I get to leave that beach as me and not that guy. So I don't care about being right. Peace is my priority now. And are you there yet? And choosing peace over anything else? Comment. Let me know.

If you can't afford my book, I want to give it to you for free. I'm not kidding. I've got a link right here. You fill in your info, I send you my book, 14 Days, Change Your Life:

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