Recently, Recovery at the Crossroads Clinical Director Nadine Talley, MSW, LCSW, CTSS; and Director of Business Development Michael DiMarco attended the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA) Member Benefits Fair, hosted during the annual conference of the Gloucester County Education Association (GCEA) and the Salem County Council of Education Associations (SCCEA). Nadine had the opportunity to present on a topic close to our mission at RAC: how engaging the senses can be a powerful, accessible tool for emotional regulation and healing. Here’s a deeper look at what she shared with the 120 dedicated educators in attendance.
Recovery at the Crossroads offers flexible treatment programs designed to fit your life and schedule. Reach out to our team today online or at 856-644-7210.
What Is Self-Care, Really?
Self-care has become a buzzword, often reduced to bubble baths and days off. But the clinical reality is much deeper. True self-care is an intentional, proactive set of behaviors that individuals use to maintain or enhance their physical, emotional, and mental well-being. It’s less about what you do and more about being consistent, intentional, and attuned to how your actions affect your overall well-being.
Psychological research frames self-care around three core capacities:
- Awareness: Recognizing your needs, your limits, your stress signals, and your internal states.
- Self-control: Regulating your behaviors and emotions to support health and prevent burnout.
- Self-reliance: Taking responsibility for your own well-being through consistent, health-promoting actions.
Self-care is s a continuous, deliberate process grounded in self-awareness, and it works best when we understand how the mind and body communicate with each other.
Understanding Your Internal States
Our brain operates in a hierarchy. The “survival brain” governs the body regarding things like safety, threat detection, and basic functioning. The “emotional brain” governs feelings and relational experience. The “thinking brain” governs logic, planning, and rational thought. These layers are deeply interconnected through the nervous system.
When the body is dysregulated (tense, overwhelmed, or shut down), the emotions and mind will follow. This is called “bottom-up” dysregulation, and it’s why telling yourself to “just calm down” rarely works in the middle of a stressful moment. We can also use “top-down” approaches (using thoughts to regulate), but this is much harder when the stress response is already activated. That’s where sensory regulation becomes so powerful: it speaks directly to the survival brain, creating a felt sense of safety from the ground up.
Regulation vs. Dysregulation
When we say “regulation” we don’t mean you should feel nothing. Regulation means your mind and body are working together in a steady, flexible way. You can feel emotions, even strong ones, and still be able to think clearly, make choices, and respond rather than react. Your body feels safe. Your emotions ebb and flow in a way that feels tolerable. Your thoughts are clear and organized.
Dysregulation is when emotions or stress become too intense, too fast, or too hard to manage, and your thinking brain struggles to stay online. It’s easy to fall into the trap of feeling like dysregulation is a failure, but it’s not. It is a biological stress response. Your body may feel tense or numb. Your emotions may feel unbearable, jumbled, or disconnected. Your thoughts may be foggy, repetitive, or racing.
Understanding where you are on this spectrum, and having tools ready, is at the heart of sensory self-care.
Why the Senses?
Sensory input is processed by the survival brain before language, logic, or memory. This means engaging the senses can regulate the nervous system faster than cognitive strategies alone. When we engage senses that the brain associates with safety, we bring ourselves into the present moment and disrupt stress responses that may be tied to past events.
As mindfulness teacher and stress-reduction researcher Jon Kabat-Zinn put it, “Our senses are the gateway to presence.”
The Eight Sensory Systems
Most of us grew up learning about five senses. But there are actually eight sensory systems that influence regulation, and three of them are often overlooked entirely.
- Interoception involves internal body sensations like heartbeat, breath, temperature, and visceral cues. Dysregulation can look like panic triggered by a racing heart or emotional confusion. Helpful strategies include controlled breathing, body scans, and shifting your temperature (a cool glass of water or a warm shower).
- Proprioception involves body position, muscle tension, and joint compression. Dysregulation can feel like chronic tension or feeling disconnected from your body. Helpful strategies include deep pressure exercises, resistance training, weighted blankets, and pressing your feet firmly into the floor.
- Vestibular involves balance, spatial orientation, and head movement. Dysregulation may cause dizziness or difficulty staying present. Helpful strategies include slow rhythmic movement: rocking, swaying, gentle spinning, or balancing exercises.
- Tactile (Touch) involves touch, pressure, vibration, and temperature. Dysregulation can include exaggerated startle responses or avoidance of physical closeness. Helpful strategies include matching texture to your need (soft and smooth to calm, bumpy or scratchy to energize), massage, and safe relational touch, which generates oxytocin.
- Visual (Sight) involves light, color, movement, and spatial mapping. Dysregulation can trigger hypervigilance or flashbacks. Helpful strategies include soft, predictable visual environments, nature, and spaces with positive personal associations.
- Auditory (Sound) involves volume, pitch, rhythm, and tone. Dysregulation can look like heightened sound sensitivity or exaggerated reactions to tone of voice. Helpful strategies include low-to-mid frequency sounds, humming, singing bowls, and gentle nature soundscapes. Music at 60 BPM can slow the heart rate; 120 BPM can raise it.
- Olfactory (Smell) involves scent memory and the brain’s inherent responses to certain odors. Dysregulation can include smell-triggered flashbacks or shutdown. Helpful strategies include scents tied to safety or positive memories: lavender and chamomile to calm, citrus or rosemary to energize.
- Gustatory (Taste) involves sweet, salty, sour, and bitter. Dysregulation can show up as loss of appetite during high stress or emotional eating during shutdown. Helpful strategies include mint or citrus to energize, and warm spices like cinnamon or vanilla for comfort and a sense of safety.
How Healing Happens
The brain has evolved to associate certain sensory inputs with safety. Predictable, rhythmic movement signals the absence of threat. Soft, low-intensity sound is interpreted by the brainstem much like a lullaby: calming and orienting. Warm, gentle touch signals proximity to others, which historically meant protection. Familiar scents signal predictability, which the survival brain treats as safe.
These aren’t abstract wellness tips; they are neurobiologically grounded strategies that work at the level of the survival brain, before conscious thought even begins. When practiced consistently, they can meaningfully shift your baseline level of regulation and resilience.
What This Means for Recovery
At RAC, we see this play out every day. Trauma, substance use, behavior addictions and mental health challenges all affect the nervous system profoundly. Many people who struggle with addiction are, at their core, struggling to regulate a nervous system shaped by chronic stress, loss, or trauma, and substances become a way of managing that dysregulation.
Sensory-based approaches aren’t a soft add-on to treatment. Rather, they are often an entry point to healing. They give clients accessible, low-barrier tools they can use daily, in real time. Paired with evidence-based treatments like EMDR and our flexible outpatient programs for mental health, addiction recovery, and behavior addictions, sensory regulation strategies help build a sustainable foundation for long-term recovery.
Where to Start
If you or a loved one is struggling with substance use, behavioral addition or mental health challenges, Recovery at the Crossroads is here to help. We offer flexible treatment programs designed to fit your life and schedule. Reach out to our team today online or at 856-644-7210.
