Is your brain wired in such a way that it appreciates stimulants?

So one of the things that's super relevant to the self-soothe skill is pavlovian / classical conditioning. Basically your body gets used to drinking tea when you're calm, so if you occasionally drink it when you're not calm your body will be like "wait we're doing the thing we do when we're calm though? I'm probably supposed to be calm then."

It could also have an ingredient that's mildly sedating or if you have ADHD it's caffeinated sometimes it can help you focus, which can reduce agitation. Some people will even say caffeine helps them sleep and while it can help you focus on falling asleep it will still reduce overall sleep quality (there's other, better ADHD meds that can be used around bedtime for that reason).

So there are other reasons it might be helping you, but classical pavlovian conditioning is a common mechanism and a lot of behavioral therapies include teaching on how to exploit for your own benefit. I'm super excited to talk about this because spreading info on these specific sort of topics is exactly why I made this community!