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Grounding
What is it?
Grounding techniques are coping strategies to help reconnect you with the present and can bring you out of a panic attack, PTSD flashback, unwanted memory, distressing emotion, or dissociation. They help separate you from the distress of your emotional state or situation. Grounding can also be a way to self-soothe when you are having a bad day or dealing with a lot of stress, overwhelm or anxiety. It can help reorient you to the here-and-now and to back to a calm reality.
Six examples of grounding techniques:
1. The chair
Sit down in a comfortable chair, one where your feet are touching the floor. Close your eyes and focus on your breath. Breathe in slowly for the count of three, then out slowly for three. Bring your mind’s focus to your body. How does your body feel sitting in that chair? Which parts of you are touching the chair? Can you feel the contact between your body and the chair’s surface? If the chair has arms, touch it, what does it feel like? Press your arms down the length of the chair arm, notice where your hands are sitting or dangling. If your chair doesn’t have arms, are your hands sitting on your legs, what does that material feel like? Next push your feet into the ground, imagine the energy draining down from your mind, down through your body and out through your feet into the ground. Picture that energy passing through your body as it goes from your head to your toes. As the energy drains from your head, feel how heavy each body part becomes, your upper body feels heavy and now your arms as you relax those muscles. Lastly, feel the heaviness go down your legs, through your feet and down into the ground.
2. The 5,4,3,2,1
This technique gets you to use all your five senses to help you to get back to the present. It starts with you sitting comfortably, close your eyes and take a couple of deep breathes. In through your nose (slowly), out through your mouth (slowly).
Now open your eyes and look around you. Say out loud:
5 – things you can see (you can look within the room and out of the window)
4 – things you can feel (the silkiness of your skin, the texture of the material on your chair, what does your hair feel like? What is in front of you that you can touch?)
3 – things you can hear (traffic or birds outside, when you are quiet and actually listening to things in your room constantly make a noise but typically, we don’t hear them).
2 – things you can smell (hopefully some lovely fresh baking?!)
1 – thing you can taste (what did you last eat? Can you still taste it? Or you can always leave your chair for this one and when you taste whatever it is that you have chosen, take a small bite and let it stay in your mouth for a couple of seconds longer than normal, to really savour the flavour).
Then take a deep breath to end.
3. The Hold and Focus
Look around your house for things that have a texture or are pretty or interesting to look at. Hold an object in your hand and really bring your full focus to it. If you have a gem stone for example look at the patterns that run through it, see the colour variances. Some have streaks of different colours going through it or sparkly bits. Look at where shadows may fall on parts of it or maybe there are shapes that form within the object. Feel how heavy or light it is in your hand and what the surface texture feels like under your fingers. This can be done with any object you have lying around or if you know you are going into a stressful situation, take one of your favourite small objects and put it in your pocket or purse so you can do this calming exercise on the go. I use a little gold paper weight pig for example!
4. Distract yourself (with colours and numbers!)
There are several ways to distract your mind so it stops thinking about whatever it is that is worrying you and focuses on something that isn’t emotionally driven. Here are two quick ways to do it. Pick a colour. How many things in different shades of that colour can you see around the room or out of the window? Still feeling stressed? Pick another colour. Or count backwards by 7, starting at 100 or count down from 1000. It isn’t that easy and needs you to concentrate. These number ones can also be helpful to do when you are finding it hard to sleep.
5. Breathe
Try what’s called “Boxed Breathing,” in which you’ll breathe in for 4 seconds, hold for 4 seconds, breathe out for 4 seconds, hold for 4 seconds, and so on until you feel grounded. You can also tighten your muscles and release them while breathing, focusing on the breath and practicing mindfulness all the way through.
6. Feel your feet
Take off your shoes and go outside. Somewhere safe ideally; sand, grass or even water. Simply walk and stay present with your environment.
If your mind is very active try to slow it down and it should only take a few minutes before you are more mentally calm and centered. Walking barefoot has the added benefit of massaging acupuncture points in your feet, just like in reflexology! Whist walking barefoot - be sure to use your whole foot when you walk; heel, ball, toes. Happy walking!
What are benefits?
Grounding exercises can be helpful for a variety of different situations where you might find yourself becoming overwhelmed or distracted by distressing thoughts, feelings or memories. If you find yourself getting drawn into strong emotions such as anger or anxiety, or if you realise you are engaging in stressful ruminating thoughts, or if you experience a strong painful memory, flashback, or nightmare grounding exercises can help bring you back to the here and now. It can be helpful to have a grounding exercise at the ready which you can go to at these distressing times. Hopefully you can pick one from the above and find one that suits you. Like most things they aren’t for everyone but if you can find one that works for you then great!
Some of the benefits of grounding have been described as reducing inflammation, decreasing pain levels, decreasing the stress response, increaseing heart rate variability, improving sleep and improving cortisol rhythm (cortisol is one of our key stress hormones).
Interesting articles
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/grounding-techniques
https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/fixing-families/201905/upset-10-grounding-techniques
https://www.goodnet.org/articles/5-healing-benefits-grounding-techniques