How To Ground Yourself When You’re Feeling Anxious

“Get yourself grounded and you can navigate even the stormiest roads in peace.”

Steve Goodier

If you've spent time looking on Pinterest or Instagram at posts about anxiety, then the chances are that you've come across the term 'grounding' or the phrase 'ground yourself' or variations of these. It comes up in some therapeutic sessions too.

Well, there's a reason for this.

It works.

Grounding is a way of disengaging from negative or challenging emotions and the other shit in our heads. Grounding refers to a number of techniques rather than being a single identifiable technique and they work by distracting you from the emotion or shit in your head and refocusing on the present moment. It's basically a way of being deliberate and mindful in the face of internal things that are challenging for you. Similar to formal meditation, grounding helps you to appreciate that you are not your thoughts, memories or emotions even at times when you're finding things difficult.

As you can imagine, since grounding is a collection of techniques, they can be split into three categories or types of technique. Physical, psychological and soothing.

See below for an overview of the different types.

This is all quite straightforward so far, isn't it?

I know you're eager to learn how to actually use these techniques now that you understand why grounding is useful and what the different types are.

First, let's look at some of the physical grounding techniques.

My personal favourite is having a mindful shower. I stand there under the stream of water and pay attention to how it feels as it hits my face/head, the sensation of the water on my skin. I pay attention to the sounds of the water, the temperature. I visualise the crap of the day as a layer of grime on me and then I visualise the water washing the grime off me, taking it down the drain. This is really powerful to do.

I have known many people to find that holding ice cubes works. The cold temperature is really attention grabbing so it's useful when you're experiencing particularly intrusive thoughts. You also get changes in tactile sensations as the ice melts in your hand.

Breathing exercises can be used to help ground you. If you shallowly and quickly breathe into your chest, then you're more likely to feel anxious and/or stressed. So when you do any breathing exercises for the purpose of grounding yourself, I most recommend deep belly breathing as it activates your relaxation response. This is important. You can do deep belly breathing exercises anywhere, anytime which is partly the magic of this technique. It simply involves deliberately breathing into your belly in a deep, slow manner. Some people talk about magic ratios for your inhale and exhale. I don't. As long as you breathe slowly, deeply and fully into your belly, you will feel the wonderful benefits of this exercise.

Savouring food or drink is another excellent one. This is slowly tasting, smelling and appreciating the appearance of the food or drink. It's paying attention to the sounds of it – maybe it crunches – as you consume it. I drink fruit teas and savouring the heat of the mug in my hands, the smell of the fruit, the colour of it and the taste is brilliantly grounding.

Now moving on to psychological grounding techniques.

It can be powerful to use visualisations – particularly ones where you visualise leaving the painful, negative emotions behind. There are various ways you can do this – for example, putting the emotions in a box, walking (or moving by any other means) away from them, giving them to someone or something to take them away. I'm especially fond of using this in visualisations and deep relaxation sessions.

If you find yourself feeling overwhelmed with emotions, it can be useful to use what's called an anchoring phase. This involves telling yourself out loud what the time is, what day it is, where you are, who you're with, that you're safe (if you indeed are). You keep describing what you can see, hear, smell, taste and feel until you feel calm. This seems to be notably useful when you're having a flashback, including emotional flashbacks.

Another strong psychological technique for grounding yourself is coming up with one or two broad categories (e.g. “mammals”, “methods of transportation” or “flavours of ice cream”) and spending a couple of minutes thinking of as many things as possible from those categories.

It should be clear to you now that the last two techniques are very distinctly distraction techniques.

This takes us to soothing grounding techniques.

If you have a pet, spend time sitting with them. Animals live in the present so they can be helpful in getting us to be more present too. There's also something soothing about stroking or cuddling them.

Touching something comforting is one that works well for me. I love the cooler weather because it makes it more feasible to get snug under a warm blanket or duvet! These are not the only options. You can touch a favourite t-shirt or book. Hold a smooth stone or crystal. Run your fingers through a soft carpet, grass, sand, water or over your favourite piece of furniture. The key here is that you find what you're touching to be comforting.

Listen really closely to your favourite piece of music. Focus on the melody, any lyrics, what sensations you feel. Let yourself focus on what stands out most to you. This can have the by-product of making you fall deeper in love with it than before (yes, voice of experience there!).

This article is not an exhaustive run-through of grounding techniques. Though I do hope you have found something that may be helpful to you in the future.

Have you got a powerful technique that you use not described here? Let me know about it in the comments as I'd love to hear what you find useful :)