Everyone knows the feeling of racing thoughts and emotions interfering with our ability to function. Sometimes, our minds won’t turn off, or our hearts feel like they are racing out of our chests. We lose sight of what's around us and can become consumed by feelings of panic and anxiety.
Panic and anxiety are also disorders that are heightened by daily stress. If we don’t learn how to manage stress, our symptoms of anxiety can pop up at the most inconvenient times and put a wrench in our days.
While we’re busy checking off our to-do lists, self-care gets pushed to the back-burner, often not to be visited until triggered by anxiety.
Although we talk about it a lot in this blog, self-care is an important way to unwind, check-in with how you are feeling and can help keep you on track with your goals, without getting burnt out.
Self-care, when incorporated into our lives, can help prevent overwhelming feelings, especially when we have a lot on our plates.
“Grounding” is a quick and easy form of self-care that we recommend to our clients. Incorporating some of these techniques into your daily routine can help navigate stress and overwhelming emotions. When they do pop up, use grounding techniques to bring you back to the present moment.
When we feel “ungrounded” we may be:
Committing to too many things at once
Being “flooded” by emotions or thoughts
Finding ourselves in a situation that doesn’t align with our values, goals, or purpose
In this article, we’ll talk about some easy grounding and self-care techniques that will help you reconnect with yourself, alleviate anxiety, and achieve greater well-being.
Like every technique, the more you use these, the easier it will be to regain that sense of calm, and live in your strength, in the present moment.
Types of grounding techniques
Grounding techniques are rooted in calming your nervous system so you can rebalance your thoughts and not allow anxiety to take the wheel. Grounding techniques are broken up into 3 categories: Mental, physical and emotional.
Mental Grounding: Mental grounding teaches you how to take hold of racing or negative thought patterns so they do not have the power to cause anxiety and overwhelm you.
Physical Grounding: Involves using your senses and breathing or using your senses to calm your physical body and nervous system.
Emotional Grounding: Using self-compassion and connection to calm and rebalance your sense of identity and value.
1. 5 senses grounding technique
Using your physical body is a great way to check into your nervous system and take note of how your body is feeling in the present moment. Before you start this technique, focus on your breathing. Its purpose is to slow your heart rate down, and calm your mind so that you can refocus on your goals. Deep, long breaths can help you maintain a sense of calm. Once you find your breath do the following to help ground yourself:
See - Point out 5 things you see- It can be a chair, a tree or anything in your line of sight
Touch - Acknowledge 4 things you can touch - It can be the pen in your hand, the keyboard under your fingertips or anything you can feel with your hands.
Hear - Recognize 3 things you can hear - The birds chirping, and your belly rumbling, focus on things you can hear in your current surroundings.
Smell - Maybe you are in your office and can smell a fresh stack of paper, or outside and freshly cut grass, whatever it is acknowledge 2 things you can smell.
Taste - What does the inside of your mouth taste like or what are you currently eating or drinking?
2. Remember, everything is temporary
When we lose ourselves in overwhelming and repetitive thoughts, it’s easy to feel like that is our reality. Our nervous system can trick our brains into believing that we are in a constant state of danger, which in turn leaves us feeling, panicked, anxious and exhausted.
Regardless of the situation, remind yourself that everything is temporary. Events in life are situational and the emotions we feel are fleeting, they come and go. Even if you’ve had a bad day today, you have your whole life to make up for it.
3. Find support in your circle
Have you ever heard the saying, “A problem shared is a problem halved”? That means that you don’t have to carry the weight of your problems on your own. Simply talking about a problem with a friend, or loved one, helps to alleviate some of the stress we feel surrounding that problem. When we bottle up our problems, they begin to grow inside of us. When we share them, we also have an opportunity to form a connection with someone else who can relate.
4. Do something you’re good at
When things get overwhelming, we are often too busy focusing on how to reconcile our problems to take a minute to remind ourselves of how great we are. Everyone has something that they're good at, or that they genuinely love doing. Focusing on using your skills will help bring back joy to your daily moments and build back that confidence that is so easily lost in stressful times. So get back to being yourself, by reminding yourself who you are, and what you’re good at! Prioritize yourself when things get overwhelming.
5. Prioritize physical wellness through sleep, nutrition, and exercise
Prioritizing physical health is just as important as prioritizing emotional and mental health. Adequate sleep, proper nutrition and exercise are all important ways to manage emotions and keep anxiety at bay. Some stress may also be linked back to vitamin deficiencies or allergens in your body. If you are feeling overly tired or stressed it may be also worth speaking with a nutritionist or naturopath for tests that can tell you what’s going on inside your body.
6. Avoid catastrophizing
Catastrophizing is believing your situation is worse than it is or exaggerating the difficulties you face. Oftentimes it involves a kind of snowball type of thinking that goes from one fear to another, ultimately leading to a conclusion that is just not likely. Say you are worried about not doing well on a project at work, it may lead to you thinking that you may be fired and thus never be able to find a job and be financially stable. Instead, slow down and check-in with yourself. Slowing down will allow you to be more mindful of these thought patterns and help you come to more positive and realistic conclusions.
7. Stay Productive, Unwind
In adulthood, it’s tough to get that time to ourselves to do a little bit of nothing. With all the busyness around us, taking some time to do an activity that we enjoy helps encourage some grounding and in turn, makes us more productive! Take the adult time-out. It’ll be worth it.
8. Prevent Burnout & Anxiety
It’s incredible how many times you’ll hear “I don’t know why I’m so tired!”. Between work hours, social time, and making time for activities, it can feel like we never get a minute to ourselves. Taking some intentional time for yourself and doing what helps you to recenter is a great way to maintain your energy and a healthy mindset.
9. Practice Self-Compassion
Sometimes, we face transitions in life that result in a lot of action. During these times something is happening constantly around us. Some transitions are expected, like a schedule change, moving, transitioning into a break-period and then back into work (for some), and some changes, like a pandemic, or a break-up are less anticipated.
Giving yourself the space to stay grounded in times of change is important. Offering yourself love and kind words is a nice way to move through whatever is coming at you, at your own pace. To do this, it is important to take a step back and practice self-care, even if it is just 10 minutes of your day.
10. Checking-In and talking it through
So many of us go from task to task, meeting to meeting, event to event, without skipping a beat. The importance of noticing what is going on inside you and listening to your body is incredibly important in maintaining balance. If your body is tired, sleep. If you feel energetic, play. Be careful of shoving yourself, or your emotions, off to the side. Some need to speak about their experiences to gather insight into what they need. If that’s you, speak to your partner or call your friend and chat. The importance of self-awareness and listening to your needs is crucial in being able to experience joy, understand your boundaries, and listen to what you need!
Here are some self-care ideas to help you stay grounded:
Nature (hikes, walks, sitting)
Talking to a friend
Biking
A warm bath
Yoga
An easy walk
Meditating
A workout
Breathing for 5 minutes/day
Seeing a friend
Listening to music
Drawing
Playing an instrument
Running
Cooking
Learning something new
Taking a class
Hanging with your pets
Final thoughts
Practicing grounding techniques is helpful for everyone, especially those feeling overwhelmed or overly stressed. Stress can easily get the better of us but with these helpful techniques, you can learn how to prevent and manage negative emotions so that you can make better decisions, stay grounded, be more productive, and achieve everything you desire in life.
If you want to learn more about grounding or simply speak to someone to clear your head feel free to get in touch. We offer a free consultation for anyone needing some extra support, we also offer online trauma therapy, so we can help get you back to feeling great.