Feeling Overwhelmed? These Grounding Exercises May Help You Regain Calm.

Having Difficulty Calming Those Anxious Thoughts? Try Grounding Techniques

Grounding techniques are a common practice that helps you redirect to the present and help focus away from anxious emotions. Grounding techniques help us focus, using our senses, including site, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. By using one or a combination of these senses, it helps us return to the present moment and soothe our anxious feelings.

You can use grounding techniques in many different situations and for many different feelings. For this blog post, we will specifically focus on anxiety.

While there are many different types of grounding techniques, we will focus on three categories that you can use as needed:

  • Physical Grounding Techniques

  • Mental Grounding Techniques

  • Soothing Grounding Techniques

Physical Grounding Techniques

Drink a glass of water

Take small steps of a glass of water, letting yourself enjoy each sip. Think about how the water feels smells and taste in your mouth.

Pick up in touch an item near you

Think about how the item feels in your hands. Is it soft to the touch or hard? Is it very heavy or is it super light? Does it feel cool to the touch, or does it slowly warm up in your hands. Describe its size, color, and texture. Really focus on the details of what you feel..

Take a short walk

Take a brief walk and focus on your steps and breath. You could even count each step you take. Notice the rhythm of your footsteps and how heavy or light your feet feel. Note your pace and how you lift your feet off the ground and place them back down again.

5-4-3-2-1 Method

Working backward from five, use your senses to list things you notice around you.

  • 5 things you hear

  • 4 things you see

  • 3 things you can touch from where you’re sitting

  • 2 things you can smell

  • 1 thing you can taste

You can switch these up some as needed (i.e., 5 things you smell).

Mental Grounding Techniques

Use math and counting

Tried several different approaches to see if this helps.

  • Do multiplication tables in your head

  • Count prime number is starting at 1

  • Pick a number and think of five ways you could end up with that number. For example, you could pick the number 12. (Some examples: 1 + 11 = 12; 24 – 12 = 12; 6 X 2 = 12, etc)

Describe what’s around you

Spend a couple minutes, taking in your surroundings and note what you see, smell, taste, feel, and here. Try to get as much detail as possible, then described to yourself all the sentences you are experiencing at this moment.

Recite a common and soothing phrase

For this one, you may need to find a poem, song, or book passage, you know, and learned by heart. You should really enjoy and find this phrase or passage, very soothing. You then simply say the words aloud in visualize each word as you say it out loud. Take your time and repeat as necessary.

Soothing Grounding Techniques

Visualize the voice of someone you love

When you feeling upset and anxious, visualize someone important to you in your life. Imagine them speaking, calm and soothing words to you. Imagine how the voice sounds, the tone, the pace, and how soothing their voice feels to you, imagine them noting how tough the situation is currently, and that you will get through it.

Practice self kindness statements

Repeat, kind, compassionate phrases that you come up with earlier to yourself. You can either say that silently in your head or out loud to yourself.

-today is a really rough day, and I’ll still make it through it.

-You’re trying your best, and you know eventually, you will succeed.

While this is definitely an anxious situation, you’ll be able to move forward with it and it’ll be done soon enough.

Listen to music

Put on your favorite song or group of songs and imagine you never heard it before. Focus on the melody, the lyrics, the harmony. Imagine this will be the last time you ever hear this song. Savor it as much as you can. What parts of the song stand out the most to you.

Parting Thoughts

With any technique, we try, remember, it will take some practice before these can become effective. Remember to practice some of these grounding techniques before you are feeling anxious. If you get used to using them, it’ll be much easier when you are feeling anxious in the future.

Need More Help? Reach Out!

If you are having difficulty worrying and feeling calm, consider anxiety therapy at Sequoia Counseling Group. We offer 15-minute consultations at no cost to answer any questions you may have about counseling. We are in Las Vegas (both in-person and virtual sessions) and offer virtual sessions across the states of California, Nevada, Georgia, and Virginia.


Dr. Philip B. Gnilka is the Clinical Director and Founder of Sequoia Counseling Group, a boutique mental health practice that serves clients in Las Vegas, NV. His experience as a tenured professor in mentoring students about counseling approaches and theories reinforced his passion for helping individual clients directly. He specializes in anxiety, stress management, and perfectionism.


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