Grounding Techniques for Anxiety

Photo by David L Smith on Unsplash

When anxiety takes over, you can feel like you’re floating outside your own body, caught in racing thoughts, heart beating out of your chest, ears ringing, tunnel vision, shallow breathing. A complete sense of being disconnected from the present moment. When anxiety is so high, our brains can not think or reason, the parts of brain that do that well can go ‘offline’. So if those parts of out brain most responsible for thinking, planning and reasoning are offline that means we can’t think our way out of it, we need something else.

Grounding techniques are simple, body-based strategies that help you return to the here and now. They will not necessarily make anxiety go way, you can’t breathe away anxiety. But grounding techniques can help contain anxiety when it shows up and send signals to the brain that reactivate the thinking, planning and reasons parts more quickly. Here are five evidence-based techniques I teach clients:

1. 5-4-3-2-1 Technique

   Name 5 things you see, 4 things you feel, 3 things you hear, 2 things you smell, 1 thing you taste.

2. Deliberate Breathing

   Inhale for 4 counts, hold, exhale for 6 counts, hold. Repeat 4 times.

   Remember to breathe in through your nose, and try noticing the air pass your nostrils and blow out through pursed lips, like you are blowing out candles on a cake.

   Longer exhales cause the vagus nerve to send a signal to your brain, activating the parasympathetic nervous system and easing the sympathetic nervous system.

3. Cold Water Trick

   Splash cold water on your face or hold an ice pack on your face. This stimulates the vagus nerve and resets the nervous system. Anyone who has done an ice bath will get a sense of this. It is also very effective to submerge your face in a sink of very cold water.

4. Grounding Objects

   Keep a smooth stone, textured fabric, or sensory object in your pocket to hold and focus on. Notice all the texture and contours on the object.

5. Naming What’s Real

   Say aloud: “I am safe. This feeling is temporary. I know where I am. I am in control of my breath. I am in control of my body”. It can be important in these moments to remind ourselves of the things that are important to us.

   
   

These practices help signal to your body that you are not under threat—even if your mind feels like you are. Think of it this way, we want to simulate body actions that we wouldn’t be doing if we were running from a bear. When your brain becomes anxious, it doesn’t distinguish between types of threat.

Anxiety can feel overwhelming, but you’re not powerless in the face of it. These tools are a starting point—and therapy can support you in understanding what your anxiety is really about, so you don’t have to fee like you need to keep running from it.