Grounding Techniques For Anxiety & Lowering Stress

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When anxiety takes over, our thoughts are often going a mile a minute, thinking about future things, worst case scenarios, social interactions we think have gone terribly wrong, all of the things that really scare our poor amygdala. More often than not, these types of worried thoughts are not being very helpful for us, and they’re not truly preparing us in the way we think they are. So today, I am going to walk you through a few grounding techniques for anxiety that you can implement to interrupt your worries, therefore decreasing your anxiety. 

What Are Grounding Techniques?

Grounding techniques for anxiety are meant to bring you back to the present moment and to help you reconnect with the here and now. We can do this by refocusing attention on our breath, on our body, or on the environment we find ourselves in. When we can reconnect to the present moment, to what is actually happening right now, our brain is reminded that in this moment we are safe. Once our brain recognizes that we are, in fact, safe in this moment, our anxiety begins to decrease. 

I can’t tell you how many times I have been in a session with a client, anxiety has its grip, and after pausing, slowing down, focusing on the breath, anxiety starts to ease. Clarity comes back and all of a sudden those anxious thoughts don’t seem as important as they did just a few minutes ago. The grounding technique told their brain that they were safe, anxiety started to calm down which brought their prefrontal cortex back online, therefore allowing them to think clearly without anxiety’s tunnel vision focused on worst case scenarios. 

Pay attention to your breath 

A simple way to come back to the present moment is by focusing your attention on your breath. You can follow this guide:

Turn your attention to your breath

Notice how it physically feels to be breathing in this moment

Observe how your body rises on the inhale and falls on the exhale

Listen to the sound of your breath

Imagine sending air to the bottom of your abdomen

Envision air filling your belly and lungs with each inhale

Notice the temperature of the air as you breathe in

And how it may be warmer on the exhale

Take 3 deep slow breaths 

Thank yourself for taking this time to breathe and to check in with yourself 

Deepen your breath 

This grounding technique is focused on making our exhale longer than our inhale. This small tweak to our breathing pattern tells our brain that we are safe, so it can send out calming signals through the body, turning on our parasympathetic response. You can thank your vagus nerve for the effectiveness of this technique. 

A simple way to practice this grounding technique for anxiety is by counting how long your inhale is and trying to make your exhale twice as long as that inhale. For instance, if your inhale lasts to the count of 3, you will try making your exhale last to the count of 6. There is no need to strain yourself here. Listen to your body and do whatever feels most comfortable, while trying to make that exhale last a bit longer. 

If you’d like to be guided in this practice, you can do so here:

Identify your 5 senses

For this grounding technique, you will check in with each of your senses. You can do so with an object, an environment, an activity or even a snack or beverage. Notice all that you see, hear, taste, touch and smell. Try your best to only focus on one sense at a time. 

Progressive muscle relaxation

This grounding technique for anxiety leads you through scanning over your body slowly, tensing each muscle group for a moment and intentionally relaxing each muscle group. You’ll do this by starting at the very top of your head and slowly moving to the bottom of your feet. 

If you’d like to be guided through this techniques, you can do so here:

Remember, it typically takes 15-20 minutes of actively using these types of calming, grounding techniques for our Parasympathetic nervous system to turn on. So you may likely still feel a bit jittery after practicing these in times of high anxiety. This is completely normal. It does not mean these techniques are not working. Trust in the process. Trust in yourself. Calming our anxiety is not a quick fix. Our body simply does not work this way. It just takes some time. 

Take good care,

Katie