Reactionary Coping Skill: Grounding
Mental Illnesses have a way of robbing us of the present moment. Anxiety can keep us stuck in worry about the future. PTSD can keep us in fear of the past. And depression can numb us from it all.
When it comes to combatting these and striving to live in the present moment, a skill to help accomplish that is grounding.
Grounding helps bring you back to the present moment, it helps “reconnect what’s been disconnected” in your thoughts, memories, surroundings, actions, and identity. An important disclaimer is that the goal of grounding is to help ground you in the present moment, it is not to dismiss all of your emotional experiences. By this, I mean that while being dissociated (not in the present moment) you may begin to have emotions such as panic, fear, anxiety, sadness, depression, etc. come up for you. After you have engaged in grounding these emotions may still be present, but hopefully, you will feel a better sense of control over them than you did before you implemented grounding.
A way to ground yourself is to turn to your 5 senses. If you attune to what you smell, hear, taste, feel, and see then eventually your brain will start to create connections again between those areas that are disconnected. Some ways you can turn to your 5 senses are:
Look for 5 things you see, 4 things you hear, 3 things you feel, 2 things you smell, and 1 thing you taste (order of the senses doesn’t matter, just choose one and work your way through the 5 senses)
Chose one sense and really run with it. Perhaps you spot an object near you and really lean into how it looks, use as many descriptive words to describe the look of that object.
Pop a piece of gum in your mouth and process how it tastes.
Light a favorite candle or use essential oils and process how it smells.
Have an object with a unique texture near you at all times, perhaps a rock in your pocket or a small piece of fabric in your purse. Pull it out when you need to and process how it feels.
Other ways of grounding yourself can be:
Reminding yourself of the date today to help your brain come back to the present moment
Have a photo available that brings you joy so that you can pull it out and look at it
Repeat a certain phrase to yourself such as “I am safe” or “I will be okay”
Distract your mind. Chose something like counting down from 100 by 2’s or counting up to whatever number by 7s. Chose something that makes you focus on that task and distract you from the past memories, future worries, or numbness coming up.
These skills work best when you take the time to practice them. So while I do consider grounding a reactionary coping skill, I encourage you to try and practice a couple of times each day. You can always benefit from attuning to yourself and the present moment, but this will also make it easier to implement when you are triggered because your body and brain will be used to going through the skills.
