13 Grounding Techniques for Anxiety, Trauma, and Dissociation

What Are Grounding Exercises?

Grounding techniques are exercises that have two goals:

1. Bring your attention back to the present moment.
2. Distract yourself from whatever triggered you. 

The end goal of a grounding technique is to tap into your parasympathetic nervous system and calm your body now. We’ll talk about that below. 

Grounding exercises can range from complex meditations that take half an hour to simple breathing exercises you can do in a meeting. Not every grounding exercise will work for everyone, so try a few of these and keep the ones that make you feel better. 

How do Grounding Exercises Work?

Panic attacks, trauma attacks, and dissociation are all caused in part by the sympathetic nervous system. This nervous system is in charge of our fight-or-flight response. The fight-or-flight (which includes trauma responses such as fawn and freeze) is triggered when your body thinks it is in a life threatening situation and needs to get you out of there quickly. While it is a very helpful system when you are really in a deadly situation, like a natural disaster, physical attack, or car crash, it’s less helpful when you’re trying to drive to work or are in a crowd at the grocery store. 

When your sympathetic nervous system is triggered into a fight-or-flight response, you need to calm it down by activating the parasympathetic nervous system. The parasympathetic nervous system is in charge of resting and relaxing. It will calm your heart rate and help the body enter the “rest and digest” state. 

Grounding techniques such as the ones below are designed to activate the parasympathetic nervous system. By doing grounding exercises you are telling your body “It’s okay. I’m safe, and you can rest.” Eventually, your body will listen and the attack of whatever sort will subside.

15 Grounding Techniques

Try a few of these grounding exercises when you’re feeling unsafe, panicked, or dissociated. How do they make you feel? Keep the ones you like and use them as needed.

1. Color Scanning: Scan your surroundings from left to right. On your first pass, look for all instances of the color red. On your second pass, look for all the things that contain the color orange. Repeat the process for the colors yellow, blue, green and violet. 
2. Box Breathing: A simple breathing technique that can be done anywhere. If you can, place your feet flat on the floor. Breath in slowly for a count of 4. Hold your breath for 4 seconds. Breathe out for 4 seconds. Finally, hold your breath for another 4 seconds. Try to focus on the way your breath enters and leaves your body. It can help to place a hand on your stomach to feel it rise and fall. 
3. Put an Ice Pack on your chest: Putting an ice cube or an ice pack on your chest is thought to activate the vagus nerve, a long nerve that runs the entire length of your body. Activating it also activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which calms your body down. Make sure to always put an ice pack on a towel to prevent the ice from harming your skin. A cold shower can also work in the same way. 
4. 54321 Method: Get somewhere comfortable if you can. Scan your surroundings and list: five things you can see, 4 things you can touch, 3 things you can hear, 2 things you can smell, and 1 thing you can taste. 
5. Progressive Muscle Relaxation: Starting at the top of your head, squeeze all of your face muscles as tight as you can. Hold it for a second before slowly releasing all of the tension. Notice how it feels to release and what muscles unclench that you didn’t even know you were unclenching. Move on down to your shoulders, then your arms and hands, your legs, and finally your feet. 
6. Eat something sour: Sour candy can distract your thoughts and bring you back into the present moment. Some people bring sour candy with them when they know they’ll experience triggers so they can be ready to combat anxiety. 
7. Move your body: Have you ever noticed that after a dog gets stressed they’ll shake themselves? This is a parasympathetic nervous system response! They are literally shaking off the stress and calming their body. You can shake yourself like a dog (it actually works!) or you can go for a walk, do some jumping jacks, or any other movement that feels good. 
8. Visualize a common activity: In as much detail as you can, mentally walk through your drive to work, or how you make your favorite meal. This has two effects. One, it distracts your brain. Two, by going through a common activity, you are soothing yourself. 
9. Pet a dog or cat: Petting animals actually releases serotonin and dopamine, two feel-good hormones. 
10. Sit under a weighted blanket: If you don’t have a weighted blanket, you can ask someone to lay on top of you or cover yourself with something heavy (just make sure you’re not restricting your breathing). The pressure on your chest can activate the parasympathetic nervous system. 
11. Bilateral Stimulation: Cross your arms on top of your chest, so the tips of your left fingers are resting on your right collarbone and your right fingers resting on your left collarbone. Your arms should make an X on your chest. Slowly at first, tap your right hand against your left shoulder, and then your left hand against your right shoulder. Keep a steady beat, not going faster than 60 beats a minute. This type of bilateral stimulation calms your brain. It’s also why EMDR works so well. 
12. Talk about a cold shower in the dark: A cold shower can activate the vagus nerve which helps the body calm down. Light a small lamp or crack the door to your bathroom, but keep the big light off. The soothing atmosphere will help you calm down, and the half-light will help you bring your focus to the feel of the water against your skin. 
13. Walk barefoot in the grass: Another tactile grounding exercise is to walk barefoot. There are a ton of nerves in our feet that feed input all up our body. Focus on the sensations of your feet on the ground. How does it feel? 

What if Grounding Exercises Aren’t Enough?

Grounding exercises are powerful tools in fighting anxiety, PTSD, and dissociation, but they’re not the only ones. If grounding exercises aren’t doing the trick, talk to a therapist. A trained therapist can treat these disorders, get to the root cause of them, and help you feel better. 

To get started with therapy today, contact Lifebulb’s support team. We have therapists near you who are excited to meet you and ready to start today.