What is grounding?
Grounding is a skill that helps refocus you back in the present moment. This can include feeling back in your body or in your current surroundings. Sometimes anxiety, panic, excessive worry, racing thoughts (etc) can get us trapped in our head and make it difficult to connect with the present moment. We can get lost for a moment and struggle with finding our way back.
Why is grounding an important part of PTSD treatment?
If you are struggling with PTSD, this can include flashbacks, remembering unwanted memories, being triggered by familiar sounds or smells. These types of symptoms can cause you to lose touch momentarily with where you are. This can lead to feeling overwhelmed very quickly.
The purpose of grounding is to center yourself by doing simple things that will make sensory based connections with the here and now. Once you are reconnected with your current moment in the present, it disconnects you from the memory in the past that you were experiencing.
What are some examples of grounding?
The key to a grounding skill is to do something simple that will heighten a specific sense (sight, smell, hear, taste, feel) and then focus on connecting to that heightened sense.
Here are some examples of grounding activities to try:
A Grounding Chair: Find a chair that is near you and sit all the way back. Your bottom and back should be fully touching the surface of the chair. Reach out your arms and legs so as much of your body is connected to that chair. Notice how it feels: the weight, the material, the texture, the temperature. Breathe deeply and relax your body as you exhale.
A Grounding Item: Find an item that has a unique shape, weight or texture. This is similar the chair activity whereas you will still focus on the senses connected to the item, breathe deeply and exhale.
Colors: Pick a color, look around your surroundings and name every item that you see (no matter how small) that is any shade of that color. Continue with different colors until you feel less distress, more relaxed or more present.
Cold/Hot Water: Take a cold shower or a hot bath.
Sour/Hot Candy: Eat a piece of hard candy that is either especially sour or hot (e.g. lemonheads, cinnamon candy/mints, etc)
Exercise/Movement: Get up and move. If it is cold or hot outside you can walk from the inside to outside. You can get your blood pumping with a run up the stairs. You can take a walk or walk briskly around your space.
Track Your Skills
As you start to practice using grounding skills, start to keep track of your experience. Which skill did you use and how it felt during and after that specific skill? Did you enjoy it? Was it successful in grounding you? A grounding skill should make you feel more present in the moment or more ‘in your body’. If that is your experience when practicing a specific skill, then you know that that skill works for you. Paying attention and tracking the skills that work helps fill your toolbox with tools that you can pull from when you need them. Not every skill will work for you and not every skill will work every time. So, it’s important to develop a list of grounding skills that have worked successfully so you can try different things when you are starting to feel distress.
Are you interested in PTSD Treatment?
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To find out more about my services, click here: PTSD Treatment