How to Practice Grounding When You're Feeling Overwhelmed
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0:00 Hi, everyone. Today I want talk a little bit about a couple of ways that you can ground yourself when you're feeling overwhelmed. So, when you have a lot of anxiety or a lot of overwhelm, as a lot of us are having during this pandemic, it's important that you have a couple of tools in your back pocket that you can use to help yourself calm down and ground. So, I'm going to go through a couple of different ways that you can quickly and hopefully, very easily, bring your activation level down and bring your anxiety level down a couple of notches.
00:39 So real quick, if you don't know who I am, my name is Connor Moss. I'm a psychotherapist based in Oakland, California, and also offering online sessions anywhere in California. I specialize in helping people heal through traumas, heal their relationships, and heal addictions, and in these videos, I just offer some short tips and tricks that I've learned in my years of studying and working with clients.
01:03 Alright, so, the first thing with grounding exercises is you need to kind of know where you're at on your activation scale. So I recommend asking yourself a couple of times throughout the day and getting in the habit of noticing how activated you are. So if you think about it on a scale of 1-10, you can just ask yourself, "Where am I on that scale?" That way, when you start to notice, "Oh, an hour ago, I was at a six, and then I was at a seven recently, and now I'm at an eight," then it's time to do these grounding exercises preemptively before you're stuck in a panic attack or something very intense. So, scaling your anxiety throughout the day with that number system. You can even track it. Some people like to track their anxiety in a mood tracker or on their calendars. This can help you do notice the trends and realize before it's too late when you're starting to get overwhelmed.
02:06 So, the first method I have for grounding anxiety and grounding overwhelm is probably my favorite, it seems to be really effective and very popular with a lot of my clients, and it's called 5 4 3 2 1. So, I'll go through it with you here, and you can follow along. So the first step of 5 4 3 2 1 is to name five things that you can see in whatever space you're in. So I'm going to go ahead and do that now. So, the plant, a lamp, a painting, the vent, and the wall. Okay? Five things I can see.
02:50 Next, you're going to name four things that you can hear. So I can hear the traffic outside, I can hear my computer buzzing a little bit, I can hear the sound of my own voice, and I hear my chair creaking a little bit.
03:12 So next, you're going to name three things that you can touch or feel with your body. So I feel the leather on this chair, I feel my socks on my feet, and I feel the earpiece in my ear. Okay? Three things that you can feel.
03:35 Next, you're going to name two things that you can smell. This might be a little difficult, so you can just do the best you can. So I smell this plant next to me, and I just smell the room. Okay?
03:55 And last, you're going to name one thing that you can taste. I don't really taste much, I'm just going to say I taste my saliva. Okay?
04:07 So, 5 4 3 2 1: Five things you can see, four you can hear, three you can touch, two you can smell, and one you can taste. And the idea behind 5 4 3 2 1 is it's going to distract you from whatever overwhelm you're feeling, it's going to bring you into your sensations and out of your spiraling thoughts, and it really is a good way to just change the tracks on your mind, focus on something else, and in that, hopefully, you get taken out of whatever overwhelm you're in. And notice that if your anxiety goes down a little bit when you do that. Usually, people report dropping between two and four points on the 1-10 scale with anxiety. So it has a small but pretty consistent effect in my experience. Okay?
05:00 So up next, we're going to talk about your breathing. So a really good way to ground when you're feeling overwhelmed is to focus on your breathing. There's a lot of different breathing techniques out there, and many of them are useful. I think some of them get a little too complicated, so my favorite is just what I call four in and four out breathing. And this is very simple, it's very easy to remember: You're going to breathe in for a count of four, and you're going to breathe out for a count of four. And just focusing on the breath, not thinking about anything else, just focusing on the in-breath and the out-breath as you're doing it. So I'll demonstrate it here and you can kind of follow along as you like, so we'll breathe in for one, and out. And in, and out. And in, and out.
06:12 So you can do that three times, five times, 10 times, you can do that for a couple of minutes. You should notice a calming effect with this. When you focus on your breathing, you tend to breathe a little more slowly, a little more deeply. This brings more oxygen to your brain, to your entire system, and it tends to kind of slow you down and bring you back into the present moment. So it's a really good way to interrupt overwhelm, come back to the present moment, and just slow down. And hopefully, you could follow along when I was counting, but all I was doing is in my head counting one, two, three, four, at about that calm, slow pace, like you imagine you're taking a calm stroll in the park. Okay? So four in, four out breathing is a really good way to focus on your breath and bring yourself back.
07:15 Alright, so the next grounding technique I have is what's called a body scan. So, you might hear a lot about the body in relation to anxiety and overwhelm, and that's because you can think of anxiety as consisting of two different parts: There's the thought loops, the consistent thoughts of, "This is bad, everything's bad, something bad is going to happen." And there's also generally a physical component. You might notice tension in your chest, or a pit in your stomach, or trouble breathing, or you might start sweating. So these are all physiological, physical manifestations of anxiety. So, when you're talking about grounding techniques, doing something grounding to the body can be really helpful in these situations.
08:08 So with the body scan, you just want to... You can close your eyes if you like, but it's kind of like a meditation, you just want to start to notice what you feel in your body. So instead of thinking your thoughts and being stuck in your head, try to drop down into your body, and you can try it right now with me, and just notice, what information are you getting? You might notice some pain, some tension. You might notice if you're anxious, like a lot of pressure. And you might also notice some areas that feel calm and relaxed. So right now, I feel a little bit of a tension in my lower back, I feel a little bit of tightness in my shoulders, but I also notice that my chest feels relaxed and open. Okay? So that's some of the types of information that you might get from your body. And when you're just starting out, this might feel a little weird or be a little difficult, but just try to focus and slow down and notice what your body is telling you. Very often, when there's anxiety, you're going to notice that tension.
09:25 And so the idea with the body scan is just to become mindful of what are these different sensations that are happening. If you're having an anxiety attack and your chest is super tense, but you're not really in touch with your body and you don't really notice it, you're just going to experience that as like this overwhelming pressure and claustrophobia. But if you can identify that, "Oh, this pressure I'm feeling is actually a physical sensation that I notice in my chest," it can help kind of parse it out so that it doesn't feel so overwhelming. It's still uncomfortable, but you at least know that this is why you're feeling this tension.
10:04 And also with the body scan, like I mentioned, you'll notice areas that feel more open and relaxed, and that can be a big resource for you, because you can focus in on those points that feel positive and helpful. So, even though you have a lot of tension in your chest, you might notice that your feet feel cozy, you're grounded, and you can kind of notice that as well, and realize that even though there's some negative stimuli going on, there's also some positive that you're giving from your body. So, yeah, slowing down either with eyes open or eyes closed, just scanning your body, noticing what's happening. It's going to help you identify the points of tension and also identify the points of resource. Okay?
10:53 So my last suggestion for how to ground overwhelm is what's called bilateral stimulation. So this is something that's been studied a lot and talked about. It's the basis of EMDR, if you've heard of that, which is a method of trauma processing and grounding that utilizes eye movement to help the body relax. And the idea behind EMDR and bilateral stimulation is that studies have shown that activities that rhythmically and methodically use both sides of the body, which connect to using both sides of the brain, help process and ground information in your system. So, it's a little complicated, and I'm sure I'm not actually getting it completely right, but the basic idea is that using both sides of your body in a methodical and rhythmic fashion has been shown to really help calm and relieve body tension and anxiety.
11:54 So there's a lot of different ways that this... You can practice this. A classic way is through drum circles. So, drumming, you use both hands when you're drumming in a methodical and rhythmic way, and that side-to-side, back-and-forth sensation helps the body calm down and relax. So also walking using both sides of your body, knitting, crocheting, those types of things. And if you don't have those types of materials available to you or can't go for a walk, one grounding exercise that I like is just tapping like this on your shoulders. So you can think about a rhythmic, back-and-forth kind of like that walking pace that we talked about before, and just notice... You don't have to do it really hard or in any particular way, but just notice the sensation of the left and the right going back and forth. And again, you can try that for a minute, or three minutes, or five minutes, if you have the patience for it. And studies have shown and people have reported that that type of rhythm and back-and-forth movement actually helps your system calm down.
13:21 So, those are my tips on how to ground your anxiety and ground your overwhelm and come back to the present moment. I think these are really important to... They might not all work for everyone, but I think they're really important to have at least one of these that you can rely on. So, try them all out and see what works for you. Don't just say, "Well, this seems a little weird, so I'm just going to assume it doesn't work." Try it; if it doesn't work, then you don't have to do it. But give yourself the opportunity to suspend your disbelief and try some of these a little bit to see if any of them help at all. And even if one of these helps a little bit, that's still a really good tool to have.
14:07 So, yeah, I hope you found this helpful, and I hope these techniques can help you calm down and come back to presence, and if you're needing more support around this type of thing, I do this type of work with individual clients and trauma therapy, relationship therapy, and drug and alcohol counseling, and you're always welcome to reach out if you'd like to chat or consult and see if I might be able to be a good fit to help you. So I hope this is helpful, and I'll see all next time. Take care.
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