Were you ever grounded as a child? This is a form of punishment. If you somehow ran afoul of your parents’ rules, they would ground you to your room or some other specific space. The idea is that you can't leave that space for a certain amount of time.
Grounded children learn to make the best out of a bad situation. They look around their punishment environment to find something in this confined area that will distract them. They engage their senses with what they have access to rather than thinking about things they aren't able to do (play with their friends, watch television, ride their bicycle).
If you need to deal with anxiety, you can ground yourself as an adult.
This form of therapeutic grounding is similar to your punishment as a child. You limit your sensory involvement to the immediate area. This involves attaching yourself to the "right now" moment and your current physical space. Here are three tips that will help you get more anxiety relief from grounding.
1. Practice Makes Perfect
The human brain is an amazing computer. You can program it to do so many things. Many of your skills and abilities were developed thanks to you repeatedly practicing them.
Practice grounding, and you will get better at it over time. This is because your mind recognizes things you do repeatedly. It assumes that if you consciously repeat certain behaviors, they must benefit you, or you wouldn't do them.
Where grounding is concerned, practice is powerful.
Calm yourself and engage your senses. What do you see, smell, hear, touch, and taste right now? Ground yourself in the present moment only. Take your focus away from what's causing your anxiety. Place it in your immediate environment. The more you practice this, the better you'll get at removing your focus from what's making you anxious.
2. Build a Support Network
The people you care about can help you with this process. Teach them what grounding does for you and why you use it; to relieve anxiety. Enlisting help this way can be wonderful because sometimes anxiety might be sneaking up on you without you recognizing it. A friend may be able to tell you that you might benefit from some grounding if they see warning signs of anxiety.
They may say, "Are you feeling anxious? Let's do some grounding. What color is the shirt I'm wearing? How does your clothing feel on you? What do you smell right now? What sounds are you hearing?"
3. Open Your Eyes
Anxiety involves worrying and obsessing over some real or perceived thought or experience. It's usually not something that's going on in your current moment. This is why you want to keep your eyes open and focus on the physically present things around you right now.
If you close your eyes, you limit your sensory input dramatically. This can allow your mind to wander to those anxious feelings and experiences. Open your eyes for a better grounding experience and let them take in all the visual input in your immediate environment.
Using your senses to ground you in reality can calm an anxious mind. These three tips help improve your grounding so you enjoy less stress and anxiety.
