Grounding

At a glance

• About Grounding
• When can Grounding help?
• General Guidelines when using Grounding 
• Grounding 5 Senses
• Grounding Object
• Grounding Activity

About Grounding

Grounding is a way of helping you to gain some distance from your thoughts, feelings, and memories by bringing yourself back to the present moment.

It helps you to get back in touch with what is happening around you right now, and to train your mind and brain to stay in the present.

Grounding can also help you to find a balance between feeling overwhelmed by emotions and being out of touch with them.

When can Grounding help?

Grounding can be used to help when you:

• Have a ‘flashback’
• Have a nightmare
• Have and intrusive memory
• Feel very angry
• Feel very upset
• Feel very frightened

General Guidelines when using Grounding 

Grounding can be used any time or place and no one has to know that you are doing it.

Try to think about the things you notice just as they are, without judging them or thinking of them as good/bad or like/hate.

Focus on the present and your surroundings. Try not to think about the past or the future.

Practise as often as possible, even when you are not feeling anxious or overwhelmed. If you are able to use these strategies easily when you already feel relaxed, they will be much more helpful when your feelings, thoughts and/or memories feel too intense to cope with.

Notice which strategies or combination of strategies work best for you.

Create your own methods of grounding. These may be more helpful than the suggestions here, because they are your own and will be especially meaningful to you.

Grounding 5 Senses

Focus on the present moment by using all your senses to notice where you are right now.

• Say aloud one thing that you can see, one thing you can hear, and one thing you can feel with your body. For example:
• I can see the kitchen table.
• I can hear music from the next flat.
• I can feel my hands touching the chair.
• Repeat this 3 times.

Then describe the objects, sounds, textures, colours, smells and shapes around you. For example, ‘The kitchen table is brown and has scratches on it.  It is made of wood with a smooth plastic top’, and so on.

Grounding Object

A grounding object is a comforting physical object you can hold which carries a positive meaning for you and can distract you when needed.

When you start to re-experience unpleasant memories or feelings, hold your grounding object and really focus on its colour and different textures (temperature, roughness, smoothness, etc.).

Your grounding object should be something that you did not own when the trauma happened, and is small enough to carry it with you. For example, you might use a pebble from your favourite beach, or a ring given by someone important to you, or another item that feels important to you.

Grounding Activity

Here are some other ways of grounding yourself in the present:

• Run cool water over your hands, noticing how this feels against your skin.
• Hold on to the arms of your chair as hard as you can, noticing the tension you feel when doing this.
• Touch every individual object around you: your keys, your clothing, a table, the walls. Notice textures, colours, materials, weight, temperature. Compare the different objects you touch: Is one colder? Lighter?
• Notice your body. The weight of your body in the chair; the feeling of wriggling your toes in your shoes; the feel of your back against the chair.
• Walk slowly, noticing each footstep, saying “left” or “right” with each step.
• Eat something, describing the flavours in detail to yourself, close your eyes really focus in on the elements of taste.
• Focus on your breathing, noticing each breath as you breathe in through the nose, and out through the mouth. Repeat a pleasant word to yourself on each in breath. For example, a favourite colour, or a soothing word such as “safe” or “calm.”