Grounding strategies to calm your nervous system and ease anxious thoughts, wherever you are.
Written by Simon Spichak, MSc, Co-Founder of Resolvve
Your job interview starts in ten minutes but the anxiety is overwhelming. Your mouth and throat are dry, your breathing is rapid and shallow, your heart is pounding, and your mind is running through every worst-case scenario. You’re struggling to lock in and focus, and don’t know how you’ll get through the interview.
Grounding techniques can bring you back into the present moment. These simple exercises involve using your senses, body, and thoughts to reduce overwhelming feelings of anxiety. Practicing them can make stressful situations more manageable.
What Is Grounding and Why Does It Work?
Grounding uses self-soothing techniques to bring you back to the present. These techniques shift your focus away from the anxious thoughts toward inward thoughts and sensations.
These strategies help calm the nervous system’s flight-or-flight response by slowing the heart rate and breathing, easing muscle tension, and improving focus. Many people find grounding techniques are helpful as coping strategies. However, they are not cures for underlying mental health conditions.
5 Grounding Techniques for Anxiety
Practice these skills so that they become easy to use when you’re feeling overwhelmed or anxious.
- 5-4-3-2-1 sensory technique: Name 5 things you can see, 4 things you can feel, 3 sounds you can hear, 2 things you can smell, 1 one thing you can taste. Engaging these senses may bring your focus into the present.
- Slow, paced breathing: Breathe in through your nose for four seconds and exhale slowly through your mouth for six seconds. Repeat for a few minutes. The longer exhale may increase the body’s parasympathetic nervous system activity, which calms the fight-or-flight response to reduce your heart rate and increase feelings of relaxation.
- Progressive muscle relaxation: Sit or lie down somewhere quiet and comfortable. Work through all the muscle groups in your body, taking about five seconds to tense the muscles and then exhale and relax the muscle for 15 seconds before moving onto the next muscle group. Don’t tense the muscles hard enough to cause pain and skip any areas that are injured. You can move from your feet to your head or vice versa. Relaxing the muscles to release tension helps calm the on-edge feelings of arousal that come with anxiety.
- Category mental grounding: Pick a category like animals or plants, and name one item for each letter of the alphabet. This technique may distract you from racing, intrusive thoughts that could make your mind spiral and instead makes you focus on a different task.
- Orienting and object grounding: Look around the room and name where you are. Pick up an object and notice its qualities like whether it feels cold or warm, hard or soft, and what colour and textures it has. This strategy allows you to anchor your physical sensations and thoughts within the present moment.
For more strategies that focus on the physical symptoms of anxiety, see our other guide.
Note that if you have obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) with mental compulsions, using strategies could reinforce the cycle and lead to more distress. Specialized exposure and response prevention therapy might be needed to ease those symptoms
How to Choose the Right Technique
Because 5-4-3-2-1, the categories mental grounding, and paced breathing could be done discreetly and silently, they work in public spaces like a waiting room before an interview. Progressive muscle relaxation is easier to do in a quiet, private space though its possible to practice it at your work desk, too. Try each technique while you’re calm to figure out which ones work best for you.
Tips to Make Grounding Work
The first time you try these techniques, you might struggle, especially if you’re feeling intense anxiety. To get the most out of them:
- Practice when you’re calm so the skills become familiar and easy to do
- Use them when you feel anxiety or intrusive thoughts escalating, but don’t wait until they hit their peak
- Don’t expect these strategies to take anxiety away altogether
- Set up reminders in your phone or calendar to do these throughout the day
When Grounding Isn’t Enough
If the anxiety, intrusive thoughts, and physical symptoms interfere with your daily life, you might benefit from professional help. A therapist could help you understand why you’re experiencing these symptoms.
“People avoid talking about the things that are actually scaring them and facing them,” says Noah Tile, RP, co-founder and clinical director of Resolvve. Therapists provide a safe place to explain the source of these anxieties and will help you build a toolkit to help you manage the distress that comes with them.
Resolvve’s Ontario-based therapists offer online sessions and are trained to support individuals with anxiety, ADHD, OCD, and other conditions. Therapy starts at $30 with student interns and $100 to $130 with psychotherapists and social workers. If you’re ready to take the next step, book a free 15-minute consultation today.