Grounding techniques are ways to calm yourself by making connections in the here and now. It literally means “grounding” and anchoring in the concreteness of the present.
Before we can talk about the value of grounding techniques, we need to understand anxiety and its role in our lives. According to marriage and family therapist Emily Maynard, LMFT, “Anxiety is a nervous system adaptive process necessary for human survival. Unique to you, anxiety often arises in moments of risk or fear.
You can’t completely eliminate experience, but can managed. This is where grounding techniques come into play.
“Grounding techniques are exercises that help us stay in the present moment and are designed to bring our bodies back to baseline,” says psychologist and Depression Research Foundation Media Advisor Dr. Ernesto Lira de la Rosa tells mbg. By gently distracting your attention from your worries and bringing your attention back to the present, grounding reduces the intensity of your emotions and reduces physical stress.
Anxiety occurs through a chain of physiological reactions. Grounding techniques are natural coping strategies that tell your brain that it’s safe and okay. “Just as the body knows how to panic, it also knows how to return to calm through the parasympathetic nervous system,” says de la Rosa.
