How To Ground Yourself

Do you ever find that some days your head is flooded with many different thoughts?

Or do you have moments when you feel overwhelmed with what you need to do or achieve?

Or maybe you are going through a situation that is making your experience emotional stress.

Whatever it is you may benefit from knowing how to ground yourself.

Grounding yourself can be done through a variety of techniques that will help you to center yourself, calm the noise in your head, and help calm an anxious feelings within minutes.

In this guide, we show you several simple tricks and techniques that you can use to ground yourself next time you are feeling overwhelmed, anxious, or stressed.

How To Ground Yourself?

The below techniques have been grouped into three different categories:

• Emotional Self-Care: a focus on nurturing compassion for yourself
• Physical: these techniques help to create calm within your body as well as relate to your physical well-being
• Mental: offer ways to reframe your thought cycle with mindset shifts that help to avoid overwhelming your nervous system

Emotional Self-Care Techniques

Everything Is Temporary

This simple sentence will help guide you through difficult moments or feelings of duress, simply remind yourself that everything is temporary.

The world we live in and we as individuals are forever changing.

When things are feeling out of control remind yourself that this feeling will pass and you will feel grounded and in control again soon.

Maintain Boundaries

Often feelings of overwhelm are a result of taking on too much or not respecting or maintaining your boundaries.

When you are asked to do something, always ensure that it will benefit you and your purpose and not take away from what you are trying to achieve.

By maintaining your boundaries you should be able to keep a handle on things and by focusing on your purpose you can decide whether something should be let go, dealt with at a later time, or if you should ask someone else for help.

Find Support

Reaching out for support and help can help to make you feel more grounded as you will have someone to vent to or seek help from which can help to prevent you from spiraling into the void of ungroundedness.

Get To Know Your Inner Critic

If what you are trying to achieve is unattainable due to time, ability, or eternal factors that are not in your control you will be setting yourself up for failure, something that often triggers our inner critic.

Get to know your inner critic by learning when it may pop up which will help you to learn how to ignore it, engage with it to understand your behavior, or appreciate it.

Engaging with your inner critic will diminish this negative internal voice and the power it holds over you.

Physical Techniques

Breathe

This may seem simple but focusing on breathing and working through some breathing exercises can help you to reconnect with your body and also help calm the nervous system.

The first technique you can do is a body scan, where you will check-in and consciously think about each part of your body, helping you to see that everything is ok.

Next, you can engage in box breathing, for this technique you will close your eyes and imagine a box, as you trace each side you will breathe in for the count of four, and out for the count of four.

Repeat twice to trace the shape of a square. Once you have repeated this several times you will have calmed the body down.

Mindful breathing is also useful, simply be aware of your breathing as you inhale and exhale, paying attention to the fresh oxygen filling your lungs.

Prioritize Physical Wellness

Prioritizing your physical wellness can be done in many ways, such as focusing on sleep, nutrition, and exercise.

By giving your body what it needs you can immediately benefit from the way you feel which can help to ground you during times of stress.

Treat Your Senses

Treating your senses could be something like going for a walk, where you can breathe in the fresh air, feel the air on your skin, see beauty, and hear stillness and calm, soothing sounds.

Treating your senses could also mean listening to relaxing music or touching something soothing or engaging in a tactile activity such as gardening.

Mental Techniques

Take Small Steps

By breaking a task that is overwhelming you into small steps you will be better able to achieve whatever it is you need to do.

Writing a list of each small step and crossing each one as you complete them can give you a sense of achievement.

Always try to start with something that you are already good at for a dopamine boost before beginning the task.

Look For Another Perspective

Consider things from a different perspective, for example, will something causing you stress matter in a day, week, month, or year?

If not it can help relax the brain and body about what you are doing and alleviate any pressure.

Looking at situations from a different perspective can also allow you to understand things better and also understand why they may be causing you to feel overwhelmed.

Avoid Catastrophizing

Catastrophizing can be an easy thing to do when feeling overwhelmed as your brain is naturally going to think negative thoughts.

To avoid doing this, take a long deep breath, name what you are feeling, then ask questions about what you are feeling and why you may be feeling this way.

This will help you to distance yourself from the problem and a solution will become much more obvious, enabling you to work through any issues and find a workable solution that will give you the best outcome possible.

Final Thoughts

You now hold the techniques necessary to ground yourself wherever you may be.

By having these skills you will find that you are better able to manage your emotions and can avoid getting overwhelmed as easily as before.