Reclaiming Your Body #3: Grounding Strategies & Techniques

Welcome to Part 3 of the Reclaiming Your Body Series, in which we’ll look at grounding: coming back to your body in the present moment when in the grip of anxiety or when trauma triggers occur. Simple grounding techniques can help bring a sense of control when it feels like your body has been hijacked or when dissociation occurs.

Stolen Bodies

When traumatic experiences occur and your body reacts by falling out of your Window of Tolerance into fight, flight, freeze, fawn or flop, and/or continuing trauma tiggers push you into reexperiencing your trauma in the present moment, it can feel like your body has been stolen from you.

If you have been the victim of physical or sexual trauma, it can feel like your body no longer belongs to you; your body itself is the site of trauma from which you cannot escape.  Perhaps during the trauma your body subconsciously went into freeze mode to protect you and you feel like your body betrayed you. In order to survive the trauma and the ongoing aftermath, perhaps you have subconsciously shut off from feeling it; disconnecting and disowning your body to protect yourself from pain yet simultaneously feeling cut off from feeling pleasure or the simple sensation of feeling alive.

Dissociation

Falling out of your Window of Tolerance into fight, flight or freeze states (see part 1) can bring a sense of dissociation, whereby you may feel you are ‘not real’; like you are not part of your surroundings and you may experience a sensation that your body is floating, untethered to the earth. Or, you may feel completely disconnected to and ‘out of’ your body; both these sensations can leave you feeling powerless.

Trauma Triggers

When trauma triggers occur, you may find yourself transported back to the past (then and there), relieving the distressing or terrifying experiences in bodily sensations, feelings, thoughts and images as if they are happening to you now, in the present moment. It can feel impossible to function effectively in your day to day at home, work or school when you are time travelling and re-experiencing your trauma again and again, or when simple actions such as laying down to sleep become moments of terror.

How Grounding Strategies Help Dissociation & Trauma Triggers

Grounding techniques create a distance between your thoughts feelings and memories by bringing you back to the present moment. In terms of trauma triggers, it means bringing you back to safety; helping you move from ‘then and there’ by connecting to what is happening around you right now in the ‘here and now’, and training your mind and body to stay in the present moment.

Grounding strategies can support you to find your way back into your body and a state of ‘realness’, to feeling anchored and connected to the earth. And in doing so, it can help you rediscover the simple pleasures of your senses and engaging safely with your body and the world you inhabit.

Physical Grounding Strategies

These grounding strategies can be used whenever you feel disconnected from, or unsafe in your body or when you are experiencing the anxiety inducing sensation that you are not connected to the earth.

The Standing Grounding Strategy, and Progressive Muscle Relaxation Technique, both use the physicality of your body to help you feel the sensation of being within it and having control over how you can sense it.

54321 Grounding Technique and the 333 Grounding Techniques both utilise your senses to engage with the your surroundings to being you back to the here and now. You may also find this list of other ways to use your senses, movement and temperature, helpful to bring you back to your body.

Mental/Cognitive Grounding Strategies

These mental and cognitive techniques can be helpful whenever you are experiencing intrusive thoughts, a swirling brain or when your mind is replaying images and sounds of your trauma. They create a distance between the thoughts and feelings via distraction so you can have space to breathe

Soothing Affirmations for Trauma and Anxiety

When you are overcome with anxiety or overwhelmed by trauma triggers, it can be very easy for you to respond with critical or negative thoughts about yourself. Responding with kindness and compassion towards yourself can help you move back towards your Window of Tolerance. These affirmations can be used in conjunction with any breathing or grounding strategies.

Top Tips for Grounding Strategies & Techniques

• You can use grounding techniques in any place, at any time. Many techniques are hidden and no one will know you are doing them. You can always go somewhere more private to do the more physical or noticeable ones.
• As you think about the things you are noticing, try to stay neutral rather than judging or thinking of them as good/bad or like/hate.
• Focus on the present and your surroundings. When your mind goes back to the past or forward to the future, gently bring yourself back to the present with kindness and love. It’s completely normal for your mind to time travel and you are not doing anything wrong.
• Notice which strategies and combination of strategies work best for you, you may even develop your own.