#13: Finding Calm in Chaos: Grounding Techniques for Anxiety
DECEMBER 5, 2024
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In this episode of the Courage to Heal podcast, we explore anxiety, its impact on the body, and practical grounding techniques to manage it. Anna explains Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and dives into how anxiety manifests physically.
Detailed grounding practices are shared, including physical, sensory, mental, and breathing exercises, as well as visualization and journaling techniques. Tips for integrating these strategies into daily life are provided to help listeners manage their anxiety effectively.
Mentioned in this Episode:
YouTube Documentary on Earthing
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[01:59] Understanding Anxiety Disorders
[05:19] The Body's Response to Anxiety
[11:07] Managing Anxiety with Grounding Techniques
[13:42] Physical Grounding Techniques
[18:23] Sensory and Mental Grounding Techniques
[22:44] Breathing Exercises for Anxiety Relief
[25:33] Visualization and Journaling
[33:45] Practical Tips for Grounding
Transcript
ANNA: Hello, friends! Welcome to another episode of Courage to Heal podcast. Today, we will be talking about finding calm in the chaos of anxiety. We will find out what anxiety is, how it works, and how you can manage it better. We will look at common anxiety disorders and how they often manifest through physical ailments.
I will give you tons of actionable tips that will improve your anxiety coping skills. We will especially focus on grounding techniques.
I doubt that I really need to define anxiety for you. We have all felt it at some point. But still, anxiety is what we feel when we are worried, tense, or afraid, particularly about things that are about to happen, or which we think could happen in the future.
Anxiety is a natural human response when we feel that we're under threat. It can be experienced through our thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations. Here's the thing. Some degree of anxiety is normal, even good for us. For example, anxiety can motivate you to prepare for an exam, a job interview, or a public speaking engagement.
It can help you stay alert and aware of risks. Anxiety can help you focus and be more efficient when faced with the unpredictable. Anxiety can even make you more creative and innovative. There is research that proves all of this. Really, it's only when anxiety gets excessive and disrupts our daily functioning that it starts to get us in trouble.
That's when it can turn from a natural, useful response to a mental health condition. One such condition related to anxiety is called generalized anxiety disorder. So, let's discuss the psychiatric criteria for Generalized Anxiety Disorder as an example of how excessive anxiety can manifest.
And before we do that, I want to say that Generalized Anxiety Disorder is just one anxiety disorder. There is also Social Anxiety Disorder, Panic Disorder, and Phobias, as well as some others. But generalized anxiety disorder is like your “standard-issue” anxiety.
The symptoms of it include excessive worry that is difficult to control. This worry occurs more days than not for at least six months, and it happens about a variety of events and activities.
Restlessness or feeling keyed up. That's also called hypervigilance. You are always on the lookout for something bad to happen.
Fatigue. Because of course you're going to have fatigue if you're constantly feeling restless. Your body can be depleted of energy by constant anxiety.
Difficulty concentrating or your mind going blank. You may be familiar with that feeling of just being frozen or not being able to pull the information up in your mind.
Irritability. If your body and mind are overwhelmed with worry, you can feel stressed and depleted of energy. This can make it difficult for you to shrug off or ignore things as you normally would be able to. In turn, this can cause you to become more irritable and anger quicker.
Muscle tension. Being anxious is associated with being armored up because you are literally bracing yourself against the impact of something bad and because your muscles are constantly being used due to the overabundance of stress hormones. But we will talk about this later.
Sleep disturbance. Here this means difficulty falling or staying asleep or restless, unsatisfying sleep. Once again, you have an overabundance of stress hormones, so sleep is not really restful.
And much like most diagnoses, these symptoms have to cause a clinically significant distress or impairment in important areas of functioning, to be counted as diagnosable anxiety.
Important areas of functioning mean daily living, social functioning, work, etc. These symptoms cannot be a result of substance use to get this diagnosis of generalized anxiety disorder.
There are also some common everyday signs of anxiety that may not be a part of the diagnosis but are still present for those of us who experience excessive anxiety. They include heart palpitations, sweating, rapid breathing, digestive issues like nausea and upset stomach, and muscle tension and aches, particularly in the shoulders, neck, and jaw.
So let's talk about what the body actually goes through when you feel anxiety. In order to do this, we need a very quick lesson on our nervous system. Within us, we have what's called an autonomic nervous system. That's the system that's responsible for all the functions that we cannot control voluntarily, like heart rate, sweating, digestion, breathing, etc.
Everything that happens without us having to think about it is controlled by the autonomic nervous system. This system has two branches. The sympathetic and the parasympathetic. The sympathetic is responsible for speeding us up. It's responsible for our fight and flight response. You can think of it as our gas pedal.
The parasympathetic is the opposite. It's responsible for slowing us down. It's also referred to as the rest and digest branch. You can think of it as our brake pedal. Interestingly enough, this branch can slow us down too much, essentially making us numb and dissociated, but that's a story for another time.
Then, in our brain, we have this fire alarm called the amygdala. It's a small, almond shaped structure that tells us when we are in danger. We also have a relay station called the thalamus and a command center called the hypothalamus. So, when we are in danger, the following happens. And all of this happens so quickly, we cannot even process it with our thinking mind.
First, the thalamus, the relay station, sends a conglomeration of sensory signals to the amygdala, the fire alarm. If these signals appear dangerous in any way, the amygdala acts like that fire alarm and sends out a distress signal. The hypothalamus, or the command center, then sends out a command to activate the sympathetic nervous system by telling our adrenal glands to release adrenaline into the bloodstream, acting like a gas pedal.
This leads to a faster heart rate as blood travels to muscles and blood pressure goes up. We develop rapid, shallow breathing, which causes us to consume extra oxygen. That extra oxygen increases alertness, and our senses become sharper. Also, nutrients like glucose are released for extra energy. All of this is called the SAM axis, and SAM stands for sympathetic adrenal medullary.
This response continues as long as perceived danger exists. As a matter of fact, the hypothalamus That command center starts a secondary process where it tells the pituitary gland to tell the adrenal glands to produce cortisol, which you may know as the stress hormone. This is called the HPA axis, or the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis.
And this process keeps the body revved up and on high alert, essentially pressing the gas pedal all the way down and not letting go. Once the threat passes, the parasympathetic nervous system, or the brake pedal, dampens the response and returns us to feeling calm. However, people who live with chronic anxiety often find it very hard to press that brake pedal, which results in elevated levels of cortisol in their bodies.
Over time, these elevated levels of cortisol can cause a lot of health issues. As a matter of fact, I covered this in detail in episode 10 titled Trauma 101 I did a couple of weeks ago, if you want to check that out. Here I will give you a brief overview of how excessive anxiety can affect our physical health.
It can damage blood vessels and arteries, increasing blood pressure and raising the risk of heart attacks or strokes. It can contribute to the buildup of fat tissue and to weight gain. Cortisol increases appetite so that people will want to eat more to obtain extra energy. It also increases storage of unused nutrients as fat.
All of this can lead to diabetes. Another issue commonly caused by an excess of cortisol is IBS or irritable bowel syndrome, as well as other digestive disorders. Excessive anxiety can also weaken the immune response by dysregulating key immune cells such as T-cells, B-cells, and natural killer cells.
This leaves you more vulnerable to illness. Autoimmune disorders like multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis can also occur. Finally, experiencing frequent feelings of fear, worry, and anxiety can impact the body by contributing to muscle pain and tightness. Constant muscle tension is a common problem for people with panic disorder.
Alright, so we have taken a look at how anxiety works and how excessive anxiety can affect us negatively. Now, let's start exploring how we can actually make that anxiety better.
Of course, you can always try medication for anxiety. There are many effective options out there. And if you want to go that route, you can talk to a psychiatrist or your general practitioner.
I always recommend a psychiatrist because they get so much more education on various psychiatric issues compared to a GP. But if that's not possible for you, a regular doctor can prescribe anti-anxiety medication. I won't go into medication in detail because that's not really the focus of this episode.
What I want to discuss with you today are grounding practices and techniques.
Grounding techniques are simple strategies designed to help you focus on the present moment, effectively interrupting anxious or negative thought patterns. By redirecting your attention to the here and now, these techniques can bring about a sense of calm and control. They often involve engaging your senses sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell to anchor your mind in your immediate surroundings.
By systematically activating your senses, you disrupt the cycle of anxious thoughts and return your focus to the present moment. This shift can reduce feelings of anxiety and promote a state of relaxation. Grounding techniques are versatile and can be practiced anywhere, making them valuable tools for managing stress in daily life.
There are several types of grounding practices. Physical grounding, which uses the body. Sensory grounding, which uses the five senses. Mental grounding, which occupies the mind and distracts us from feeling anxious. There are grounding breathing exercises, and then there are visualization practices, as well as journaling.
I am going to give you not just one, not just two, but ten grounding practices today. I really want you to see how versatile they can be. There are some practices that require some kind of tools, but most of them can be done anywhere, anytime.
The first practice we will look at is called earthing. Earthing is a form of physical grounding, and it literally involves you touching the earth with your body, whether it's just your feet or your whole body. Believe it or not, that's an evidence-based practice for stress management, meaning it has been tested by research.
There is an electromagnetic exchange that happens when we touch the ground, and it's been shown to reduce cortisol and other stress related chemicals in the body. You can even buy an earthing mat or socks, that's the thing. I have one client who swears by her earthing mattress cover. They plug into the wall and create that electromagnetic exchange without you having to touch the ground.
If you want to learn more about earthing, there is a free documentary on YouTube called The Earthing Movie. I will put it in the show notes. It's a really comprehensive resource to tell you more about this practice.
The second technique we will explore is mindful exercise, especially mindful walking.
Mindful walking is when you go for a slow walk, paying attention to each step. how your foot feels against the ground, and any sensations from the environment around you, like the wind and sun on your skin. You generally don't listen to music and instead use all of your senses to absorb what's happening to you.
The physical activity of walking releases tension, while mindfulness keeps your focus on the present, getting you out of the anxious loop. But it doesn't have to be walking. You can do any exercise mindfully. My favorite is mindful dancing. You pick a great song, then move your body in a way that's pleasing to you.
You don't worry about how it looks. You just dance. It's also called ecstatic dance. You may have heard of it. In general, moving your body, like I said, decreases muscle tension, and getting your heart rate up changes brain chemistry, increasing the availability of important anti-anxiety neurochemicals, including serotonin, GABA, brain derived neurotropic factor, or BDNF, and endocannabinoids.
Finally, exercise activates frontal regions of the brain responsible for executive function, which helps control the amygdala, which as you remember, is that fire alarm that reacts to real or imagined threats to our survival.
The third practice I want to recommend for reducing anxiety is progressive muscle relaxation.
Progressive muscle relaxation is when you gradually tense and release each muscle group in the body, starting from your toes and moving up to your head and face. You hold the tension in each muscle group for 10 to 15 seconds, then release it slowly. This relieves muscle tension caused by anxiety and fosters a sense of physical relaxation.
I want to show you a quick version of progressive muscle relaxation right now. Wherever you are, you can probably try this, unless you're driving. Go ahead and tense up your legs and squeeze your hands into fists, tensing both of your arms. I'll do it right along with you. Just squeeze your muscles together as hard as feels comfortable and hold it.
Keep holding. We will do this for about 15 seconds.
Keep holding.
We are almost there.
And now slowly release the tension. Take a deep breath. Doesn't that feel good? Muscles tend to relax more when you first tense them up. That's what progressive muscle relaxation is based on.
Okay, so the first three techniques were all a form of physical grounding. Now let's move on to sensory grounding.
This is one exercise you might be familiar with, and I actually did a demonstration of it in my last episode on mindfulness and trauma recovery. It's called the 5-4-3-2-1 technique, and it's very simple.
You notice five things you can see, four things you can touch, three things you can hear, two things you can smell, and one thing you can taste. And you do all of that slowly and mindfully, paying attention to each thing you are exploring with your senses. This exercise is excellent for anxiety because it gets you out of your worried brain and gets you to pay attention to your surroundings, which has the added benefit of making you feel safe.
Another sensory technique for grounding is to hold a familiar object, like a worry stone or a blanket or a fidget toy, and focus on its texture, weight, and temperature. This provides a comforting sensory experience and a tangible reminder to stay grounded. You can make this exercise even better by repeating a mantra to yourself while touching the object.
For example, you could say, “I am safe,” or “This too shall pass,” or “I choose peace over worry.” Really, any short phrase that will help you feel even more grounded and centered.
So those are the two great sensory grounding techniques that I'm going to show you today. The 5-4-3-2-1 exercise and grounding with a familiar object.
Now, let's take a quick look at mental grounding. Mental grounding involves using the mind itself to distract you from anxious thoughts. The idea is, if something occupies your mind, then anxious thoughts cannot take over.
One very simple form of mental grounding is to count backwards from 100 by 7s. Another is to look around the room and name out loud every color you see. Try to find as many shades as possible and keep naming them until you feel a sense of calm returning. Instead of just saying blue or red, try to get a more nuanced shade like turquoise or scarlet.
And if you need more time to feel calm, you can start naming shapes around you. These mental grounding exercises distract the mind by engaging it in a simple task. helping you focus on the environment and bringing you into the present moment. It's particularly helpful in settings where movement or other grounding techniques may not be feasible.
All right, let's take a quick break here. This is a perfect time for me to tell you about the gift I'm giving away today. It's a free five-minute anxiety meditation that offers a quick path to calm and grounding. It's designed for those times when you need immediate relief. This practice guides you through deep breathing, a swift body scan, and a soothing affirmation.
During these five mindful minutes, you'll focus on your breath, relax key areas of tension, and anchor yourself in the present moment. This meditation helps you regain a sense of control when anxiety strikes. I will put the link to download it in the show notes. You can just save it to your phone and listen to it anytime you need to find calm amidst chaos.
Okay, now let's take a look at breathing exercises. Slow and deep breathing is fantastic for anxiety relief because it activates our parasympathetic nervous system. Remember, that's the system that acts like a brake pedal and slows down our fight or flight reactions. It puts us into a rest and digest state.
This is especially true for when we take long exhales. So really, if you want to feel less anxious, you can just spend 3-5 minutes taking long, deep breaths, making your exhale longer than your inhale. This activates that parasympathetic nervous system very well. One reason this works is because it starves our brain of oxygen.
It may sound counterintuitive, but too much oxygen can make us feel anxious. Once again, remember how in moments of stress our breathing gets shallow and fast so that we can get more oxygen to our extremities to run away or fight? Here, we're trying to do the opposite and raise our CO2 levels to bring us into a calmer state.
One very common breathing exercise you can do is called box breathing. Box breathing is when you inhale for four counts, hold for four counts, exhale for four counts, and hold again for four counts, repeating the cycle over and over again. The combination of holding the breath and counting really calms down the nervous system.
Another breathing exercise I will show you is called finger breathing and it's very simple. You use the index finger of your dominant hand, which for me is my right hand, and you trace this index finger up the side of your non dominant thumb as you inhale. Then down the other side of the thumb as you exhale. Then up the index finger as you inhale, and down the other side as you exhale, moving all the way from thumb to pinky and back.
You are basically tracing the outline of your hand with the index finger of the other hand while breathing in and out. The combination of a physical action with slow breathing helps slow down the mind and bring focus to the body.
The next category of grounding practices we will cover today is visualization. Visualization is very interesting because it tricks our brains. You see, our brains cannot tell the difference between a thing that's happening in real life and a thing we're visualizing or imagining is happening. It's true.
If you imagine something vividly enough, your brain is fooled into thinking it's actually happening. This is a principle used by elite athletes and CEOs. They visualize themselves making that throw or giving that speech. And the more they practice in their mind, the better they perform in reality. Why not borrow this technique from them? What you want to visualize during moments of anxiety is something calming.
My favorite is to visualize a peaceful space, a sanctuary that combines all of your favorite elements for comfort and calm. You imagine yourself being in this place with all of your senses, so you visualize what you are seeing, hearing, smelling, and touching. You really need to immerse yourself into that scene.
Some examples of peaceful places that my clients use include a beach, a forest, a garden, and a quiet room in their house with their favorite couch. Mine is a mossy forest, kind of like what you will find in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, where soft green moss covers everything. And there's a beautiful stream nearby.
You can even bring animals or people you care about into this peaceful place. You are only limited by your imagination. I had one client who struggled feeling safe anywhere at all, any place that existed on earth. So she imagined herself peacefully floating through space and visiting different planets.
Again, the only limit is your imagination. I want to mention that this technique is used extensively in EMDR therapy, or eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy, which was specifically designed for trauma but is now used for multiple things, including anxiety.
Okay, we are on to our last tool for grounding, and this one is a good one, although it does require a bit of extra time and tools. The last tool is journaling. There is something about writing things down with your hand that is very calming and grounding. It combines multiple techniques we've already talked about.
Journaling is the form of physical, sensory, and mental grounding all in one. And you can do it in multiple ways. There is an approach called flow writing, where you write down your stream of consciousness, just whatever is coming to mind. And if nothing is coming to mind, you can literally write down “blah, blah, blah” until something comes up.
Set your timer for 5 to 10 minutes and just start writing. No editing or stopping allowed.
Another method is to do some thought restructuring in your journal. This is a technique used in cognitive behavioral therapy. You basically question your thoughts, put them on trial, so to speak. I also like to add some self-compassion to the mix, otherwise the approach may seem a little devoid of empathy, at least for my taste.
So, here are some questions you can ask yourself as you journal. I recommend you write them down for future use, because you can use them over and over again, every time you have anxious thoughts. And this makes the anxiety better over time, not just in the moment. I've got eight questions for you.
Number one, what specific thoughts or fears are causing my anxiety right now?
Number two, are these thoughts based on facts or assumptions? Which ones?
Number three, what evidence do I have that supports or contradicts these anxious thoughts?
Number four. What is the most likely and realistic outcome of this situation?
Number five. If the worst-case scenario happens, how would I cope?
Number six. How might the situation look a week, month, or year from now?
Number seven. If my best friend were experiencing the same anxious thoughts, what advice or comforting words would I offer them?
And number eight, what is one small positive action I can take right now to feel more in control?
I'm sure you can see how these questions can calm you down. Not only do they engage your prefrontal cortex, taking you out of that amygdala-based reaction of fight or flight, but they also walk you through how you would cope with that. And what action you can take right now. And the action you can choose is one of the grounding techniques we've talked about today.
All right, let's do a quick recap of the techniques we've covered. We talked about physical grounding like earthing, mindful exercise, and progressive muscle relaxation. Then, we talked about sensory grounding, like the 1 exercise, and focusing on an object like a worry stone. I even told you about simple mantras you can say while focusing on that object.
Then, we covered mental grounding, like counting backwards or naming all the colors you find in your environment. After that, we delved into breathing exercises with box breathing and finger breathing. Then, we discussed visualization. Specifically, imagining a peaceful, calm place in your mind. Finally, we talked about journaling, where you can try flow writing or using specific questions I suggested to challenge your anxious thoughts.
Hopefully this gives you plenty of choices for what to do when anxiety strikes. I try to make sure to pick techniques that can be done almost anywhere and anytime without expensive tools. And I want to remind you about that free meditation I am giving away today. It's a guided five-minute experience that walks you through some breathing to activate your parasympathetic nervous system, followed by a short body scan and an affirmation to help you get to a calmer, more peaceful state of mind.
It's an audio recording you can easily save to your phone to use in times of anxiety. Just check the show notes to get it.
I want to give you some quick tips for integrating these grounding techniques into daily life. One tip is to start small. Pick one or two of these techniques, then practice them in low stress situation.
I'm going to repeat myself. Practice them in low stress situations first. Do not wait until your anxiety is a nine on a scale of zero to ten. If you do, you won't remember exactly what to do and you won't be able to do it properly. This brings me to my second tip. Practice, practice, practice. The best thing is to practice these exercises when you're not anxious at all.
First, then practice them when you feel the level of anxiety equivalent to three to four on that scale of zero to ten. Repetition is going to be very important here. Doing these practices over and over again ensures you can access them quickly from your mental toolbox when needed. And this brings me to my third tip.
Set a reminder on your phone or on a sticky note to practice grounding throughout the day. It only takes a minute or two, 60 to 120 seconds, to make a big difference in the long term. If you suffer from anxiety, especially if it's diagnosable like that generalized anxiety disorder we've talked about, you can't afford not to practice these grounding techniques.
It would be the same as a diabetic person not watching their blood sugar or taking their insulin. Really, it's that important. This brings me to my final tip. While the techniques I gave you today are excellent at reducing anxiety in the moment, you have to engage in other practices of self-care throughout the day and the week.
This means taking regular breaks, eating well, exercising, being kind to yourself, and engaging in regular mindfulness.
Okay, it's almost time to say goodbye. Today we really dive deep into the topic of anxiety and how to find relief from it using grounding techniques. We talked about how anxiety in and of itself is not a bad thing. It's only when it's excessive and persistent that you want to take action in fighting it.
We talked about generalized anxiety disorder and how anxiety affects us physically. We looked at exactly what happens in our body when we feel anxious, and how you need to activate your body's natural brake pedal. The parasympathetic nervous system to feel calmer. Then we covered 10 grounding techniques to do just that.
From earthing to visualization to journaling, I gave you plenty of options for attaining that state of peace and balance within. I want to remind you that anxiety management is a journey that takes practice and repetition. You now have the tools to get started. It is up to you to actually put them into practice and improve your life.
Thank you all so much for spending this time with me today. I hope you'll be feeling a little lighter and more empowered on your journey. Remember, healing takes time and you're exactly where you need to be. Take care of yourselves and until we meet again, be kind to your heart.
