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Grounding
There may be times when you are suffering emotional pain that you want to detach yourself
from. A helpful technique often used by people when they are feeling this way is to focus
on the outside world instead of focusing on what is being felt internally. This technique is
called grounding. There are many types of grounding exercises people use with different
types working best for different people. Here are a few different types of exercises you
might find useful.
Examples of mental grounding:
• Describe objects in your environment in detail using all your senses.
• Describe an everyday activity, such as eating or driving to work, in detail.
• Use a grounding statement. “I am Jo, I am 23 years old, I am safe here, today is...”.
• Say the alphabet slowly.
• Counting backwards from 20.
Examples of physical grounding:
• Run cool or warm water over your hands.
• Press your heels into the floor.
• Touch objects around you as you say their names.
• Jump up and down.
• Change your posture to a more upright one.
• Stretch.
• As you inhale say “in”, and when you exhale say “out” or “calm” or “easy” or “safe”.
Examples of soothing grounding:
• Rub nice smelling hand cream slowly into hands and arms and notice the feel
and smell.
• Say encouraging statements to yourself such as “You’re okay, you’ll get through this”.
• Think of favourites of any kind of object (e.g., cars) or animal.
• Think of a place where you felt calm and peaceful, describe where you were,
what was around you and what you were doing.
• Plan something nice for yourself such as a bath or a good meal.
• Think of things you look forward to doing in the next few days.