What are Grounding Techniques? How Can Grounding Techniques Help with Stress and Anxiety

Life can get overwhelming. Overwhelming enough to lead to stress, anxiety, and even burnout.

When you feel exceptionally emotionally overwhelmed, it's time to seek professional help. Especially if you're battling burnout syndrome.

However, when things cause stress during the day, such support might not be available right at that moment. Or perhaps things haven't gotten that bad — yet. This is when you want to use grounding techniques; strategies to reduce symptoms of anxiety and stress.

From taking deep breaths to practicing mindful meditation — or maybe exploring how to connect to the Earth's natural energy through earthing — there's a grounding technique that's a fit for your personality.

To help you better understand when you may want to use a grounding technique, imagine this scenario...

You have an important presentation to do at work. It's a project you've been working hard on, day and night, for the past couple of weeks. And on the day of your final presentation, you realize you left your laptop at home!

Panic! Panic! Panic!

That is how your mind will react to stress. Once it does, it will force your body to respond in the same way as well.

First, you will lose your calm. Your breathing will get shallower, and your heart will start beating faster. You will rub your hands together in worry and notice how sweaty your palms are. Your forehead will be too. And you might get that sinking feeling in your stomach as well.

You will try to think about what you can do, but the stress of not having your presentation with you will not let you do so. So, your mind starts to race; you need a solution.

Yet, all you can think about are a million ways in which everything could go wrong.

What will everyone think of me? They will surely make jokes about this. What if my supervisor is disappointed?

So many questions... All making you more anxious. More stressed.

You need to calm down. Fast.

However, with just an hour left for the presentation, there's no time to call a professional for some emotional regulation. Especially when such a state of panic is doing you no good. Rather, it is making things worse.

In such moments, one thing can help: practicing a grounding technique.

What Are Grounding Techniques?

Grounding techniques are self-administered strategies used for on-the-spot emotional regulation.

Their main aim is to reconnect an individual with the present while allowing them to remove themselves from a negative emotional experience — without professional help. In short, they act as an efficient way of reducing anxiety.

What Do Grounding Techniques Help With?

The main thing that grounding techniques help with is reducing symptoms of anxiety which, according to the American Psychological Association, include but are not limited to:

• Excessive worrying
• Restlessness
• Difficulty concentrating
• Sleep difficulties
• Psychosomatic symptoms such as headaches, body aches, indigestion, chest congestion, and hypertension

Grounding techniques help to soothe the nervous system, reducing anxiety symptoms, especially when it comes to instances where an individual experiences sudden attacks of emotional dysregulation. This practice, in turn, helps one to gain immediate psychological relief.

It is beneficial in everyday situations that are a significant source of stress, at the workplace or home.

Grounding techniques are great for anyone to use, not just people who are at a point where they are seeking professional care.

We all experience stressful situations, and practicing grounding as a form of self-care can prevent worsening symptoms. Further, grounding techniques can help rectify cognitive distortions such as emotional reasoning, which cloud our judgment and lead to irrational decision-making. For those in treatment, grounding techniques can help them self-regulate until they can see their doctor or therapist. 

Types of Grounding Techniques

There are two main categories of grounding techniques: physical and psychological.

Physical grounding techniques aim at soothing the body to reduce symptoms of anxiety and stress. These might include bringing down the heart rate and taking control of rapid breathing through belly breathing.

Psychological grounding techniques focus on cognitive solutions to reconnect the mind to the present rather than focusing on negative thoughts and imagining the worst-case scenario. One common example of such a strategy is categorical visualization.

More information about these techniques and how they work is available on our Beginner's Guide to Grounding Techniques, located in our free member's area.

Why Should You Try Grounding Techniques?

In such a fast-paced world, stress can be unavoidable. People often experience situations that bring up unpleasant emotions, be it at home, school, or work.

One such example could be that of working in a toxic workplace environment. According to the SHRM Global Culture Research Report 2022, 45% of employees rate their workplace culture as poor. Out of this, 90% consider leaving their stressful jobs.

Such statistics are alarming and require stable sources of interventions to help. Especially when professional support is unavailable. For that, grounding techniques prove useful by providing the following:

• On-the-spot emotional regulation that can be done anywhere
• Efficient strategies that take only ten to fifteen minutes to practice
• Ways to reduce physical and psychological symptoms of anxiety
• A chance to reduce the possibility of reaching the point of burnout

Grounding techniques and strategies fit well in today's fast-paced world. They are especially beneficial for people who either cannot take time for extensive therapy or cannot afford it.

Such techniques help to provide an alternative to therapy until professional therapeutic intervention is available. It is essential to note that such techniques help control anxiety symptoms that might lead to more severe conditions if not attended to. Their main aim remains to regulate emotions while bringing awareness to the present. All of which should be learned by every individual in today's day and age.

Our free Introductory Guide on Grounding Techniques provides an in-depth analysis of grounding techniques, how they work, and their benefits. You only need to provide an email address to become a BrainManager member.

Membership also gives you access to a growing database of personal development articles, tools, and assessments to help you on your journey of self-discovery!