Natural Grounding Techniques for Managing Anxiety

Anxiety is a common topic in any therapy practice. One of the things I hear over and over is that a client is having difficulty managing their anxiety “but I don’t want drugs.” Generally when they tell me this, I do several things. The first is defining “anxiety.” Often, feeling words mean different things to different people. Generally it’s any number of feelings related to uneasiness or difficulty handling worry. I get everything from panic attacks to driven thought. I also discuss with my clients that medication is ONE tool in a variety of tools in my toolbox. I tell them that we will try everything else first, and then, if need be we will discuss medications. There are a lot of things we can try first! 

The main issue with anxiety for most people is not being present in their daily life. Panic attacks can be terrifying (and are good evidence that anxiety isn’t just in your head!) Constant worry can cause you to live in your head and not really be able to participate in your life. It can also cause memory problems. If you aren’t really paying attention to the things around you, how can you possibly be expected to imprint any of it in your memory banks? We like to talk about anxiety as if it is an isolated problem but it can manifest itself in so many ways and cause real problems in your life. So, how do we manage this? 

I often discuss several ways to manage anxiety and remain present in daily life. It’s all about refocusing yourself, calming down your body, and developing tools to handle your emotions. There are SO many ways to holistically deal with your anxiety. I’ll share with you a sample of what I share with my clients. 

The first thing you have to realize about any form of anxiety is that it is a mix of physical and emotional. Over time, your body recognizes these thoughts as a real threat, believes that it is in danger, and “fight or flight” reflexes kick in. The stress hormones release throughout the body and physiology takes over- blood gets pulled to the trunk of the body, urination and digestion go by the wayside (because you don’t need to digest when you’re being chased by a wooly mammoth!), logic goes out the window, and the only goal is survival. In extreme cases, over time, you can accidentally train your body to get anxious and anxiety becomes a very real PHYSICAL problem. The goal here is to turn those signals off or tone them down so that logic can come back online in the brain. 

Meditation- this is one of my favorites. It can be intimidating and difficult for someone with anxiety to do, but with practice and guidance it is doable and really helpful. Meditation has been shown to have tangible physical effects and is incredibly effective in bringing your nervous system down “off of the ceiling.” One of my favorite apps, which I use myself, is the “breathe” meditation app on Ipad. It’s free guided meditation for all kinds of topics. 

One thing to remember: BE CAREFUL when you first start this. If you feel like a panic attack is brewing as you relax you are not imagining this. There is such a thing that when someone has been in fight or flight for a very long time the body recognizes that as where it should be and when the body begins to relax it will stimulate itself to get back to that “normal.” If this happens to you you’re going to need some professional guidance. 

Another warning: Not everyone meditates the same! If you have anxiety, trauma, ADHD, you’re not going to be able to do the quiet your thoughts, calm, ohm, sit still meditation at first. So, allow yourself to do it your way! Fidget, try a walking meditation, use bilateral music, whatever works for you. 

Deciding not to engage the thought- This one is as simple, and as complicated, as it sounds. I place it next to meditation because it is directly related to being able to pull that off. The idea is that it is a CHOICE to engage and latch on to a thought. You can simply honor whatever intrusive thought came in to your mind and let it go, or you can take hold and spin. Example: you’re watching tv but only half watching. “I wonder if I finished that report? Did I email that? I can’t remember. My boss wanted it in her email box.” There’s no real way to solve this at home when the office is closed. You can continue to worry and panic, or you can simply let the thought go. “I’ll confirm that in the morning.” 

If you want to practice this look for “trainspotting” “leaves passing” or “clouds passing” meditations.

4x4 breathing- To understand this one, you have to understand a little bit about the feedback mechanism in the body. When you become anxious and the most primitive part of your brain kicks in, it tells your body “I’m in danger!” Breathing gets shallower because you can’t run from a threat without oxygen in your muscles. This is where things like hyperventilation happen. I explain this because, often, I get the “you’re seriously telling me to breathe?!” look. When you FILL your lungs with oxygen, it tells your body that you are not in danger. You cannot physically achieve a deep, full breath if you are fighting or running. The way 4x4 breathing works is this: Take a deep breath in for four seconds, hold for four seconds (to decrease the fast pace of breathing and saturate the body with oxygen), and then breathe out for four seconds. Do this four times. Repeat as necessary. Another step I have some clients do is visualize black smoke/negativity leaving the body when you breathe out, and white smoke/positivity entering the body when you breathe in. 

Before I get to the next few I want to explain the mechanism behind them. When you are anxious and begin to get to the point where you cannot focus, fight or flight kicks in. We commonly call this “lizard brain.” What we mean by that is that the part of your brain that you share with the lizards- who scatter when panicked, takes over. Logic takes a specific part of the brain to accomplish. (Frontal Lobes, neocortex) This part of the brain “flees” when anxiety gets overwhelming. The Amygdala takes over (Deer brains are ALL Amygdala. Think of it that way. The way they are highly skittish and panicky.) Logic goes offline. The goal of these admittedly very weird (and very annoying when it’s happening) techniques is to bring this part of your brain back online. 

And yes, my clients often think I’m a lunatic when we’re processing and I suddenly ask them to name all of the state birds they can think of! It makes for a good time!

Logic Questions- Questions that require recall and specific reasoning will bring your brain back online. What is the state bird? How many yellow things can you count in the room? Can you recite the alphabet backwards? How many state capitals can you recite? What is every other word of The Pledge of Allegiance? 

Sensory Five- This is basically another version or a subset of the logic questions category. The idea is to name 5 things you see, 4 things you hear, 3 things you feel, 2 things you smell, and one thing you taste (in any order of the senses you desire.) The idea is to bring yourself back to the present state of things. 

Sensory “shock”- I use this one with my dissociative clients a lot. (dissociation is the mental “flight” and can be hard to describe. Any time that you have felt physically there but not mentally there- that is dissociation. It can be very minor or very severe) This is a very good technique for flashbacks and needing to “shock” someone into being present. There are multiple ways to do this. My highest recommended is WarHeads Candy. That stuff is SO SOUR! It’s awful! It shocks your brain back into the present very quickly. Peppermint is a less severe version of this. Placing an ice cube in your armpit also works. Your brain cannot stay absent in thought and process a sensory input of that magnitude at the same time. It’s physically impossible. 

Worry Talkdown- This last one is generally not for panic or dissociation. This is a reasoning exercise, mostly for driven thought. I tell my clients they are “stuck on the hamster wheel” when they are engaging in cyclical reasoning- when they are going through the same thought pattern over and over with no resolution. Bear with me, as it’s a bit to explain. (I have a worksheet I use in my practice. It’s best to practice writing this out when you’re new at it and training your brain.) The idea is to state your worry. Then, state how confident percentage wise you are that this will happen. What is the worst case scenario? How confident, in percentage, are you that this will happen? What if it does- then what? How worried do you feel now, in percentage? Now, state evidence AGAINST the possibility of this happening. (What are you doing to prevent this? What steps have you already taken? How real is this really?) Now, what percentage worry do you feel? (It often goes down from here. ) Basically, you are rationally talking yourself down from your irrational blowing the thoughts out of proportion. 

These are just a few of the ways that you can manage anxiety without medication. It takes some experimentation to sort out what works for you and what doesn’t. Don’t be discouraged on the first try! It took conditioning to teach your body to be anxious and it will take conditioning to teach your body that the threat isn’t real. Work with your therapist to get to the root of the problem and find a plan that works for you. 

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