What is Grounding in Therapy? 7 Strategies to Manage Anxiety
Have you ever felt so overwhelmed that you felt out of your body or lost in your head, deeply distracted by your thoughts?
Grounding techniques can be great tools to help bring you back into the present moment and combat anxiety. They can also be used for self-regulation when experiencing panic attacks, symptoms of trauma, overwhelming emotion or anger, negative thought cycles, and dissociation.
What is grounding in therapy?
Grounding essentially means to direct your attention to the here and now. It helps take you out of your head and back into your body in a more sensation-oriented way, or distracts you from intrusive thoughts through cognitive strategies. Grounding can also help disrupt the cycle of self-perpetuating anxiety and thought ruminations.
When we feel anxious or triggered by a perceived threat (this may just be in our mind, for example the belief that someone is judging us can feel like a threat), our nervous system sends signals to our body to go into a stress response (fight, flight, or freeze). Grounding creates a feedback loop that calms our body, telling our nervous system that we’re safe.
While grounding may not fix the issue at hand (perhaps you’re overwhelmed with anxiety or sadness), it does provide a sense of temporary relief and allows you to regain control of your emotions in the moment. Grounding gives you an opportunity to calm down, notice what’s going on, develop insight, and implement further changes.
For example, if you feel overcome with social anxiety when starting a team meeting, you may experience the common symptoms of anxiety like racing thoughts (typically negative, fearful, or critical in nature), difficulty focusing, sweating, and increased heart rate. Grounding yourself can help you gain the clarity and confidence to take a step back (psychologically), move away from those distracting and distressing thoughts, and perform better during the meeting.
Grounding can help with:
Anxiety
Harsh self-criticism
Panic attacks
Flashbacks or intrusive thoughts
Overwhelming emotions
Intense rage or reactivity
There are 2 main ways to ground yourself:
Physically – tapping into the world around you and noticing the physical sensations you’re experiencing.
Mentally – focusing your thoughts, using soothing affirmations or reassuring self-talk, or distracting your mind.
Building your grounding toolkit –
Different grounding exercises work better for different people. In fact, some people may actually feel more triggered by certain grounding exercises, so it’s important to work with a professional and understand what resonates for you. If you’d like to explore more options, take a look at my grounding exercises PDF guide.
Here are 7 ways to ground yourself in the present by tapping into your physical sensory experience.
I recommend that clients practice these grounding strategies when they are not feeling activated so that they can feel more comfortable with using the skills when they are triggered. These strategies come from a framework developed by the Trauma Resiliency Model.
Walk - Take a walk. Feel the sensations in your body as you take each step. Notice the feeling of your feet pressing on the ground.
Push - Place your hands on the wall and push against it. Focus your attention on the sensations of your muscles pushing.
Temperature - Tune in to the temperatures of different parts of your body. What do you notice in your ears, chest, legs, or toes?
Look - Look around the room and name the colors that you see. Try to list at least 6. You can also try naming as many shapes as you can see as you look around.
Drink - Take a drink of a beverage. Notice the sensations of the cool liquid traveling through your mouth, down your throat and into your stomach.
Touch - Touch objects and surfaces nearby. Notice the textures and the sensations on your skin. Is it hard, soft, rough, bumpy, cold, smooth?
Listen - Notice all of the sounds that you can hear and try to name the individual sources of the sounds.
Grounding Skill: Push against a wall
Place your hands on the wall and push against it. Focus your attention on the sensations of your muscles pushing. Notice where in your body you feel your muscles activated.
Tools for Self-Regulation
You can also try a quick grounding technique known as the 5-4-3-2-1 exercise, which helps anchor you in the present by engaging your senses. This exercise supports cognitive reorienting through the act of naming sensory input, while also activating somatic awareness by directing focused attention to physical sensations.
First start by taking a breath, then look around your space and follow these steps:
Name 5 things that you can see. This tends to be the easiest step because we are very visually oriented.
Find 4 things that you can feel. Touch the objects in your reach and notice how they feel – are they soft, rough, smooth, warm, cold, etc? Notice the textures of the materials around you, temperature of the room, or the breeze on your face.
Identify 3 things that you can hear. For example, you may be hearing the traffic outside, birds chirping, the sound of a fan or heater running.
Notice 2 things that you can smell. What do you notice in the air around you, or if there is a flower, food, or other scented item nearby, tap into those smells.
Focus on 1 thing that you can taste. If you have candy or a mint, you can focus on the flavors you are experiencing.
Many people find this grounding exercise easy to implement and effective for reorienting to the present and disrupting the cycle of intrusive thoughts.
What’s the difference between grounding and mindfulness?
While grounding techniques and mindfulness both aim to anchor you in the present moment, they serve slightly different purposes and operate through distinct mechanisms.
Grounding techniques are practical, in-the-moment tools used to manage acute distress. They work by directing your attention outward—toward your five senses or your immediate environment—to interrupt spirals of anxiety, dissociation, or overwhelm. For example, the 5-4-3-2-1 method described above helps reorient you to the present by activating your senses and engaging your thinking brain. Grounding is especially useful when you're feeling emotionally flooded or disconnected from your body.
Mindfulness, on the other hand, is a broader practice rooted in nonjudgmental awareness. It involves intentionally noticing your thoughts, emotions, and bodily sensations with curiosity rather than resistance. While mindfulness can be calming, its goal isn't to “fix” how you feel, but to help you relate to your internal experience with more clarity and acceptance. Over time, regular mindfulness practice can increase your capacity to tolerate discomfort and reduce reactivity.
In essence, grounding helps you get out of your head when things feel too intense, while mindfulness teaches you to stay with your experience in a gentle, nonjudgmental way.
If you’re interested in addressing your anxiety in therapy, reach out to set up a free 15-minute phone consultation to see if I’m the right therapist to help you.
About the Author: Sage Grazer, LCSW
I am a licensed psychotherapist providing online therapy to adults struggling with anxiety, burnout, trauma, loss, and relationship issues. I help clients develop the insight, skills, and resilience to cope with whatever life stresses come their way. I specialize in helping high-achieving young professionals overcome anxiety and burnout to feel more confident, empowered, and effective in their lives. If you’re a resident of California or Hawaii, schedule a free consultation to learn more.