Top 6 Effective Coping & Grounding Techniques for Anxiety Attacks & Trauma

By We Level Up FL Treatment Center | Editor Yamilla Francese | Clinically Reviewed By Lauren Barry, LMFT, MCAP, QS, Director of Quality Assurance | Editorial Policy | Research Policy | Last Updated: April 17, 2023

Top 6 Grounding Techniques For Anxiety

People suffering from anxiety understand what anxiety attacks feel like when the physical symptoms of anxiety attacks rush in. Your heart races, and your mouth is while your body may even begin to shake. Some will even break out in a sweat. Panic attacks take over your mind, disregarding reason and facts. What if we could teach you the top 5 grounding techniques for anxiety attacks? You have the power within you to end anxiety attacks and stop them from engulfing you in a spiral of stress and fear. Read below for our greatest five grounding techniques for anxiety attacks that work.

Recollections and thoughts of prior trauma or an uncertain stressful future often trigger anxiety and PTSD. These thoughts become so heightened trigger a fight-or-flight response. The brain senses that you are under attack and reacts to a nonexistent danger.

Lastly, anxiety grounding techniques can be both physical and mental activities that distract you from ongoing moments filled with anxiety and highly weighted stress. The breathing and grounding techniques for anxiety you practice can calm you and help you focus on the present and what’s happening around you. Read below our top 6 best strategies to cope with anxiety and highly stressful situations.

Easy Ways To Cope With Anxiety & How to Ground Yourself from Anxiety?

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration outlines one approach to using anxiety attack grounding. [2] Although this approach suits medical practitioners to conduct for patients, you can also use it on yourself or with another person. Try to have a list of grounding questions for anxiety based on the following steps.

To follow these grounding methods for anxiety, a person should:

1. Place the feet firmly on the ground.
2. State the date and time.
3. Take slow, deep breaths.
4. State what they can observe in their present environment.
5. Remind themselves that they are in a safe place right now.
6. Observe their immediate surroundings and describe items in the room or environment.

You can use visualization exercises or sensory diffusers to diminish the intensity of your feelings. Some techniques include:

• Visualizing turning down an emotional dial.
• Clenching their fist to hold on to the emotions, then letting them go when they release their fist.
• Visualizing a safe place through guided imagery.
• Distracting themselves.

Achieving distraction from memories of the past may include trying different strategies. Some examples include:

• Focusing on recent or future events, such as a to-do list for the day.
• Reminding oneself of their current safety.
• Touching a chair or wiggling the toes to remind oneself of the current reality.
• Counting or reciting something to return focus to the present.

Use positive coping statements. Changing or disrupting a pattern of anxious thoughts by replacing them with more calming or supportive statements can help to divert a panic attack. Some common helpful coping statements:

• This is not an emergency.
• “I don’t like feeling this way, but I can accept it.”
• I can feel like this and still be okay.
• This has happened before, and I was okay. I’ll be alright this time, too.
• I can be anxious and still deal with this situation.
• I can handle these symptoms or sensations.

Cognitive interventions may help you ground yourself. First, Identify your negative self-talk. Anxious thoughts can increase anxiety symptoms and panic. Identifying negative, alarming self-talk is the first step in changing anxious thinking. [3] Some common disturbing thoughts:

• I’m having a heart attack.
• I must be going crazy.
• I think I’m dying.
• People will think I’m crazy.
• I’m going to pass out.
• Oh no – here it comes.
• I can’t stand this.
• I’ve got to get out of here!

How To Cope With Anxiety? 5 Easy Smart Coping With Anxiety Strategies.

The most powerful grounding techniques for anxiety apply all five senses to bring you back to focus on the present. These five steps to improve your anxiety merely apply real-time thoughts to help refocus when coping with anxiety: 

1. Five things you can see;
2. Four things you can feel;
3. Three things you can hear;
4. Two things you can smell; and
5. One thing you can taste in your immediate environment. 

Identifying ways to cope with anxiety can begin by taking hold of objects in the material world to help calm your heart rate. And secondly, re-direct your focus from intense thoughts of high anxiety to other less stressful thoughts and/or activities.

Anxiety Causes & Coping With Anxiety

Grounding Techniques For Anxiety PDF

Anxiety Statistics

It’s critical to understand the distinction between anxiety and depression. Anxiety, in its most basic form, is an excessive feeling of worry, whereas depression, in its most basic form, is an extreme feeling of worthlessness and hopelessness. It is conceivable for someone to experience depression and anxiety simultaneously.

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Grounding Techniques for Anxiety Attack Five Senses

What are grounding techniques for anxiety? How can they help cope with anxiety? Anxiety grounding techniques 5 senses or 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 is a mindfulness practice used to cope with, relieve, and manage stress. These “grounding techniques anxiety” can help increase awareness and decrease invasive thoughts during heightened anxiety, worry, or panic attacks.

The  Anxiety 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 exercise can also be used as an imaging technique for grounding oneself. For instance, if you fear flying and are on an airplane preparing for takeoff, acknowledging the sights and sounds around you could cause you to feel more nervous. You may want to imagine the destination ahead instead! Imaging the feeling of your toes in the sand, the smell of the ocean breeze, or the taste of your favorite comfort food could be more helpful.

The “Anxiety 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 technique” is grounded in mindfulness, which helps calm the nervous system. By shifting your attention from focusing on the causes of anxiety to being curious about your present sensations, the technique encourages you to change your brain’s response to stress in two important ways. It can also be used for dissociation grounding techniques, grounding techniques for PTSD or grounding exercises for PTSD, and grounding techniques for ADHD. Find out more about 5 grounding techniques for panic attacks here.

Five Senses Anxiety Attacks Grounding Techniques

Ground techniques for anxiety often use the five senses—sound, touch, smell, taste, and sight—to immediately connect you with the here and now. For example, singing a song, rubbing lotion on your hands, or sucking on sour candy are all grounding techniques that produce sensations that are difficult to ignore or distract you from what’s going on in your mind.

This helps you directly and instantaneously connect with the present moment. At the same time, panic attack grounding techniques reduce the likelihood that you will slip into a flashback or dissociation.

How you are grounding mental health is highly personal. What works for one person may trigger anxiety or flashbacks in another. You may need trial and error to determine what “grounding skills for anxiety” work best. Pay attention to the coping mechanisms you’ve already developed to help you get through flashbacks and anxiety, and see if you can build on them and use them as grounding techniques.

Most often, self-regulation is a foundation skill learned in early childhood. If we teach children strategies to stay calm in upsetting or stressful situations, they start to develop habits they can continue to use throughout their lives. Fortunately, we can learn new skills and techniques at any age with an open mind and desire for change. These grounding techniques for depression and anxiety revolve around using the five senses of touch, taste, smell, hearing, and seeing to ground oneself. Below are two grounding exercises that ask kids and adults to utilize their five senses to stop negative emotions from overwhelming them.

To connect with the here and now, do something (or several things) that will bring all your attention to the present moment. Keep your eyes open while you are “grounding for anxiety attacks” so you know everything around you.

Try anxiety attack grounding techniques if you’re slipping into a flashback or a dissociative state.

How Do Grounding Techniques Help Reduce Anxiety?

Let’s say you’ve had an unpleasant experience with public speaking. Perhaps you were humiliated by your teacher in front of the whole class. Or maybe you forgot your lines during a school play and left the stage feeling ashamed.

Using your five senses, you can anchor yourself in the present moment by focusing on sensations that are hard to ignore. For instance, the touch of your pen slowly gliding on a piece of paper, the sound of people talking on their phones or typing on their computers, and the smell of fresh coffee.

The more connected you are with your surroundings, the less likely you will lose yourself in anxious thoughts and have a nervous breakdown. Furthermore, grounding exercises for panic attacks can also reduce the likelihood of flashbacks and dissociation.

Before trying these strategies, remember that grounding techniques for anxiety attacks are a personal practice. In other words, what works for some might only work for some. Also, that’s why it’s crucial to experiment with several grounding tools for dissociation, ADHD grounding techniques, and anxiety grounding tools before you find the ones that work best for you.

Grounding Techniques Can Be Done Anywhere

The nice thing about anxiety grounding methods is that many can be done in any environment. Grounding oneself could mean an individual might be alone or in public. Still, once you feel that flashback or dissociation coming on, you can use grounding activities for anxiety to move your focus back to the present. Working on grounding activities for adults takes dedication and becomes easier over time. Try something else if these particular grounding techniques don’t work for you. For example, some people find that a rubber band on their wrist helps snap them back to the moment. The ultimate goal is to live now and focus on the present when the past starts coming up.

According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, anxiety is a common disorder that affects about 18 percent [1] of adults in the United States. Immersing yourself in your senses may help reduce symptoms of stress and worry. You can follow simple exercises that activate your senses — sight, touch, hearing, smell, and taste. For example, listening to birds chirping or smelling fresh-cut grass could help you focus less on your anxious thoughts and more on the present moment.

If you have difficulty managing your anxiety, contact a mental health expert. They can provide you with additional tools to manage your symptoms and discover the root cause of the anxiety.

Grounding Techniques For Social Anxiety

Everyone gets nervous in certain social situations. Since everyday events can be extra challenging if you have a social anxiety disorder (social phobia). You might feel much more self-conscious and scared than others in social interactions and suffer from low self-esteem. Try these good grounding techniques to help you feel better and get through the day. Also, people sometimes need professional help to deal with social anxiety.

• Control Your Breathing – Certain techniques can help you slow your breathing and manage other anxiety symptoms. Try these steps.
  • Shut your eyes and pay attention to how you usually breathe for several breaths.
  • Then, slowly count 1-2-3-4 as you inhale through your nose.
  • Exhale for the same four-second count.
  • As you inhale and exhale, be mindful of the feelings of fullness and emptiness in your lungs.

As you continue practicing equal breathing, your second count might vary. Be sure to keep your inhale and exhale the same.

• Try Exercise or Progressive Muscle Relaxation – Research shows that physical activities like jogging can help lower your anxiety. Progressive muscle relaxation can help, too. Yoga can also help you calm down.

• Prepare – Plan for social situations that make you nervous can help you feel more confident. You might feel the urge to avoid some situations because they make you anxious. Instead, try to prepare for what’s to come.

• Start Small – Don’t jump into big social situations. Schedule restaurant meals with friends or family so you can get used to eating in public. Try going out of your way to make eye contact with people on the street or at the grocery store and say hello. Be patient with yourself. It takes time and practice to tackle social anxiety.
• Take the Focus Off Yourself – Try shifting your attention to what’s happening around you instead of what’s inside your head. You can do this by listening to the conversation or reminding yourself that others probably can’t tell how anxious you are just by looking at you. 
• Talk Back to Negative Thoughts – These thoughts might be about people or situations and may even be automatic. Most of the time, they’re wrong. 
• Use Your Senses – Sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste — your senses can help calm you down when you’re anxious. 

Anxiety Treatment

As a mental treatment center in Florida, we understand how difficult it can be to manage anxiety symptoms. We’re sharing some of the best grounding techniques for panic attacks. While you can find many ways to “ground yourself anxiety,” you can also create your own. Everyone is different and copes with stress and anxiety differently. For example, if taking a short walk helps you calm down, do that as your anxiety grounding method.

Do what works for you. However, while these grounding techniques for adults can help you calm down during a panic attack, they are not long-term solutions. If you believe you have a panic disorder, seek pain attack treatment for a formal diagnosis and therapy.

If you have a mental disorder or believe a loved one is showing signs of mental illness, we can help. We Level Up FL offers different mental health treatments for all conditions. We’re here for you, whether you have depression, anxiety, or bipolar disorder. Call our inpatient mental health rehab today to find out how to get started.

The We Level Up FL primary mental health center stands ready to help. We Level Up FL can inspire a support system through our mental health treatments to make you feel valuable. You can trust the treatment backed by leading recovery specialists practicing evidence-based therapy. We Level Up FL Treatment Center offers therapy under one roof. Get comprehensive therapy for mind, body & spirit.

Call us now for a free mental health assessment! In addition, for the substance abuse or dual diagnosis approach, our inpatient treatment, inpatient medical detox, and primary residential addiction treatment may be available at our affiliated facility. For more treatment resources and grounding technique for anxiety, call us about your symptoms, and we can help you determine the cause and develop a treatment plan.

Powerful Coping Skills for Anxiety. Top Mental Health Tips & Anxiety Tips Advice from a Therapist Video.

4 Mental Health Tips & Advice From A Therapist To Remove Your Everyday Anxiety

“Anxiety, when gone untreated, can increase over time.

So here are four tips to calm your everyday anxiety.

Take a breath.

Do something that you enjoy.

Remove yourself from the situation and go for a walk.

Doing these four things gives you a better chance of calming your everyday anxiety.”