Self-Care Practice for Trauma Survivors: Grounding
Trauma survivors often have a hard time with self-care. A form of self-care can include the ability to regulate one’s nervous system for example when it is overwhelmed with anxiety or triggers from the past-like as flashback. Trauma often leads a person to disassociate (disconnected from one’s body or current reality) in order to endure traumatic situations. Even after the traumatic situation is over many people continue to feel this disconnection. This disassociation can lead to disconnection from our bodies and if we are not in tune with our bodies it if very challenging to manage anxiety symptoms. In this blog we will be discussing practical self-care strategies specifically tailored for trauma survivors. We will be focusing on a technique called grounding. Physical grounding can be used as a tool for managing anxiety, panic, flashbacks and other challenging emotions.
What is physical grounding? Physical grounding is when we use our bodies to manage distress (anxiety, panic, flashbacks, depression, etc.). Typically, this means using one or more of our five senses. Here are some examples of common grounding strategies.
Sense of Touch
- Using water (running faucet usually is the easiest) on hands and focusing on the water temperature. Most people with anxiety enjoy cooler water temperature. If one is at home a shower can also be use as a grounding technique. Focusing on the water can give us a brief break from unhelpful thoughts. One can also focus on how the water feels on the skin (soothing, shocking, neutral) . A person may also want to change temperatures (cold to warm) and speed of the water (fast to slow)
- Holding a piece of ice can also be an effective grounding technique as our focus may shift from anxiety symptoms to the coldness of the ice. Also, at it melts it can feel less and less cold. While holding the ice we can focus on describing the unique attribute of the ice or doing deep breathing. Focusing on deep breathing can also bring down anxiety as this tends to regulate breathing and heart rate.
- Focus on touching a nearby object and then focus on what makes this object unique (color, temperature, texture etc.). Labeling these specific things about an object can give one break from overthinking.
Sense of Smell
- Using the sense of smell can also help one ground in the present moment. One can use a scent of a lotion, candle, soap, tea, herb, perfume, scented oils or even scents in nature such as flowers trees and plans to reduce distress as one focus on that scent. One can work on describing it in detail and how it makes one feel as it takes in its scent.
Sense of hearing
- One can also focus on sounds in our current present moment such as wind, birds, traffic, or one can also bring our own soothing sounds for grounding. One can create a calming play list for moments we may need it. Creating this playlist beforehand can be an easy away to have this tool ready when one needs it. Playlist can include soothing music or sounds.
How does it help trauma survivors? Being in tune with one’s physical body can help bring a person back to the present. It is often the case that anxiety lives in future worries about what’s going to happen to us in 5 minutes or 5 years. If we can bring our attention to the present moment anxiety becomes more manageable. Moreover, when flashbacks about the past also trigger anxiety coming to the present instead of going back to an unsafe past can also be helpful.
