How to Ground Yourself During a Panic Attack

Have you been dealing with panic attacks lately? You may be looking for effective ways to ground yourself and calm your anxiety during an attack. Grounding methods for anxiety can help you recognize where you are and feel more in control. In combination with breathing exercises during an anxiety attack, you can quickly begin feeling better.

What Is Grounding?

Grounding is a therapeutic technique in which you perform activities that ground you or reconnect you to reality. Grounding physics and earth science explain how the earth’s electrical charges can positively affect your body. When you are grounded, you are content with who you are. You are confident in the decisions you make and are more sure of yourself.

Grounding involves getting rid of your body’s excess energy and allowing clean energy to enter. By grounding yourself, you are calming your emotions and grounding your energy when you feel nervous or unbalanced. When you are grounded, you are more mindful of your environment.

How Grounding Can Help During a Panic Attack

Thoughts can cause you to feel anxious and worry about events that may happen or have already happened. When you begin thinking about something stressful, a section of your brain known as the amygdala begins working. The amygdala is responsible for your emotional responses, particularly fear, and it prepares your body for an emergency event. The amygdala can even jump into action when there actually isn’t a threat.

For instance, you may think something negative about a situation, and your amygdala may begin to initiate changes in your body. These physical responses can include:

• Faster breathing
• Rapid heartbeat
• Increased muscle tension

Your amygdala will then interpret these changes in your body as more evidence that something is wrong, which is why you can end up in a cycle of becoming more anxious and overwhelmed.

With the grounding technique, you can break this cycle and calm your anxiety during a panic attack. Grounding can help slow your racing mind, bring you back to the present and help you manage overwhelming feelings. Grounding is a great technique for calming your mind and body by compelling you to focus on what is physically happening to you or around you.

Strategies for Grounding Yourself During a Panic Attack

Try these grounding techniques for panic attacks:

• Play a mental game: Play a mental game that requires your focus, such as naming all the states you know, practicing simple multiplication or reciting the alphabet backward.
• Talk yourself through it: Talk to yourself out loud or in your head when you feel a panic attack coming on. Acknowledge what is happening and tell yourself that you are going to be okay. You have been through this before and you will get through it again. Repeat positive statements or mantras.
• Meditate: Meditating on a consistent basis can help you feel grounded.
• Walk barefoot: Walking barefoot outside can help you feel more connected to the earth.
• Wade in water: Wading or swimming in water can help you ground yourself.

7 Summit Pathways Can Help You Manage Anxiety as Part of Addiction Recovery

At 7 Summit Pathways, we can help you manage mental health disorders like anxiety and depression as part of your Recovery. Contact us today to learn more.