Grounding Techniques for Trauma and Anxiety: How to Come Back to the Present

When anxiety takes over or trauma responses get triggered, it can feel like your body and mind are no longer in sync. You might feel scattered, dissociated, or trapped in racing thoughts. You may not even realize how far you’ve gone until you suddenly feel numb, panicked, or disconnected.

Grounding techniques can help bring you back to the here and now. They aren’t a cure for trauma or anxiety, but they are practical tools you can use to steady your nervous system when things start to spiral.

What Does “Grounding” Mean?

Grounding is the practice of bringing your attention back to the present moment, especially through physical or sensory awareness. It’s particularly helpful when you feel overwhelmed, flooded, or disconnected due to trauma, anxiety, or chronic stress.

Trauma can pull you into the past. Anxiety can spin you into the future. Grounding helps you return to the present, where you can begin to regulate, rest, and respond with more clarity.

Signs You Might Need Grounding

• You feel out of your body or detached from your surroundings

• You’re stuck in looping thoughts and can’t break free

• You feel emotionally numb, shut down, or frozen

• You feel panicked, like something bad is about to happen

• You’re overstimulated and can’t figure out what you need

Grounding is not about “fixing” how you feel. It’s about helping your nervous system reorient so that you can feel safe enough to respond instead of react.

Physical Grounding Techniques

These techniques use your body to help signal safety to your brain.

** Important note, if bringing your attention to your body feels overwhelming, skip these strategies. We’re not trying to push through to a sense of safety, we’re working with where you’re at right now.**

Feel Your Feet

Stand or sit with both feet flat on the floor. Press down gently and notice the contact. Shift your weight slightly. Say to yourself, My feet are on the ground. I am here.

Temperature Change

Hold something cold (an ice pack, a cold glass, cool water) or splash water on your face. The temperature shift can help interrupt a spiral and bring you back to the present.

Wall Push

Stand near a wall and press your palms into it with steady pressure. Engage your arms, shoulders, and core slightly. This gives your body something concrete to push against and re-establishes boundaries and strength.

Tense and Release

Choose one muscle group, like your fists, shoulders, or legs, and tense for 5 seconds, then slowly release. Repeat a few times. This helps discharge excess energy and reconnect with your body.

Sensory Grounding Techniques

These strategies use the five senses to bring awareness back to your immediate environment.

Sensing the Moment

Use your senses to connect with the moment. In objective terms, with as little emotional attachment to your observations as possible, check in with each of your senses

• What do you see around you?

• What do you hear?

• What do you smell?

• What can you touch and feel its texture?

• What can you taste or drink?

Move slowly and with intention. This helps anchor you in the present moment.

Carry a Texture Tool

Keep a small object with interesting texture like a smooth stone, piece of fabric, or textured keychain in your pocket or bag. Touch it when you feel detached or overwhelmed.

Engage Smell

Use an essential oil, candle, or familiar scent. Smell is processed by the brain’s limbic system, which is closely tied to emotion and memory. Pleasant or familiar smells can offer comfort and orientation.

Mental Grounding Techniques

These techniques help shift focus away from spiraling thoughts and into something more neutral or structured.

Say Where You Are

Use simple language to describe your surroundings: I am sitting in my room. It is morning. The window is open. I hear traffic outside. This reminds your mind that you are safe and grounded.

Use Math or Lists

Try listing categories (types of fruit, dog breeds, songs you like) or doing simple math problems in your head. These tasks occupy the prefrontal cortex, which helps reduce emotional flooding.

Repeat a Grounding Phrase

Choose a short, calming sentence to repeat. Examples:

• I am safe right now.

• This feeling will pass.

• I am allowed to slow down.

Over time, these phrases can become internal cues for regulation.

Why Grounding Matters in Trauma Recovery

If you’ve experienced trauma, especially developmental or relational trauma, your nervous system may stay on high alert even when there’s no current threat. Grounding doesn’t erase the trauma, but it helps you develop the capacity to stay in your body during difficult moments, which is essential for long-term healing.

In therapy, we often start with grounding to help clients learn how to stay present before diving into deeper processing. This helps build safety, trust, and self-regulation over time.

Grounding Isn’t Always Perfect, and That’s Okay

Some people expect grounding to immediately bring peace. But often, it simply brings you back into contact with whatever you were avoiding, anxiety, sadness, anger, discomfort. That’s not a failure. It’s a beginning.

If grounding techniques feel inaccessible at first, that’s normal. You might need to try a few different ones to find what works. And you might need support to build the capacity to tolerate being more present in your body.

If grounding feels hard or unfamiliar, you don’t have to figure it out alone.