Name 5 things anxiety

Unwind This Monday With the 5-4-3-2-1 Grounding Technique

April 25, 2022

Stress and anxiety are often the biggest obstacles when it comes to important moments in our lives. While situations such as receiving a promotion at work, taking final exams, going on a flight, and performing in a sports competition can be exciting and positive experiences, without proper stress management, the fear of failure and need for success can have a negative impact on not only the results, but our long-term health.

That’s where the 5-4-3-2-1 Grounding Technique comes in, as it is designed to ease your state of mind so that you can get through stressful moments. The goal with this exercise is to use the five senses to focus on the moment and avoid multiple anxious thoughts that can get in the way of your progress.

Deep, slow, and long breaths are your first priority for achieving a calm state before proceeding to the following steps:

5. SEE: Acknowledge five things that you can see around you. Options can range from a pen or stapler at your office to a bird or tree while you’re out at the local park. If you’re at home, you can look at a family photo on the wall or a glass of water on the kitchen counter. You can pick between big and small items to keep your options open.

4. TOUCH: Acknowledge four things that you can touch around you. You can start with your hair, hands, elbows, and other parts of your body if you’re short on time. The ground beneath your feet, whether it’s the floor of your bedroom or the office at work, also helps. Pillows, desks, phones, and keyboards can fit this step.

3. HEAR: Acknowledge three things you can hear around you. Instead of listening to your own thoughts or sounds from your body like your stomach growling, focus on external noises. Examples include someone driving a car nearby, a clock ticking, or a dog barking. If you’re at work, you can listen to typing and the steps of people walking by your desk.

2. SMELL: Acknowledge two things around you that you can smell. This step may be a challenge compared to the others, so it’s best to go to a place with more sources of scent if you don’t smell anything wherever you are at the moment. The outdoors has plenty of options for smells, and the soap in bathrooms also helps. Your furniture can provide pleasant smells for this step when you’re home.

1. TASTE: Acknowledge one thing around you that you can taste. It doesn’t necessarily have to be food, as toothpaste and minty floss you use in the morning or at night are easy sources. You can also go with the cinnamon-raisin oatmeal you have for breakfast, the sandwich and chips you have for lunch, or the pasta primavera you have for dinner. Coffee, tea, and other drinks you have to get through the day also work.

End this exercise with a long, deep breath.

With these steps, you will be able to get the most out of the moment. Focusing on your senses will help you be more mindful, which will then help you accomplish your tasks and experience success. As a result, you can defeat your anxiety and feel in control of your life. Put this technique into practice to so that you can improve your health and make those big days fun!

Looking for more simple stress management practices? Our free DeStress Monday resources cover everything from deep breathing to positivity with the help of engaging infographics, GIFs, and instructional videos. Check out all our resources and start a new mental wellness routine today!

The Best 5-Senses Grounding Techniques for Anxiety Relief

Everyone feels anxious at one time or another. But did you know that engaging your five senses may help calm your worries?

Not everyone experiences anxiety in the same way, and what may offer anxiety relief to you may not work for someone else.

While many people take medications or attend therapy to manage anxiety symptoms, exercises that engage your five senses may also be helpful. This is particularly so when you need something that works right here, right now.

Indeed, intentionally focusing on hearing, touch, smell, taste, and sight might offer quick relief.

For someone with anxiety, knowing how to effectively use all five senses can be a powerful tool.

Grounding techniques are strategies that help connect or “ground” you in the present moment. They’re essentially a form of mindfulness, which has been shown to help many different mental health conditions.

A large 2014 research review with nearly 19,000 studies concluded that mindfulness-based stress reduction programs can ease symptoms of anxiety, depression, and pain.

Experts believe that grounding techniques, specifically, help you detach from emotional pain, so you can better regulate your emotions.

Grounding encourages you to take a break from your negative thoughts that may be causing anxiety until you’ve calmed down.

Grounding methods for anxiety are different from other relaxation exercises in that they focus heavily on distractions and quieting extreme emotions.

A small 2015 study found that just 1 hour of grounding exercises helps improve mood in people with anxiety and depression more than relaxation alone.

An added benefit of grounding techniques is that they can be done at any time, without anyone else knowing that you’re using them.

One popular grounding technique is the 5-4-3-2-1 method. Here’s how to practice your five senses grounding.

First, you may want to start with a simple deep breathing exercise called the 5-5-5 method. To do this, you breathe in for 5 seconds, hold your breath for 5 seconds, and then breathe out for 5 seconds.

You can continue this process until your thoughts slow down or you notice some relief.

When you can find your breath, try practicing the 5-4-3-2-1 technique. For that, you want to look around and focus on:

5 things you see
4 things you feel
3 things you hear
2 things you smell
1 thing you taste

The idea is that the 5-4-3-2-1 technique helps you shift your focus to what’s currently happening around you instead of what’s making you feel anxious.

Focusing on each of your senses is a simple way to distract yourself from those thoughts that may be causing your anxiety.

Consider choosing a couple of exercises for each sense and trying to focus all your attention on the sensations.

Sight

To engage your sense of sight, here are some ideas:

Look at every little detail on a family photo on the wall.
Focus on a small object, such as a pencil or coffee mug, and identify every color and shape.
Look at the sky for clouds, birds, sunrises, or anything else you can spot around.
Focus your attention on a plant or flower and how it moves with the wind.
Observe a pet while they play or rest.

You can pick large or small items to focus on. Once you choose an object, try to notice the color, texture, and patterns.

Touch

Activating your sense of touch can help distract you from anxious thoughts and may help you decrease the physical signs of anxiety.

You might want to try these exercises:

Put your hands under running water, alternating between warm and cold temperatures every 30 seconds.
Focus on how your clothing feels on your body or how your hair feels on your head.
Touch different body parts by pressing down and holding for 30 seconds before moving to a different area.
Touch the furniture in your living area and focus on its texture. For example, take notice of a smooth table.

Hearing

Focusing on external sounds can help ground you in the moment.

Here are some noises to notice:

a barking dog
a stomach rumbling
a clock ticking
traffic outside
a car or subway engine
music
conversation
birds singing
the wind blowing

Smell

To incorporate smell into your grounding techniques, you may want to try these tips:

Walk into your bathroom and sniff a bar of soap or shampoo.
Light a scented candle.
Diffuse a scented oil.
Take in simple smells around you, such as the scent of a pillow on the couch or a pencil.
Walk outside and breathe deeply through your nose. Maybe you will smell fresh cut grass or flowers blooming.

Taste

Try to pick something that you can easily taste, such as:

a piece of gum
a mint
coffee
sugar and salt
a piece of food

You don’t actually have to taste these items if you don’t have them on hand. Instead, try thinking about the distinct flavors as you remember them.

Here are some additional tips to consider that can help when trying to engage your 5 senses to calm down:

Begin grounding yourself in your senses as soon you realize you’re experiencing strong emotions or a difficult mood.
Don’t make good or bad judgements. For instance, if you’re focusing on a brown wall but don’t like the color brown, simply tell yourself: “The wall is brown,” instead of, “I don’t like brown.”
Do your best to focus on the present, not the past or future. If your thoughts wander, softly bring them back to your senses.
Notice your mood before and after using a technique to see if it’s working for you. You might want to use a scale of 0 to 10 to rate your symptoms. Noticing relief may calm you down even more.
Be flexible. If you notice one method is more successful than another, stick with that without judgement.
Don’t give up. It might take a few attempts before grounding methods are successful.

Engaging all your five senses may help reduce symptoms of stress and worry.

You can follow simple grounding exercises that activate your five senses — sight, touch, hearing, smell, and taste. For example, simply 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’re having a difficult time managing your anxiety, you may want to consider reaching out to a mental health expert. They can provide you with additional tools to manage your symptoms and discover the root cause of the anxiety.

How to deal with anxiety if you cannot influence the situation

September 21 How to live Life

Try to switch or direct energy to deal with possible consequences.

You can listen to a short version of the article. If it's more convenient for you, turn on the podcast.

This condition has many names: restlessness, anxiety, panic. You constantly scroll through your head with an endless stream of frightening thoughts and at the same time feel fear, uncertainty, nervousness, doom. Here are a few steps to help structure these emotions and find a way to deal with them.

Important: it is not always possible to cope on your own. If your anxiety attacks have escalated into an anxiety disorder or you are experiencing panic attacks, it is best to deal with it with the help of a professional. Otherwise, you can only make it worse.

Acknowledge the problem

Since stress tolerance has become an integral part of any resume, it has become somehow undignified to worry. Everyone copes with crises in different ways: someone gets a second wind and the person becomes incredibly productive. Well, someone spends half of the resources on anxiety and cannot get together. Both are normal responses to stress. A sort of "freeze or run", only in the conditions of the urban jungle, and not real.

It happens that while some people are buying buckwheat and dollars in a panic, others laugh at them: “They are stupid, they are panicking, I am not like that.” This does not mean that the latter are not worried: attempts to ignore the problem are also a reaction.

Elena Petrusenko

Psychologist at Foxford Online School.

Stress is necessary for a person, because it allows the body to adapt to changing environmental conditions and return to normal. Do not deny what is happening to you and around you. It will not take you away from the unpleasant reality. There is no need to demand the impossible from yourself and your loved ones. Try to see reality in its entirety.

Once you admit to yourself honestly and without embellishment that you have a problem, you can begin to solve it.

Recognize the causes of anxiety

You admitted to yourself that you are worried, it's time to sort out the source of anxiety to the bones. Let's say you are worried about the global crisis, which for obvious reasons you cannot influence. But this is a rather abstract concept. If you think about it, it's not the crisis that scares you, but the possible consequences that it can bring. Therefore, it is important to speak (or better to prescribe) real fears. For example, it could be:

job loss;
worsening financial situation;
inability to pay loans and growing debt;
loss of savings.

On the one hand, these worries, translated into practice, can frighten even more. On the other hand, the enemy turns from the abstract into the real and close to you. And, perhaps, here you can already influence the situation.

This approach will help to structure the chaos in your head, to formulate the real causes of anxiety.

Take action if the situation can still be influenced

Perhaps you have articulated your real fears and found that you are not powerless. As in the example of the global crisis: the economy of the planet is not subject to you, but you can lay a straw for yourself.

Frightens the unknown. Once the enemy becomes familiar, it will be much easier to deal with him.

Svetlana Beloded

QBF Human Resources Manager.

Take immediate action whenever possible. As a result, this will allow you to stop panicking, as thoughts will switch to finding a way out of difficult circumstances. At the same time, if the actions are sufficiently balanced, the risks of developing a negative scenario are reduced.

Switch if you can't change anything

Easier said than done. Moreover, not in any state you can get away from anxiety. That is why at the beginning we already talked about the need to consult a specialist if you cannot cope with anxiety on your own. When fears poison life, but have not yet taken possession of it, it is still possible to fight them, although for this you will need to work hard.

Switching has nothing to do with well-wishers' advice to "just stop worrying." It doesn't work like that: you can't take it and stop it. But you can try to stop the anxiety attack. To do this, you need to monitor your condition and slow yourself down if you plunge into a funnel of frightening thoughts. At this point, it is better to be distracted by something else. Here are some options.

Go in for sports

Willpower is not always enough to distract. Hormones of joy endorphins will cope with this much better. They are produced during sports. You don't have to set records. Any physical activity will do.

Focus on sensations

Think about what you see, hear, feel with your fingers, what smells around you - use your senses.

Maria Eril

Psychologist, psychotherapist, head of the "Psychology of communication" direction of the Business speech company.

When you feel anxiety coming on, look around and name: five objects you see (sight), four you touch (touch), three sources of sound (hearing), two sources of smell (smell) and one object that you can taste.

Hug with loved ones

Tactile contact with people you like stimulates the production of oxytocin, one of the four hormones of happiness. Accordingly, the mood improves, and the level of anxiety decreases.

Breathe deeply

It is important to focus on the process.

Ilya Shabshin

Psychologist-consultant.

Just breathe for a few minutes in such a way that when you inhale the stomach protrudes and the chest does not rise, and you will feel how the excitement subsides. This is a simple and reliable way.

Switch to something that can be controlled

In the film “Radio Day”, in a critical situation, one of the main characters said: “We now have two problems - the Ministry of Defense and a button. Can we find the button? Theoretically we can! And we cannot do anything with the Ministry of Defense. Conclusion: you need to look for a button. And that's one way to deal with anxiety.

At the same time, it is important not to switch from one disturbing thought to another: switching from awl to soap has never been a good deal.

Rationalize the situation

Returning to disturbing thoughts, albeit on the other hand, is not suitable for everyone. But if you are one of those who are reassured by numbers, statistics, evidence, you can try to explain to yourself why the situation is not as terrible as it seems.

Ilya Shabshin

Psychologist-consultant.

Talk to yourself, more specifically to your frightened part. Imagine mentally that there is such a part inside you. Maybe it's your inner child. On behalf of your adult self, address him and soothe him as a child whom you love and want to help. You can even mentally hug him to make him feel even more secure and safe.

These are just a few examples of what you can switch to. Find ways that soothe and delight you, and use them. Whatever you do, it is important to act according to the following algorithm: catch yourself on disturbing thoughts → tell yourself “enough” → switch. Remember that every scary situation has not only a beginning, but also an end.

QUESTIONNAIRE "CAUSES OF EMOTIONAL DISCOMFORT" - Studopediya

On a 7-point scale, rate the degree of anxiety delivered to you by each of the reasons listed in the list:

1 - very weak anxiety;

2 - slight anxiety;

3 - the strength of anxiety is slightly below average;

4 - the power of anxiety is average;

5 - the strength of anxiety is slightly above average;

6 - strong anxiety;

7 - very strong anxiety.

Your answer will be the choice of one of the points - 1 2,3,4, 5, 6 or 7.

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