Anxiety Grounding Exercises Revisited (Podcast Episode 292)
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- čas přidán 21. 05. 2024
- You’re in the middle of a huge wave of intense anxiety and fear, or maybe you’re experiencing a full blown panic attack. Someone with all the best intentions and trying to be helpful instructs you to identify five things you can see, four things you can touch, three things you can hear, two things you can smell, and one thing you can taste.
This is the 5-4-3-2-1 grounding exercise. If you’ve followed along with me for any length of time you know that I don’t speak too kindly about grounding exercises. But today we’re going to revisit 5-4-3-2-1 and grounding exercises in general.
What if there is a way to use them to our benefit rather than having them blow up in our faces?
For full show notes on this episode:
theanxioustruth.com/292
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🎵 Music Used on My Podcast: AfterGlow by Ben Drake (with permission)
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Sorry to hear about your loss 💕
I really needed to hear this, meta cognition is such a big one for me for so long and it feels so good to feel understood and “normal”
until I found you and Josh I didn’t know anyone who thought about their thoughts and feelings. I am actively working on my attention external and as soon as my attention goes inwards I feel so bad (so sensitised)
Patience 😁
Thank you so so much Drew 🙏
As it turns out all humans think and feel about thinking and feeling. It's just that for people like us, that process can get kinda out of control and backfire on us. I'm go glad we're able to be helpful to you in some way. Thank you so much for the kind words and the feedback.
Gold standard advice as always 😎
Thanks Ben. I hope all is well in your neck of the woods! :-)
It's a mini exposure!!! Exposure to removing all the attention on your internal state.....to the external...seeing that it's actually possible despite all the symptoms occurring. 😊
More and more I like to use "experiment" instead of "exposure". :-)
An added piece of context is that grounding techniques like the 5-4-3-2-1 exercise can be especially useful for anxiety caused by trauma flashbacks, where you feel like you're literally back in the past and in danger all over again. In that situation shifting your attention to the outer physical world, by finding four things you can hear or whatnot, can pull you out of the scary relived memory in your head and drive home that you're an adult that's safe in the present.
good point. I have called non-crisis mental health hotlines and they often use 5-4-3-2-1, and after listening to this podcast I was tempted to say they are doing something wrong, but maybe this is the intention in that sort of setting.
I love this comment! This is exactly why we always have to be careful to frame what we're saying in context. These techniques are VERY powerful when used in contexts like the one you're describing for sure. What I really appreciate is the way you presented this. Sometimes when folks like me address misapplication of grounding techniques for folks that don't find them helpful, we get some pretty aggressive pushback. Thank you for recognizing context and contributing to the discussion in a really helpful way.
Really good advice as always! I have something to add if you don't mind. I am in my panic disorder "recovery" process (thanks to you and Josh) and one big way I've been working to recover is by taking walks. I get in my head on these walks which often leads to panic. I've found that by doing 5-4-3-2-1, I can get out of my head/thoughts and back to the present. I realize it's not "necessary" and I'd be fine without doing it, but it's nice to turn my focus outward and keep pushing through the walk. I'm doing the grounding not to get rid of panic, but to turn my focus outward. Of course, I'm working towards not using this tool, but it's been helpful thus far.
Love it! If applying 54321 this way helps you take the "risk" of noticing what's around you instead of being laser focused on your thoughts and symptoms, that's a win! Keep going. Sounds like you found stuff that's working for you. :-)
And a five, a four, three, two, one ...ah, no ending credit music. Well, back tonthe grounding. Just kiddin' 😅
OK this made me LOL for real. And hey, I did pop in some music at the end. I wasn't 100% lazy with this one. ;-)