Grounding 6: PTSD

Grounding is a powerful tool in the trauma healing toolkit because it generally reduces states of activation, sometimes quickly and significantly. Experiencing an almost total reduction in activation just through grounding can be surprising, since grounding is very simple.

When the body receives these messages about support, location and solidity, it naturally feels comfort, relief and relaxation. These natural bodily responses can contain, diffuse and diminish, to some degree, states of activation of the nervous system panic, upset, anxiety or intense emotion. It can also be used to detach or distract from activation, in order to experience a brief time of relief. It can also be used as brain training on focusing on grounding can break us out of mental and emotional habit patterns, eventually retraining the neural pathways of the brain to respond in a new way to environmental triggers. Grounding that uses tactile sensations, like playing with beanbags, squishing and shaping putty, or rubbing an ice cube on the skin, uses unique, interesting or impactful sets of sensations to pull our attention into the body and away from the mental and emotional upset.

Can Grounding help with goals? hmmm let's see:

Goal 1. Danger to Safety – The body feels safer when sensing the support provided by the earth.
Goal 2. Activation to Calm Alert / Self-Regulation – Grounding can reduce activation states to some degree most of the time.
Goal 3. Dissociation to Groundedness / Into The Body – Grounding helps counter dissociation.
Goal 4. Overwhelm to Simplicity – Grounding helps focus the mind on one thing for a while, reducing mental overwhelm and chaos.
Goal 5. Using the Five Senses – There are grounding exercises that use different senses, such as touch and hearing.

So...how can we connect? What things can I practice? Let's see how we can connect to the earth:

1. Sensation – using awareness and attention to tune into sensations in the body that result from gravity pressing us onto the supportive material/object.
2. Visualization – using active imagination or guided meditation to encourage the body/mind system to become more connected to the idea and feeling of being supported by the earth, floor, chair etc.
3. Movement – touching the floor or earth with ones hands or body, doing yoga, dancing, jogging etc. while consciously feeling the connection to the ground.
4. Tactile Sensations – touching textures, temperatures (ice, cold or hot water), objects (putty, beanbag).
5. Sound – listening to sound and feeling the sound vibration – particularly low sounds like Tibetan monks chanting, listening to nature sounds, creating or listening to rhythm (drumming).

Discussion Questions:

1. Can you share on some thoughts you have with Grounding?

2. We know dealing with trauma issues is difficult, what is the hardest thing for you to deal with? Is it possible for you to distract yourself then?

3. Now that you know some things to try on Grounding what #1,2,3,4,5 on skills are you interested in trying?

5. Is there a goal from Grounding that you like to set for yourself? If so can you share this? If not, do you have some ideas on 1 goal to think about and possibly set?

6. If you use Grounding, what skills help you the most?

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