#grounding methods

New article on my website! This touches on the 54321 grounding method

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Listening to an easy to sing song; for us this means listening to theme song/song that is short and easy to sing along too, focusing our mind on doing something that is short and fun (as we enjoy singing) helps us focus more on the present moment which ultimately helps with our dissociation

Easy puzzles or word games. Things that require just enough focus that it grounds us, but are not so hard they stress us out. For this we enjoy sometimes putting together those puzzles that have the jumbo pieces, puzzles made for kids, or things like crosswords or even suduko. (I think that’s how you spell it..)

Rewatching shows, a show that we still currently enjoy so we still feel the need to focus and engage with it rather than letting it play in the background, but we also don’t feel too stressed out about focusing completely on it. This one is a bit hit or miss, as when we are extremely dissociated we can struggle to focus on it, but it has helped us before.

Talking with friends, just easy conversation, this sometimes grounds us and helps us focus.

Occasionally writing can help, but this one is hard to do when you’re extremely dissociated or stressed.

Sometimes finding a texture we enjoy and just rubbing it over and over can help, we have gems one the back of our phone case for this purpose as the kind of rough texture of them helps grounds us, and we normally always have our phone. 

- Bring attention to the present moment

- Object: some people use an object to rub, connect and ground to

- Spend more time in nature

- Air: ideal for driving away negative energy. Sit outside and feel the wind around you. Feel the wind dance around you and pull out the energy excess

- Fire: Use fire, a candle flame to stare into and center, grounding your energy into the flame

- Water: A universal cleanser. Take a bath or shower and feel the excess energy washed away from you

- Meditate: breathing techniques, especially for centering

- Yoga: Ground yourself with deep breathing and meditative yoga

- Tree/Cord: Visualize a cord extending from the center of the earth to the base of your spine, breath from your diaphragm and stomach, feeling the energy flowing from the earth to warmly fill you. Now let the cord become a trunk of a tree, roots reaching into the center of the earth, allowing you to draw energy. When you finished ground yourself. Sink to the floor and imagine all the energy falling back to the earth

- Sinking: Sit and allow your body to sink, plant and feel yourself

- Laugh: an amazing way to release pent up energy and bring rejuvenation

- Met lots of natural items like crystals or oil

- Garden

- Do a cleansing

- Do things you enjoy

Bonus: centering your energy

Your physical center is your center of gravity, your place of balance. To center yourself relax your body into a comfortable position and then rest your mental, emotional and physical awareness on that spot

masterpost about grounding 

I wanted to share with you all something my therapist and I work on whenever I have really bad anxiety (aka today). There may have been a post done on this before so I apologize if I’m stealing.

Start off (if you can) with a quick one to two minute meditation. just get yourself settled and comfortable. Sometimes I can’t do this, such as when I’m in the car. If you can’t, just dive right in to the five senses. 

Take in your surroundings and start listing: 

-5 things that you see

-4 things that you hear

-3 things that you smell

-2 things that you feel

-1 thing that you taste

It is recommended to ground yourself before and after every practice you do in witchcraft

To ground yourself and release energy sit in a comfortable position and flatten the palms of your hands on the ground of the floor, you can also lie down placing your body flat on the ground. Take deep breaths and visualize the energy flowing through your hands or your body and into the earth. Visualize it flowing up from the earth into your body. Maintain the visualization until you begin to feel the desired result

• Benefits

• How to know when you’re not grounded

• Ways of grounding yourself

• Crystals for grounding

• How to ground if you have aphantasia

Core 5 master post

We had a rough morning with severe dissociation so I thought i'd make a post on grounding methods we have tried or used

* Colouring In (but beware of littles potentially fronting if you had colouring books as a kid)

* Hold/Feel a Smooth Stone. You can buy stones for this purpose called grounding stones, they are often sold for anxiety but they're good for dissociation too.

* Rest a Weighted stuffed animal on your lap and feel it's fur, you can buy weighted stuff animals for autisim/sensory needs. If you have a pet you could also do this with him or her. In our experiences cats seem to understand that you're not OK and will come and sit on you.

* Look around your room at different personal belongings and try to remember where you bought it or who gave it to you. Try to remember the whole history of the item with you

* 5-4-3-2-1 as taught in DBT this one usually doesn't work, but it's the first one we try.

* Look around your room from left to right and back again very slowly while telling yourself out loud the body's name, where you are, the date and that you're safe right now. The trick with this one is to do it slowly enough. You need to be slowly looking around for 3 minutes or so as if it's the first time you've ever been in this space. This is called orrientation and only works for lesser levels of dissociation. If you are a system be sure to have the part that is dissociating doing it.

* Paint your nails if that's something you enjoy

* Draw, even if you are not artistic. Don't judge what you draw, just put a pencil to paper or stylus to screen and see what happens.

* You could try listening to music with caution, if you are system make sure that the music you play is positive for the part fronting. Don't use music that you listened to during traumatic events as even if you feel OK, it might be triggering to another part. Ambient music with no lyrics is a good choice for us, but you will need to experiment to find out what works for you.

* Count the number of red things, the number of green things, the number of blue things you can see in your space.

* If you're really stuck you could try dunking your face in cold water (eg in a bathroom basin). You will need to immediately follow this up with another grounding strategy or you will just dissociate again. This is adapted from TIPP from DBT.

Day Twenty: When something feels wrong/off when casting a spell, what do you do? Are there any other methods of grounding/gaining control that you have heard of? 

While I haven’t gotten to the stage where something could go wrong / feels off in spells I haven’t started, I do have a grounding method that my Dad taught me to help with my panic attacks that I may have if I get overwhelmed by public places or in other similar situations. Let me see if I can explain this coherently;