What Grounds You?!

[sedna]

I have discovered using the five senses often works for me;however occasionally something I do w...

It's really hard to ground yourself when you're overwhelmed with flashbacks or physical feeling of anxiety. Controlled or deep breathing for me actually makes everything worse, if I'm panicking and I try to breathe deep it send me over the edge. Everyone is different, I think the main thing is to be okay with abandoning a technique if its not working..there are no right ways, just what works for you.

For me, when I'm in really bad shape and afraid I cant get centered at all, I give up on grounding and just let myself leave reality but in a happier way. I dont drink anymore and I cant afford online shopping these days, that used to be my favorite escape from memories.

Now I have safe music albums, things that no matter what always have good feelings and happy memories attached and listen with head phones really loud. It drowns out any negative thoughts pretty quickly, sometimes I do a lot of research on meaningless topics online.....like trying to find out who sells Llamas closest to me and what the legal requirements would be for owning one, for example...then it just keeps going until I end up with the names of who is illegally distributing pet hedgehogs in my county :rolleyes:

The key is feel good distractions until you get sleepy, and try not to wonder too much about whether you'll be able to sleep. I did that yesterday and ended up awake until 5 am.

I highly recommend Sir Mix-A - Lot's Baby Got Back as a song that it's hard to be unhappy or traumatized while hearing. :D

 

[mamachick]

Naoru I will look for those apps-that sounds good. Trivia that I have to retrieve, such as write 5 words that start with A-I go blank…..but T and F or multiple choice makes me start focusing and reasoning, and even thinking, I know this and attempt to retrieve.

If its to easy or easy like seek a word, I cant really focus and stay stuck as I am too distracted by the trigger still. I just dissociate or something. There is some balance that I personally need. How about others?

 

[mamachick]

@Coco-Love It…"who is illegally distributing pet hedgehogs in my country".
I do the same thing…looking up random stuff on line. We have a super highway to information and I have always been starving for it, some I remember well, vaguely, and some I forget but am interested in at time. Dont know how I would survive without a computer anymore and never thought I would be saying that.

 

[Friday]

I have a few different levels of grounding things. Not all of these are healthy or recommended. They're just mine. Not a complete list. Just off the top of my head.

Nuclear Grounding
- Sex
- Fighting
- Gravity Sports


Heavy Duty Grounding
- Sensory Overload Music (particularly in use with Panic Attacks, I start off with any genre that matches my heartbeat -blast it loud enough that it washes away all other sensory input & I can feel it in my bones- and then slowly back it down by switching genres, until the baseline has my heartbeat where I want it)
- Dancing, Gymnastics, ZoYoga (don't bother googling, it's a made up thing, that is almost -but not completely- unlike yoga... I just needed a name for the gross-motor series of odd actions & poses)... Aka deliberate gross-motor activities
- Swimming (full-body sensory with water)
- Push-ups (rhythmic -to hold onto the rhythm- plus exercise); Ditto Pull-ups when I'm fitter.
- Other forms of exercise not already listed.
- Hot & Cold showers.
- Shooting
- Humor/ Laughter / Finding something funny


Low Level Grounding
- Running cold water over my wrists
- Talking with people / very specifically getting out of my head & my problems by listening to others.
- Deliberate fine motor activities (writing, drawing, weapons cleaning, etc.)
- Cooking & sensory-eating
- Identifying things by sound
- Identifying things by other senses outside of vision (visual never grounds me unless paired with motion)
- Doing rote activities wrong/weird on purpose. Like writing things backwards, or with my left hand, or by taping them to the underside of a table and Sistine-Chapel-Style, or by morse code, skip code, substitution cypher, etc.... As weird ways to do writing. But pick just about any activity you can do blindfolded and in the dark... And either actually do them blindfolded and in the dark, or just plain bass ackwards; to trip my brain out and make it focus. Anything I usually do by rote.


Sneaky - Aka not exactly grounding, but works to get me to a place where I can ground
- Purposefully disassociating / daydreaming about something I want to be (particularly in use for grounding from disassociating)... Because I'm doing it on purpose, I can come out of it, on purpose.
- Distracting via books/TV/movies

 

[Deleted member 34535]

I have discovered using the five senses often works for me;however occasionally something I do w...

What helps keep me grounded are all of the people I come into contact with in the outside world who are not my DNA matches. I have no problem getting along with people and generally people have no problem with me. So the few DNA matches that do or used to treat me poorly are grossly outnumbered by the kind people I run into on a daily basis. Just living my life and noticing that for the most part, people are generally ok with me is validation enough for me. Yes, the DNAers still get my goat and tick me off. But their memory is fading one minute, one hour, one day at a time.