Struggle With Anxiety? I Got You!
Emotional Grounding, Decompressing, & Processing
We’ve all heard about those terrible situations where someone goes to get some mental health help and all the person tells them is “Have you tried yoga?” or “Have you tried drinking water” or worst of all “Have you tried losing weight?”
These suggestions fall flat because they are not supplemented by the other kinds of emotional tools that are necessary to really make an impact in a person’s life. There are 3 main types of emotional tools that helps you to work with your emotions—grounding, decompression, and processing. Today we are going to break down these 3 types of emotional tools and go over some examples so you can add some of them to your mental health tool belt.
Emotional Grounding
Often times, when we are upset we get overwhelmed with all the emotions and thoughts whirling around in our head. It’s like there’s a bad middle school band playing inside your head with how noisy and painful it can be. The idea of emotional grounding is to fill up your mind with something else so that it doesn’t have room to think or feel anything else. Here are some things you can try to help ground yourself
Holding an ice cube: When you hold an ice cube in your hand it is cold and intense. The intense sensation demands your full attention. It’s sort of like when you really have to go to the bathroom it makes it hard to think about anything else. This technique is also great for people that struggle with self-harm. Often times, people use self-harm as an emotional grounding technique because the pain helps to focus their mind. Holding an ice cube can be painful at times and so it can be a nice substitute for self-harm.
Face Dunk: Dunking your face in cold water can also help to ground you. Think about the moment that you jump into a pool, what a grounding experience that is because it is so cold and there is such a drastic change in sensation. The same is true with dunking your face in water. It also acts on a scientific level. The mammalian dive reflex, triggered when your face is submerged in cold water, has several calming effects. It slows our heart rate down. It also increases vagus nerve activity which is key in the function of your parasympathetic nervous system. Your parasympathetic nervous system is the part of your nervous system that helps you to rest and digest rather than fight or flight.
Box Breathing: Most of the examples of grounding techniques I provide here are ones that help with more intense thoughts and emotions. Box breathing is one that is for tamer situations. Breathe in for 4 seconds. Hold it for 4 seconds. Breathe out for 4 seconds. And hold it for 4 seconds. Repeat as necessary. This technique helps to focus your mind on control of your breath rather than the other worrying things that may be on your mind.
Sound Meditation: I guide you through the sound meditation here. In this meditation you will listen to the sounds around you and bounce your focus from one sound to the next. Because you constantly have to search for another sound to shift your attention to it doesn’t give the mind the chance to focus on worrying thoughts and emotions.
These are just a few options but feel free to experiment with ones that work better for you. Ultimately a grounding technique can be anything that helps to fill up your mind.
Emotional Decompression Tools
When we don’t process our emotions, over time they build up. We’ve all heard the phrase “bottling up our emotions” right? And eventually the pressure in that bottle gets so large that it can explode. The idea of emotional decompression is to let off some of that pressure. Sort of like opening a bottle of soda just a little bit to let out the carbonation without letting it explode all over you. Here are some emotional decompression tools:
Exercise: This doesn’t have to be something super strenuous. It could be something as simple as going for a walk or something as intense as weight lifting. But by getting your body moving it helps to get out some of that stopped up energy in your body.
Listening to Music: When you feel really angry and you can just scream out your favorite angsty song there’s few things that can compare to the release of pressure this will give you.
Screaming Your Favorite Curse Word: This is one of my personal favorites. Take a deep breath in and as you do imagine gathering up all the pent up feelings inside of you and then as you exhale scream out your favorite curse word. Put all of the emotional energy you just gathered up into that curse word. Feel free to repeat as many times as you’d like. Obviously do this in an area where you’re not going to disturb anybody.
Hitting Something: By giving your anger a safe place to vent out, like a pillow, it can help to let it flow out of you. Combining this with something like listening to music or screaming your favorite curse word can also be very effective.
Emotional Processing
And finally, perhaps the most challenging one of the three—emotional processing. The reason that the “bad suggestions” I mentioned at the beginning are not effective is not actually because they are bad suggestions but rather because they lack the addition of emotional processing. When you use emotional grounding, decompression, and processing in tandem you suddenly have a very robust toolbelt to work with your emotions. The way that emotional processing works is that when we go through tough times in life sometimes we have to put our emotions to the side to be able to get through the situation, but those emotions remain within us. Emotional processing is going back to those emotions and hearing out what they wanted/needed to say. It is the process of coming to a clearer understanding of your emotions. Evolutionarily our brains are wired to feel safer when we understand something. So as you come to an understanding of what is going on for you emotionally, our brains naturally feel more at ease. Here are some techniques to help with that
Validation: Validation allows your emotions to feel heard and understood which ultimately is all they want. Your emotions are signals. Their purpose is to communicate something to you. So when you validate them they have served their purpose and are content to fade away. Validation has a very simple two step formula. Step 1: Tell yourself that what you are feeling makes sense. Step 2: Tell yourself why it makes sense (if you don’t know why—ask). For instance, if you're feeling scared about a presentation, you might say, “It makes sense that I'm feeling scared because I have struggled with presentations in the past and this is important to my job which provides me security.”
Journaling: This is a common one but there is one very important thing that people often miss when they talk about journaling. After you write out all your thoughts and feelings on the page, at some point, you have to go back and read them. Otherwise journaling will not be nearly as effective. One of the huge advantages of journaling is that it gives you perspective on yourself. When you read all your own thoughts separated from you on the page like that it helps you to be your own coach or therapist.
Answering Your Own Questions: We ask ourselves questions all the time like “Why am I like this?!” or “What’s wrong with me” but we always ask them rhetorically. Often times the questions we ask ourselves are actually great questions. Take some time to genuinely think about them and see what answers you can come up with. You may be surprised at how much you learn about yourself
Coaching: Sometimes it can feel impossible to process our emotions on our own. Our thoughts, emotions, or egos can be so big that they blind us to the things that are necessary in order to be able to process our emotions. A coach can help provide that external perspective. Here’s what one client said about coaching “I’ve gotten feedback from people that I’m nicer lighter and happier since I started coaching after just 6 sessions”
By incorporating grounding, decompression, and processing into your routine, you create a well-rounded approach to managing your emotions.
Thank you so much for reading. Please click the button below to let me know if this was helpful for you and what kind of stuff you’d like to see in the future.