Getting Grounded

Around ten years ago, when I started my personal growth journey, I thought I was doing pretty good. I was devoted to my exciting career, I had very little time for myself, and I worked in a culture where drinking to unwind was promoted. It was a fun and wild time, yet I would periodically find myself totally burnt out, needing to withdraw from both work and social situations. It was slow progress, and little by little, I learned that while I thought I was a present, high functioning individual, I was coping by popping in and out of my own awareness. I experienced this as a cutoff with my body, and I couldn’t feel emotional cues. In place of taking conscious rest, I was resting by unconsciously transitioning in and out of the relational present. I was adept at doing it, and I could pop in and out while holding a conversation (or pretending to). I was not in touch with my body at all, I would often say I was “okay” or “fine”, when clearly my nervous system was overloaded. Much of my personal work has been to gain awareness of my body sensations and take hints from my system that tell me I am not totally present, and I may need a moment or a few to find my ground.

What is grounding?

When I refer to grounding, I am speaking to a person’s ability to maintain awareness in the present moment, connecting their mind, body, emotions, and spirit. When a person is grounded, they are connecting with their root chakra and using all their wisdom centres: gut, heart, and mind. When people are grounded, they are discerning and authentic, they feel supported, and they can respond rather than react to situations. Grounding doesn’t always mean calming, although that is certainly a helpful aspect of grounding. Grounding means being aware of what is happening for you, mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually. When you are grounded, you can be congruent in any situation and you are empowered by choice.

One common concern for my clients is their healing isn’t happening fast enough. They decide to seek counselling help and they want to feel better right away, they want to dig in, dive deep, they are impatient with their progress and self-blame when they experience a distressing pattern.

Before exploring traumatic material, we must have established some grounding strategies to help my clients regulate their nervous systems and bring themselves back into present when exploring distressing material. People who have experienced trauma have usually developed effective ways of coping, triggering fight, flight, freeze reactions. Traumatic material cannot be processed and metabolized when a person has popped out of their Window of Tolerance. The beginning steps of therapy are often slow as the counsellor and client establish trust and build up the client’s ability to ground while experiencing distress.

Why is grounding important?

To grow, we need to be able to stretch ourselves. Each person has their own unique capacity for stress. We may call this our Window of Tolerance, or our capacity. Our ability to tolerate stress without becoming overwhelmed fluctuates depending on our health, relationships, and external stressors. Some people appear to have a big container for stress and challenges. Others seem to have a smaller container, popping out of their window more often.

Specific situations, smells, and sounds that are reminiscent of a previous trauma can cause our brains and bodies to perceive danger and engage our flight, flight, freeze protection strategies, and POP, there we go out of our window. The brain struggles to distinguish between real and perceived threat. When this happens, we need strategies to help ground us in the present moment otherwise we may react as if we were in the past. When we are able to stay grounded in stressful situations, we can engage socially, we can receive feedback and incorporate it to meet challenges with an appropriate response. We are able to state our preferences, say “no”, and hear “no”. We can interact with our environment to learn, grow, process, and integrate new experiences.

Program Information

For the month of February and March, I will be offering a free in-person program at the Vancouver Regional Library on Gabriola Island. The topic of this workshop is grounding. We will practice a variety of grounding strategies to soothe mind, body, emotions, and spirit. The purpose of this workshop is to provide participants with the opportunity to explore a variety of strategies and CHOOSE which ones work best for them. If you would like to participate click here. If you can’t attend in-person and are interested in a virtual group, email me and let me know. I want to hear from you!