This Is How I Refocus My Anxiety In The Present
Through the 54321 grounding technique
When I was training on my college’s suicide and mental health hotline, we had a problem.
We had one technique that was used more often than anything else as a coping tool for people that called in. We had to switch it up and stop overusing it for our callers and be more mindful of how we often we were using it.
But when I started volunteering at the Crisis Text Line, I would certainly continue to use it, and to this day, it is my most referred resource for people who text in for anxiety.
It might be overused, but it’s popular and overused for a reason — for a lot of people, the technique works. It calms their anxiety and racing mind. Of course, it’s a temporary solution and not a heal-all panacea for anyone’s anxiety, but I have found it to be very effective whenever I feel anxious and I find myself overthinking.
In psychology, grounding is a term that means making a bigger relationship with the present and the Earth. According to Cami Walker in Psychology Today, grounding is a way of making a conscious connection with yourself and the source of your life source energy. She describes grounding as “provid[ing] [your] spirit with a GPS fix on your body.” Grounding techniques are techniques that control…
