Five Ways to Ground Yourself When You Feel Overwhelmed

Overwhelm can look different for each person. It might be a tightness in your chest, a racing mind, or a sense of being pulled under by something you can’t quite name. It may be subtle, so subtle that you might only notice the impact of the feeling before you realize what is causing it. This could look like becoming more easily irritated and snapping back at people in your life, or doubling down on your schedule or routine to try and maintain a sense of control. This can build slowly over time or bust suddenly, but often it’s the result of persistent and unattended tension, irritability, or emotional fatigue that eventually becomes too much to hold on your own.

Even though grounding techniques are not long-term solutions, they can still be useful to help anchor and steady yourself in overwhelming moments. These small practices can help bring you back into the present moment and help you feel your body and physical surroundings. In turn you feel calmer and gain access to the ability to respond more intentionally to whatever is going on in the moment. Then, later with your therapist or when the situational context is right, you can explore what is happening deeper, beneath the surface.

Technique 1: Sensory Check-In (aka The Five Senses or 5-4-3-2-1)

This technique uses sensory awareness to help you reorient to the present moment. What I love about it is that it’s simple and easy to remember because it builds on the five basic senses and you can use each finger on one hand to help you keep track of where you are in the practice.

To begin, I recommend taking a calming breath, and then turn your attention to notice the following:

• 5 things you can see
• 4 you can touch
• 3 you can hear
• 2 you can smell
• 1 you can taste

I like to spread the fingers on one of my hands as I count down the senses. With each step, I put a finger down so that I can focus on what I am noticing more intently without the distraction of trying to remember what number I am on.

What’s great about this practice is that it can gently pull you out of mental spiraling and reestablish your sense of place. It can also help you differentiate between past experiences that have been triggered and the actual reality of the present moment. It’s a way of saying to yourself: I’m here now. This is my life today. I can handle this with support.

Technique 2: Box Breathing

Overwhelm, like most feelings and sensations, often shows up in the body before the mind can name it. Many of us who grew up navigating chronic stress or emotional strain unconsciously hold our breath as a protective response.

Box breathing not only helps remind us to breathe deeply (which helps oxygenate our brain), but it also follows a steady rhythm that can also help calm the nervous system.

To begin this practice, simply:

• Inhale for 4 seconds
• Hold for 4 seconds
• Exhale for 4 seconds
• Hold for 4 seconds

You can adjust the duration of each “side of the box” to whatever amount of time is most comfortable for you, but I don’t recommend skipping any steps. It’s also useful to breathe in through your nose and to exhale through your mouth. This natural process helps increase blood circulation, reduces blood pressure, and reduces chances of hyperventilation.

This breathwork physically helps with oxygen flow, but it’s also about making room inside yourself. When our bodies soften, there is more capacity to feel, reflect, and notice what’s going on inside.

Technique 3: Feet on the Floor

This grounding practice uses physical contact between your feet and the floor. It can be incredibly stabilizing when intense feelings make you feel small, unmoored, or disconnected.

You might try:

• Noticing the firmness of the ground beneath you.
• Feeling the weight of your body supported by your legs and feet or perhaps the chair you are sitting on.
• Paying attention to temperature, texture, or pressure that you feel on your feet or body.

This simple act reconnects you to your body’s present experience and help you distinguish between a younger activated emotional state. This practice can also be useful in therapy when the goal may not be to make an uncomfortable feeling go away, but to help you stay present to it long enough to increase curiosity and understanding.

Technique 4: Holding a Transitional Object

Donald Winnicott, a British psychoanalyst and pediatrician, described a “transitional object” as something physical that helps us move between states of security and uncertainty. It is essentially an external support for internal soothing. For children, it might be a blanket or special stuffed animal; for adults, it can be anything that brings a sense of comfort and steadiness.

To try this practice:

• Find a solid object to hold. Perhaps a smooth small stone, a soft piece of fabric, a warm mug, a smooth wooden object, or even a fidget toy.
• Notice its texture, weight, and temperature.

This object acts as a symbolic source of support, a reminder that you aren’t alone. The way the object “holds” you can echo the way a therapist holds emotional space in session: steady, attuned, reliable. Over time, this object can help you build your own capacity for self-soothing.

Technique 5: Naming What Is True Right Now

When we are overwhelmed our thoughts can spiral out of control with catastrophic thinking or what-if scenarios. Naming concrete, present-moment truths can help re-anchor your mind and re-orient yourself to reality.

You might say to yourself:

• “I’m sitting in my living room.”
• “I’m having a strong feeling, but I’m safe.”
• “I can take this one moment at a time.”
• “This feels intense right now, but it will not last forever.”

These should be truthful statements that validate your experience but also provide an anchor. For example, telling yourself that “everything will be ok” when you are not certain that everything will actually be so, is not helpful. Nor is minimizing, such as telling yourself to “get over it” or that “you’re making a mountain out of a molehill.” Both of these examples invalidate your experience and imply that your feeling is wrong. Instead, we want to find something true to say, like “I am feeling overwhelmed, but I can make a prioritized list of things to do” or even “I am having an uncomfortable feeling and I would like it to go away,” which notably doesn’t have a solution embedded in the statement, it’s simply naming what is true.

This practice strengthens our ability to self reflect, to bear witness to our own experiences without being swept away by them. Often it creates just enough internal distance to approach feelings with curiosity rather than fear or judgement, even if the feelings are difficult to sit with.

Grounding Supports Deeper Healing, It Doesn’t Replace It

As stated at the beginning of the post, grounding techniques are designed to help you regulate, pause, and breathe, but they don’t remove the deeper patterns that led to being overwhelmed in the first place. They simply help create the internal space for you to explore them safely.

If you find yourself feeling overwhelmed often, it may be a sign that something in your inner world is asking for deeper attention:

• old attachment wounds
• long-held emotional patterns
• a tendency to take care of others instead of yourself
• unresolved grief or trauma
• chronic self-criticism
• unmet needs that have been pushed aside for years

In this case therapy may be the right next step for you. Therapy creates a relationship where these deeper layers can be meaningfully explored, understood, and cultivated toward growth, not just managed.

If you’d like to take this next step as you learn to understand your emotions, regulate your nervous system, and move toward a steadier, more connected way of being, we’d be honored to support you.

Reach out to schedule a session or learn more about or services.