7 Grounding Techniques To Try When You're Spiralling – These Might Help

Anxiety can make you feel overwhelmed, powerless and even embarrassed. Here’s one (hopefully comforting) fact: it’s a normal reaction to stress and danger.

- Patia Braithwaite

When you’re feeling anxious, your brain – specifically, the amygdala and the hypothalamus – triggers your sympathetic nervous system into a ‘fight, flight or freeze’ response. As your body releases adrenaline and cortisol to help you respond to the threat you’re perceiving, your muscles tense, your heart starts racing, your breathing intensifies and you start sweating, according to the Mayo Clinic.

In many cases, including during the coronavirus pandemic, a little anxiety can help you make sound decisions (such as choosing to social distance responsibly or wash your hands more attentively). But sometimes anxiety “just gets out of hand,” says Neda Gould, assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in the US. Though Neda’s careful to say that spiralling isn’t a clinical term and can mean different things to different people, the common experience is that “you might have some sort of trigger that escalates into catastrophic thinking and physical sensations”. It isn’t necessarily as severe as a panic attack, but the symptoms can be similar, Neda says. “Sometimes, it can be so extreme that it interferes with your functioning.”

When faced with anxiety, your kneejerk reaction might be to talk yourself out of it, but this isn’t always helpful, says Dr Mona Potter, medical director at the McLean Anxiety Mastery Program. “Your body’s in such high-alert mode that talking yourself down isn’t going to be powerful enough,” she explains. “Physical coping mechanisms can help lower intensity.”