By Becki A. Hein, MS, LPC, Anxiety Topic Expert Contributor

Click here to contact Becki and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile

You’re worried about money. You’re afraid you’ll catch the flu. You can’t sleep because you can’t stop fretting about… your children, your family, your job or lack thereof, the country/government, terrorists, the stock market, pollution, and on and on. Feeling overwhelmed? Anxious? Then it’s time to get back in the driver’s seat of your own mind! There are things you can do to take control and calm yourself. Did you ever notice that all your worries, no matter what you’re worried about, are about something that hasn’t happened yet? Something you made up in your mind. Anxiety is all about the future. But the only way the future exists is as a thought in your brain. When you are anxious, you are actually fantasizing the worst about some imaginary event and feeling actual fear about it. From a logical standpoint, that doesn’t make much sense does it? Sure, some of the things you are worried about may happen, but you’re using valuable energy to be scared about them. Energy that could be better spent planning, preparing, or paying attention to what’s going on around you right now.

So, the first thing to do when you find yourself making up scary stories about the future is to bring yourself back to the present moment. One of the easiest and best ways to do that is to bring your attention and awareness to your breathing. You are most likely either breathing shallowly or holding your breath, so first exhale as much air as you can. That helps you make extra space in your lungs so that when you inhale your next breath you can take in a deep, conscious breath. As you breathe in and out slowly and deeply, pay very close attention to all the physical sensations of breathing: the rise and fall of your chest and abdomen, the temperature of the air you breathe in and out, the sound of your breath. Paying attention to your breathing connects you back to your body, which is firmly planted in the present moment. You may have other unpleasant physical sensations associated with the anxiety, so visualize your breath going to those areas of your body as you breathe. In your mind’s eye, see your breath washing over those areas like a wave of cleansing, cool water. It’s nearly impossible to focus intently on your breathing and think of scary things at the same time.

Conscious breathing from your diaphragm is an important skill to have when you need to ground yourself back into the present moment. That brings us to the second thing you need to do when you’re stuck in the future with frightening thoughts, which is to ground yourself and your energy.

What does it mean to be grounded? Well, you’ve probably felt at one time or another the experience of being “in the zone”, “centered”, “on solid ground”, or “focused” in your thinking. This is what being grounded is like. We use phrases such as “air-headed”, “up in the clouds”, or “flying off the handle”, to describe what being ungrounded is like. When you are anxious, you tighten your diaphragm in order to hold your breath or breathe shallowly. When your diaphragm is tight, your emotional energy gets trapped in your upper body and intensifies the feelings of panic and the racing thoughts. The energy has nowhere to go but back up into your head, making it very hard to think clearly. You are ungrounded. In order to ground your energy you need get the energy flowing through your whole body again, down past your diaphragm, through your legs and feet, into the ground. You start the grounding process with the breathing described above. Next, if you are standing, put both feet flat on the ground. When you inhale, lower your body several inches by flexing at the knees. Then as you exhale, straighten up your body again by pressing down firmly with the bottoms of your feet. Imagine as you exhale that your feet are doing all the work lifting you up and that your breath is a stream flowing all the way through your body, through your legs and feet and into the ground connecting you firmly to the earth. Do this for two or three minutes. If you are sitting down, use the same breathing technique, and with both feet flat on the ground, press the balls of your feet down firmly and your hips into the back of the chair with each exhale. Let up slightly on the pressure with each inhale. Again, repeat this technique for several minutes.

This is only one of many grounding techniques. It’s easy, portable, and if you practice it frequently, you can become very adept at grounding your energy and calming yourself during anxious moments. By using conscious breathing and grounding techniques, you can pull yourself out of your scary future thoughts and bring yourself back to the only time that exists right now, the present moment.

©Copyright 2009 by Becki A. Hein, MS, LPC. All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. The following article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the following article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry. Click here to contact Becki and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile