Grounding Techniques to Reduce Anxiety with Melissa Young, MD

Podcast Transcript

John Horton:

Hey there, and welcome to another Health Essentials Podcast. I'm John Horton, your host.

Worries are not in short supply these days, which explains why anxiety levels seem to be rising all around us. For some, those feelings of fear and dread can be absolutely debilitating. So let's do something about it. Various grounding techniques can help you tame anxiety. To walk us through ways to self-soothe, we asked functional medicine specialist Melissa Young to join us again. Dr. Young is one of the many experts at Cleveland Clinic who visit the podcast to share tips to better our lives. So with that, let's take a deep breath and learn how to refocus our energy to help erase those nagging worries.

Dr. Young, it's so great to have you back on the podcast.

Dr. Melissa Young:

Thank you so much for having me. I always have a lot of fun when we're together.

John Horton:

Feeling is mutual. But I got to tell you, in getting ready for this topic, I'm pretty sure that my anxiety jumped a few levels just reading about how worried everybody is in today's world. What is going on in the universe?

Dr. Melissa Young:

It is interesting, we think about up to 25% of the population has a mental health diagnosis and about 18% of the U.S. population has a diagnosis of an anxiety disorder, and those are the ones who've actually sought help and had diagnosis. And I just think there's so much more pressure in this day and age when we think about work and school load. I think the pandemic also really had a lot to do with ratcheting up everyone's anxiety and stress. I think social media and being on electronics so much more than we used to be is all playing a role. And perhaps just when you think about it from a medical standpoint, people are more sedentary. They're not moving, and movement is great for helping lower stress hormones.

John Horton:

Well, clearly with everything you just said, we have a big need to bring anxiety levels down a few notches, so tell us a little bit about grounding techniques and how they might be able to help.

Dr. Melissa Young:

I mean, grounding is interesting. It's a set of simple strategies to help with distracting people from painful or difficult emotions. They help bring us back into the present moment and perhaps also help us stop the immediate negative self-talk or negative critic that so many of us, if not all of us, have to some extent in our head. So it's a type of distraction from those difficult emotions. And there's several different categories. There's the physical, there's the mental, there's the soothing, which we can go into. But I'd love to just take a very short detour and talk about grounding, also, say, from an energetic perspective, in that, I think we have, as a society, moved away from nature, from the earth. We're indoors all the time on electronics. Kids don't go out and play as much outdoors. And there's some speculation that going out in nature, walking barefoot on the grass or sand if you're on the beach, perhaps submerging our bodies in natural bodies of water, may have a grounding effect that's more energetic. So I always like to talk about that because I think it's so easy to do, but we've forgotten that connection.

John Horton:

Yeah, yeah … well, let's get into the different categories. I know you brought up there are three different categories. So let's start with the physical grounding techniques, which I feel like you were touching on a little bit with walking barefoot through the grass.

Dr. Melissa Young:

And I agree. I think that certainly could fit into either the physical or the soothing for sure. There's an overlap in these different categories, but when we think about some of the physical grounding techniques, clenching our fists really tight or clenching, holding onto the back of a chair really tightly is one at the top of the list. Running warm or cool water over our hands is another one. Stretching different body parts, jumping up and down are also, I think, very physical options that bring us into the moment. And then, things like breath work as well, which we've talked about before. If we're doing breath work, I think about, especially for physical grounding, thinking and noticing the movement of air in and out of the nostrils or your belly rising and falling when you're doing that breathing to have that focus and that grounding. So those are some of the key ones that I think are ideal and pretty simple.

John Horton:

What's some of the benefits of the physical grounding? Is it something just with moving your body or involving, I guess, the parts of your body that help with that soothing feeling?

Dr. Melissa Young:

I think for the physical piece of those, like clenching your fists or jumping up and down, it helps bring us back into our body. I think when people are in pain or very anxious, stressed, we tend to disconnect a little bit from the physical body when we're in that fight or flight with the stress hormones flowing and that helps bring us back into our body back into the current moment — the moment of now that allows us to short circuit a little bit of that stress response. And for some people, that works ideally, where for others, we’ll talk about shortly, some of the mental or soothing that may work better for them.

John Horton:

Well, let's move over into the mental grounding techniques then. What kind of things would fit in there?

Dr. Melissa Young:

Sure. For mental, I think about … really, imagery. I love people going, say, to their happy place in their mind, but thinking about what do you feel? Can you taste anything? For instance, if someone loved the beach, really bringing in all the senses, the feeling of the hot sun on their face or their body, hearing the waves lapping on the shore — how does the sand feel under their feet? So gathering all the parts of your sensory nervous system, again, to distract us from that emotion and bring us back to the present moment. And if you're doing something like imagining yourself in your favorite place, you're going to have less production of those stress hormones.

John Horton:

And it sounds like the beauty of that is you can take yourself to the beach when you're sitting in your office and you're stressed or wherever you're at. You can just transport yourself to this magical spot that can help you feel a little better.

Dr. Melissa Young:

Absolutely. You could imagine yourself, say, at the beach, you could imagine yourself even in your home with your pets. And imagery is very powerful. The body doesn't know the difference between what we're imagining and what's actually happening, so we can use that to our advantage to calm the stress response rather than keep increasing the stress response, if that makes sense. Some other mental options are saying the alphabet, counting to 10 or counting backward from 10. So those are some, I think, of the primary ones for mental.

John Horton:

Well, then, that just leaves us with soothing techniques. And how are those different than the other two categories? It sounds like there might be some overlap there.

Dr. Melissa Young:

There is quite a bit of overlap, but my favorite category is soothing because the top of the list is petting our cats and dogs or if you have other pets at home. But that's my favorite with my cat, Sophie. Very soothing. But studies have also shown that petting our animals at home does help to actually decrease cortisol, that main stress hormone that's produced when we're anxious or stressed. So that's one that I love. Saying kind statements to yourself as if you were talking to a good friend or a child of everything is going to be OK, you're safe in this moment is very soothing. Adult coloring books now, I think, are all the rage and fantastic with colored markers, colored pencils. Focusing on just coloring and picking your next color keeps you in the moment and distracting you from those emotions. Listening to music, I think, is a wonderful one that's in the soothing category — and there's good studies as well with music shifting us out of sympathetic fight or flight and being very calming.

John Horton:

Are there times when it's better to use one technique over another or is it just a matter of personal preference?

Dr. Melissa Young:

I think it's really more of a matter of personal preference. I'm always encouraging people to try different techniques because there's so many options and really, some resonate with people and less so with others. If we're even looking ... slight digression, we're looking at meditation. There's walking meditation, sitting meditation, so Qigong, tai-chi — so there's very different modalities for what resonates with people. And one of the things we could talk about as well is there are some of these grounding techniques called 3-3-3, 5-5-5 that again overlaps with what we were discussing. Would you like to talk about some of those?

John Horton:

Absolutely. And actually, as you know, whenever you stop by the podcast, it's tradition for you to walk us through doing one of these techniques, so it sounds like this might be the perfect opportunity.

Dr. Melissa Young:

We're going to do the 3-3-3 demonstration this afternoon and we're going to look in our environment. So for those people listening to the podcast today, whether you're inside or outside, looking around where you are, we're going to look for three things first that we can see, then three things that we can hear, and then three things that we can touch. So let's start with the three things that we can see. I want everyone to be looking around for their own objects, but when I look around my room here, I've got lots of papers and some are white and shiny, some are bright orange.

The bright orange paper has more thickness to it that I can see. So we're not only just searching out an object, but we're really looking for the colors, the textures that look at those details. So I've seen my paper. I'm looking at my pen holder right now that actually has amazing texture to it with little holes. And I have an orange pen, I've got a yellow pen, I have a red pen. So that'll be my second. And then my third is there's a picture of an adorable dog that has shaggy red hair and is wearing a vest that has texture of black piping around its orange piece of primary vest material and seeing also how content the dog looks in this picture and how relaxed, which is helping me as well to be more relaxed.

John Horton:

So it sounds like as you look around and you identify different things, it sounds like you should really take some time to absorb what you're seeing and study it a little bit.

Dr. Melissa Young:

Yes. We don't want to just go pen, paper, dog, coat. We want to see what's the texture? Are there different shades of color? We want to engage in all of these exercises, our senses. It brings us back into the present moment and is, I think, a very good distraction from what we were talking about in the beginning, the negative self-talk, the overwhelming feelings at the time. So yes, bringing in all those senses, whether it's something we're seeing or what we hear or what we're touching.

Let's go to what can we hear. I'm listening in my area. I can hear someone next door actually on their keyboard typing. I hear voices down the corridor. Someone's having a conversation. Otherwise, it's fairly quiet here. But things I think about are looking for someone playing music, is someone's phone ringing and is that a ringtone or music, rain on the windows or on the roof? Really, again, engaging all those senses.

And then, we're going to look for three things that we can touch. And so I am touching a paperclip. It's very smooth, it makes me want to play with moving. It's very flexible and then touching paper. Very smooth. Very crinkly. We can include that a little even though that's hearing. And then I have scotch tape and I'm feeling the stickiness of the tape, feeling the plastic container and how that feels different. And I lost count. Was that two or three?

John Horton:

That was three.

Dr. Melissa Young:

OK.

John Horton:

And I got to tell you, I think I was lucky here. My dog Charlie is always at these podcasts and he starred in one of them a little earlier. So as you were talking, I was leaning down and petting him and there's definitely a relaxation that you get in doing that.

Dr. Melissa Young:

It's top of my list for sure. Absolutely.

John Horton:

So let me ask you this … when should someone or when can you use one of these grounding techniques? Can you do it spur of the moment or is it better to set aside time to do the exercise during certain times of the day?

Dr. Melissa Young:

I think it can be done both ways. I think, especially this particular grounding technique of the 3-3-3, is very helpful in an acute situation of stress or anxiety. It really helps you focus away from the sensation, away from your mind telling you you're going to have a panic attack or I'm never going to get over this. So, I mean, certainly both ways, but this one, in particular, I like for more acute — where with many of the other ones that we talked about and especially some of the soothing ones, I think it's something that can be done on a regular basis to help calm the body, calm the mind. And so I just always urge people — you've done so many amazing podcasts with different modalities for helping with stress — and try them all. See what works for you. Try one in a certain situation. See how that works. But the more we practice these on a regular basis, we help our autonomic nervous system, that fight-or-flight stress response more easily shift into the parasympathetic rest, digest calm, and it takes less over time, typically to get out of those situations of pain and anxiety and sadness.

John Horton:

Well, Dr. Young, I have to tell you, I tend to be a little more high-strung and I have used the techniques that you've talked about in these podcasts to bring a little more sense of calm to my life at times. So I want to thank you for that. I guess, before we say our goodbyes today, is there anything else you'd like to add regarding grounding techniques?

Dr. Melissa Young:

I just think that grounding and all these wonderful different areas with the physical, the mental, the soothing … try them all. See what works for you. Use them under a stressful situation, and then also see what it feels like if you do that for three to five minutes a day or a couple times a week in shifting (or downshifting for car enthusiasts) the stress response over time. Because we're seeing more and more people in stress on a regular basis. But these are great tools that people — you don't need to buy anything, you can do this on your own — that, I think, are very powerful and can change some people's lives really for the better.

John Horton:

Well, that's what we're always trying to do here, Dr. Young, and I appreciate you coming in and giving us some tools to accomplish that.

Dr. Melissa Young:

Thank you.

John Horton:

Anxiety can be overwhelming. That doesn't mean you can't do something about it. Consider trying one of the grounding techniques suggested by Dr. Young. It might help take your worries away. Until next time, be well.

Speaker 3:

Thank you for listening to Health Essentials, brought to you by Cleveland Clinic and Cleveland Clinic Children's. To make sure you never miss an episode, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts or visit clevelandclinic.org/hepodcast. This podcast is for informational purposes only and is not intended to replace the advice of your own physician.