Grounding Exercises and Techniques for Stress and Anxiety

Hello everybody, thanks for joining me this evening. Tonight I'm going to be looking at different ways to ground ourselves, I'm going to be looking at what grounding means, how it can be helpful. As always I'm going to look at what it isn't. I might sound a little odd tonight, I do have a bit of a sniffle, you might see me using my tissue once in a while, maybe doing a little bit of coughing, very unprofessional, but let's see if we can Grounding is a term for a coping strategy. The important thing to remember about a coping strategy is whenever we feel something overwhelming, it's anxiety, it's stress, it's fear, it's anger, all those things that come up in us and we're feeling overwhelmed, things we struggle with, a coping strategy is not there to take it away, it's not there to bring it right down to a zero, give us a level of calmness and all the rest of it. Coping strategies are there to help us manage things better, they're there to help us maybe get through something, maybe navigate something, they're there to dilute, diffuse, whatever term you want to use, the intensity of the feelings that we have in that moment, the things that can often lead us to avoid certain things. So it's a practice to help bring us into the moment, because whenever, I'll stick with anxiety for instance, whenever we're overly anxious, it's like our mind is all over the place, you know, we're thinking about things that maybe haven't happened yet, what if this happens, what if that happens, what if the other thing happens, what if he does this, she says that, or we could be thinking over things that have already happened and we're thinking about how uncomfortable it was, how unpleasant it was, and we're just, we're trying to avoid those situations coming up again. We may even find ourselves maybe in someone else's head, we're trying to figure them out, what's their motives, what's their agenda, so we're feeling a lot, a lot of difficult emotions, sometimes all at once we're feeling, we could be feeling angry, we could be feeling helpless, we could be feeling anxious, we could be feeling stress, a lot of stuff, it's just come up, my eyes just call it catastrophizing. Yeah, we're catastrophizing a lot of the time, we're thinking of the worst thing that could possibly happen. Now, I did a little exercise, I think it was one of my early, early live streams, I'm going to do it again this evening, just to give you an idea of what I mean. So if I've already done this with you, if you're familiar with it, that's okay, you can try it again, but those of you that are new, give it a go, it's a silly exercise, but I hope it does make a point. I'd like you to start by just counting in your head, it really doesn't matter what number you get to, just start counting, off you go, just start counting, but pay attention while you're counting, so off you go, what's your name, say it out loud, spell it for me, what's your date of birth, when's your birthday, coming up, have you anything nice planned, do you want to say it out loud, is it recently passed, did you do anything nice, do you want to tell me about that, when was the last time you were at the cinema, what did you go and see, what was it about, tell me what the movie was about. Now, if you're able to answer those questions and to think of those answers while you're still counting in your head, then you know you can do something that no one else can, because we are not able to do both at the same time, we don't have the capacity to do both. Now, a lot of the time when we're feeling overwhelmed, it's like there's counting in our head, so what we cannot do is we cannot pay attention to what's going on at the moment, in other words, we can't answer questions. When we're a little more present, grounding is a way of bringing ourselves into the present, into this moment, when we're more in the moment, that's when we're able to problem solve, that's when we're able to think about options, choices, resources, that's when we can think, you know, whatever it is I'm trying to avoid, is it in my best interest to avoid it, because it could well be, by the way, it could well be, or am I just trying to avoid something because it's the habit that I've got into, every time something unpleasant comes up, I'm just trying to avoid it, to escape that uncomfortable feeling. So grounding is a useful technique, there's different ways of doing it, I will talk you through a few of them, I'm going to end tonight with doing a little grounding exercise with you that I hope you find helpful, but grounding is a way, as I said, bringing ourselves into the moment, it's useful for managing feelings of heightened anxiety, stress, anger, dissociation, pretty much anything that we find overwhelming, and what they do is they work by putting ourselves into the moment, if you will, it's a way of silencing that counting, redirects our attention away from whatever it is we're struggling with, whatever it is we're frightened of, sometimes it can be coming into the moment, it could be focusing more on ourselves, sometimes if you think in terms of things like social anxiety, a lot of attention is on ourselves, we're very self-conscious, we're worried about people judging us, we're worried about, you know, what are they thinking, what are they feeling, what if they don't like me, other ways of grounding can be actually taking the attention off yourself, so there are different things we can do, it really depends on the environment, do you know what, as I often say to my clients, it's finding what works for you, the other thing about a grounding exercise, just like any kind of coping strategy, is it's something I believe that you need to practice, because sometimes we might have a strategy, a technique, something like that, and we think that's a really good idea, but we don't do anything with it, and then something happens, something comes up, and we start to find ourselves panic, we might forget all about that technique, might forget all about that strategy, or maybe we do try to do it, but we're trying to do it while we're still really really heightened, so we're not really paying attention, so when it comes to things like our coping strategies, I think it can be really helpful to practice them, you get into a habit of practicing them, something I've said again on previous live streams, sometimes we don't always have the time to do a meditation or something, but we can do little things like pepper our day with little reminders of what I'm doing right now, for instance, right now I'm having a coffee, right now I'm going to check my phone, right now I'm brushing my teeth, whatever it is, we just pepper our day with little things like that, to remind ourselves of what we're doing in the moment, minds wander, that's what they do, but sometimes we just gently bring them back to whatever it is we do, whatever it is we're doing, so practicing these little things can be helpful, because whenever you need them, you will know what they are, you know how they work, you know when to use them, and how to use them, and the more you become familiar with them, we can start to learn to adapt them, because some of the techniques we use might not use in every single situation, that being said, sometimes they're not always appropriate, if there is a real danger, there's a big great white shark coming right towards you, the last thing you want to do is practice a breathing exercise to calm yourself down, you want to get to safety, so you learn when to use them and how to use them, okay, so ways to ground ourselves is you can focus on your senses, you use your senses, you've got five different senses, you've got taste, touch, sound, smell, it's a four or five, did I say them all? Anyway, you've got five senses, you can use one of them, you can use a combination of them, you can use all of them, you could, for instance, you're in a room, you could be thinking five things I can see, just name five things, you scan the room, five things that you can see, you might hear different sounds, you might, you know, there might be sounds outside, what do I hear? Well, I hear traffic, I hear people, you try to identify the different sounds, things you can touch, is it hard, soft, warm, cold, different textures, you use your different senses, when you focus on those senses, you're bringing yourself back into the moment again, it's like you're silencing the counting, sometimes people do a combination, they might do something like five things they can see, it could be four things they can touch, three things they can hear and on and on, so they do it in like a little order, okay? Again, practicing these things so that you become familiar with them, whenever you start to feel anxiety, stress, worry, things like that begin to rise, you feel these things begin to rise, you have a good idea how it works, you know that it brings you into the moment. Some people find breathing exercises helpful, right? I think it's fair to say that whenever we are in a state of stress, anger, anxiety, things like that, we tend to shallow breathe, it's like we're breathing from our chest, some people find breathing exercises helpful, they might do a number of deep breaths, hold it for a second, then let it out, you know, it's like in for four seconds, out for four seconds, whatever it happens to be. Breathing exercises, again, because you're focusing on the breathing and it's not just the air that's coming in, you're focusing on the physical sensations, you feel yourself expand, you feel it, you know, yourself deflate as it goes out, people visualize tension, fear, things like that, whatever it is, it's like as they're breathing out, it's becoming expelled, there's different little things you can do with breathing exercises. The touch, again, you can have grounding objects, some people find things of personal significance, for instance, it could be a watch they have, it might have been a gift, it could be, you know, something special, something they've had for a long time, something that gives them, something that they have a connection with, something that has some kind of meaning to them, it could have been something they had to work very hard for, they saved up for, they bought it themselves, whatever it happens to be, if you will, it's like it's a tangible reminder of the real world, again, when things are in our head, I often say people have a head like a tortoise, it's always so much bigger on the inside, coming out of our head once in a while, that grounding object, that familiar object, whatever it is, again, that can reduce the counting in our head, it can reduce the overthinking, the panicking and so on. Now, just use the exercise about counting in our head, you know, as an example of our racing thoughts and so on, our panic, well, actually counting can be quite useful as well, again, as I said, five things I can see, four things I can hear, some people might find an exercise where they start counting backwards, it might be from 100, it might be from 1000, it might be, they might try to do it from a million, whatever, you know, finding little counting exercises, that's what they're focusing on, because what they're doing is they're silencing what's going on in their head, a physical thing people can do is like a body scan, I think that can be useful, it can be very useful with emotional regulation, in the sense that, you know, whenever we feel something, we feel anxious, we feel nervous, we feel physical sensations as well, you know, we might get knots in our stomach, we might get butterflies in our stomach, we might get tension in our joints, we might have a lot of energy, we can't sit still, we're very fidgety and restless, whenever we're doing emotional regulation, I did a live stream a while ago, yeah, we're naming it, we're trying to identify it, how long does it last, we're trying to put it on a scale and so on, but I think it's important to recognise what we're feeling physically as well, again, I have, you know, butterflies in my stomach, so that's an indication that I'm nervous, I have knots in my stomach, that could be an indication that I'm very tense, there's a lot of stress, it's not being released and it's been quite a while, it's been going on for quite a while, we can also recognise, you know, whenever we feel something, whether it's physically or emotionally, sometimes it's normal, for instance, someone who struggles with maybe meeting new people, let's say they're shy, social anxiety, something like that, so they're going to feel very anxious, maybe going into a new environment, there's going to be a lot of people there, so they might be concerned that people are going to judge them, they're going to reject them, whatever, so they might start to feel tense, they might start to feel restless, it's, if you will, that fight or flight starting to kick in, so they're feeling a lot of this sort of stuff going on and because we get the physical feelings as well, sometimes the emotional, that starts to heighten, when we recognise, again doing a little bit of grounding and we recognise what you're feeling, it's probably normal in the sense that everybody here is going to be feeling the same thing, none of us have ever met each other before, this is a brand new environment, you recognise that the last person that was here on their first day, they probably felt the same way, when we recognise that, you know, the other people in the room, they don't know what to make of me, so they might be feeling nervous, when we get a sense of being able to normalise that, we can recognise that things like anxiety, when we feel it, we feel it for a reason, but we feel it in short bursts and often appropriate to the situation, if we fear that feeling, that's when it becomes really intense, that's when we start to fear other people's judgment, that's when we start to fear being rejected and so on, when I said a moment ago about paying attention to our senses and putting the focus on ourselves, what I'm doing right now, another thing that can help with things like the social anxiety is, believe it or not, it's the opposite, you take the focus off yourself, when we're grounding ourselves, yeah we're aware of what we're feeling, we're aware of what's going on, we're feeling very self-conscious, I think that's when we're often fearing being judged, but if we were to take the focus off ourselves, for instance, imagine it's a new environment, room full of people, you're not sure, you don't know anyone, you don't know who to say hello to, you start to pay attention to things like how many people in the room are wearing glasses, how many people are blonde, how many people are grey, you know, how many people are wearing shirts, wearing a suit, wearing a dress, how many doors are there, what pictures are they, just little things like that, you pay attention to the surroundings, sometimes that can take the focus off yourself, it's like something I learned many years ago, giving presentations and you know training people and so on, of course you're going to feel anxious, every eye in the room's on you, of course you are, you're going to feel a little bit nervous, you're all, you're going to be worried in case you get a question you can't answer, who's not going to be feeling like that, again little things to take the focus off myself, what I learned was, see when you're, when you get a room full of people and you're talking to them, you make eye contact, now you don't stare at someone, you don't stare them out, you don't just pick the one person but you're saying something and you're looking at one person and then as you go to change your point, change something else, you look at someone else, then you walk about a bit, you talk to someone else and it feels more like you're having a conversation and you're looking at those people, you might be looking at their reactions, their body language and so on, but you're still taking the, taking the pressure off yourself, you're not really thinking about, do I sound okay, am I coming across okay, you know, does that person look like they don't like me, you just look at different things, like you take the focus off yourself, you look at the environment, the situation, the different people around you, start to pay attention to those other little things. Some people find it helpful as well to think in terms of visualizations before they go to do something, a visualization, so maybe they know the environment, they know the people, they know the situation, they know that it might bring up a lot of stress, a lot of anxiety, but they can imagine themselves, even if it's difficult, they imagine themselves handling it okay, get a little bit of creative thinking as opposed to magical thinking, a little bit of creative thinking, what does it feel like afterwards when you have, you know, completed your task, when you've said what you need to say, when you've done what you need to do, what does that look like, how does that feel, and then you might take yourself, well what is it gets me there from here okay, so little visualizations can help, preferred outcomes, preferred scenarios, something I said in the previous live stream as well are things like that inner critic that we, that often sabotages us, tell us we're no good, tell us that you know we're going to fail, no one likes us, nothing's going to work, those little things that that critic that tells us that, well sometimes whenever we maybe try to change that narrative a little, we might remember the last time we tried something and it was really unpleasant, it was difficult, it didn't go as well as we would have hoped, and that's what we're focusing on, we're focusing on the pain, the difficulty, and that critic is telling us well nothing works for you, why do you think you could do it again, it's going to be any different, you start to use a different affirmation, yeah things like, yeah difficult, difficult is not the same as impossible, could be hard, all that means is I'll have to try a little harder, I'll have to try a little different, something a little different, it might not be immediate but not now, it's not the same as not ever, just little things like that, different kinds of affirmations, now some people find positive affirmations really helpful, find one that works for you, whatever it is you, whatever it is you want to say, whatever it is you find helpful, some people will just come up with something as simple as I've got this and that's perfectly okay, so try on different affirmations as opposed to those critical kind of things that we often do, if you will maybe hold us back judges, judge yourselves harshly, judge yourselves harshly for the things that didn't work, now lastly there is mindfulness and there's a lot of mindfulness, I don't want to talk too much about mindfulness because there's a lot of information on mindfulness and I could probably do a whole live stream on mindfulness, I'm not a mindfulness practitioner but I do do some mindfulness techniques, there's a lot of mindfulness out there, mindfulness is all about bringing ourselves into the moment, there's exercises, there's meditations, there's a lot of stuff on YouTube, there's a lot of podcasts, people can get apps for their phones, again you find something that works for you, different areas you might have mindfulness practitioners, teachers to do them in groups and so on, mindfulness can be really really good at silencing our racing brain, it can bring us into the moment and mindfulness is all about using our senses, our five senses, noticing things, paying attention to things, not necessarily judging them, just acknowledging them for what they are, allowing them to come and allow them to go, as I say there's a lot of stuff out there, you will find stuff on YouTube that's really really helpful, even the uncomfortable stuff that comes, whenever we feel we might feel embarrassed, we might feel frightened, we might feel overwhelmed, when we're practicing a mindfulness exercise, again we're acknowledging it, we're noticing it is what it is, we're also noticing the physical things that come up with us, we might notice the thoughts that come into our head when we do acknowledge these feelings, but we're doing them without judging them, we're doing them in like a safe environment if you want to call it that, and we can do it without becoming overwhelmed, when we don't become overwhelmed, again we're a bit more present, we're a bit more in the moment and that's when we can think, we can think critically, we can think, we can problem solve, we can find solutions, we can prioritize, it's not to say something isn't important, but how important is it, yeah it's important whether or not people like us, but really how different is our life, is our life really going to change, are we going to be any taller, any shorter, any older, any younger, just because of someone else's opinion, we could be in an environment, a situation that we find very very difficult, very very toxic, we can acknowledge that, again we are aware of the impact that's having on us, but again when we're a bit more present, that's when we can think, what can I do to change this, can I change this, or do I have to change something about me, I might not be able to change say other people, I might not be able to change the past, I might not be able to change the particular culture in an environment, you know not necessarily, but we might be able to change our approach, we might be able to, do you know what, we can even decide, is this for me, and we can think, do I need to leave, so there are many different ways we can ground ourselves, as I say there's the visual, there's the auditory, there's touch, lots of different ways, there is focusing on our physical sensations, there's focusing on our thoughts, things like that, but there's also focusing on external things to maybe take us out of ourselves, there's a lot of different things we can do to ground ourselves, when you practice, when you find something that works for you, and you practice it, whenever you need it, whenever something really overwhelming comes, it might not change the situation, it might not change what's happening, but it can give you what you need in order to get through it, or to get around it, or whatever that happens to be, as opposed to what we often do, we either shut down, we run, we freeze, all of the other different kind of things we do, so that's the concept of grounding, what it can do, it can help us silence that racing brain, it can stop doing that, so that we are, it can stop us with that, so that we are able to answer questions, if you remember the exercise at the beginning, because we cannot do both at the same time, when we feel something really unpleasant, really difficult, I think it's human nature, not necessarily, there has to be something wrong with somebody, if that's the way people want to talk about it, no, not at all, it is human nature, that whenever we feel something really unpleasant, what we tend to think of is, what's the best way out of this, what's the quickest way out of this, whatever it is, could well be in your best interest to avoid by the way, but not every single time, because sometimes the question might be, first of all, what does this even mean, why is this important, another question could be, what's the best way through it, and that's what your coping strategies are for, to help us get through something, so who's ready for a little bit of an exercise, I'll talk you through a little grounding exercise, something I do, this is not a meditation, we don't need to take our shoes off, we don't need to light candles, all I'm going to ask you to do, I'm going to ask you to do, is just pay attention, so get myself comfortable here, if you can hear Freud in the background, I apologize, I don't know what's going on out there, but he's going absolutely crazy, just get yourself as comfortable as you want to be, okay, now I'd like you to just find something to rest your eyes on, it could be the screen, could be me, not much to look at, but you can look at me if you want, find something in the room just to rest your eyes on, okay, you're not focusing, you're not staring, you're not concentrating, you're not actually looking at it, if you know what I mean, all you're doing is resting your eyes, now find something just to rest your eyes on, okay, now you might have a thought come into your head, it's perfectly okay, thoughts come, allow it to come, but then allow it to go again, you don't have to dwell on it, you don't have to concentrate on it, you don't have to carry it through to its conclusion, but then you don't have to push it away either, you don't have to force it just allow that thought to come and then allow it to go again, now I can't tell you whether that thought's important or not, I don't have the right to say that, I'm just asking you just for this moment, allow that thought to pass and come back to it in a moment if you want to, because right now whatever it is you're resting your eyes on, I'd just like you to notice what can you see in your peripheral vision, you don't have to move your eyes, but just pay attention to your peripheral vision, you probably find you can see a lot more than you think, when you think of your peripheral vision, whenever we're struggling with something, I often think it's like we're looking through a tube, like a kitchen room tube, you know something like that, but all we can see is what's at the end of it, and that takes up a lot of our energy, a lot of our thought, and even if you move that tube about you can't really see much, you can't really make sense of what you're looking at, but if you were to take that tube away, the very thing you're looking at is still there, it hasn't went away, it's still there, but you can now see the bigger picture, you can see cause, effect, rhyme, reason, you can see options, choices, resources, support, you can see it in a completely different context, so whatever it is you're resting your eyes on, just be mindful of what you can see in your peripheral vision, let's say you can see a lot more than you give yourself credit for, now you might have a feeling come over you, that's okay, feelings come and feelings go, I'm not going to tell you that feeling's not important, because again I can't do that, what I'm going to ask you to do is to notice it, just pay attention to it, but allow it to pass, don't dwell on it, you want to come back to it, we can come back to it in a moment, because right now I'd just like you to pay attention to whatever you're sitting, you might be sitting, you might be lying down, it's okay, if you're sitting down, just notice what you're sitting on, pay attention to it, what parts of you are touching that chair, how's it supporting you, how's it holding you up, that's the thing about chairs, it would be very hard to hold a position like this without sitting in a chair, so notice how the chair is supporting you, just notice is it hard, is it soft, is it comfortable, would you need to move about, it's entirely up to you, now notice your feet, are your feet on the floor, both on the floor, do they both feel the same, what part of your feet's touching the floor, is it the heel, the toe, do they both feel the same, is one maybe at an angle, notice the difference in both your feet, and while you're noticing that, your mind might begin to wander, if that's okay, that's what minds do, and that's perfectly okay, just gently bring it back to where it needs to be, because right now I'd like to ask you to pay attention to whatever you can hear, you can hear my voice, you might hear other things, you might hear my dog in the background, there might be other people in the building, you might hear traffic outside, you might hear the wind, you might hear the rain, you might hear a clock, just be aware of those sounds, you don't have to listen to them, just hear them, just acknowledge them, know that they're there, pay attention to them, notice them, while you're, while you're paying attention to the sounds that you can hear, notice what temperature is the room, feel it against your face, against your hands, is it warm, is it cold, is it comfortable, had you even thought about it, how does it feel, is it comfortable, is it uncomfortable, can you feel a draft, can you feel a breeze, just notice that temperature, again you might have a thought, you might have a feeling, comes over you, that's perfectly okay, allow them to come and allow them to go, we can come back to them, we can come back to them if we need to, you can acknowledge them later on, because right now I'm just going to ask you to notice your breathing, I'm not asking you to change anything, but just notice your breathing, I said a moment ago that whenever we're nervous, anxious, sometimes we're shallow breathing, we're breathing from our chest, how are you breathing at the moment, even if you are breathing, well of course you're breathing, even if you are breathing from your chest, your body knows what it needs, every now and again it's going to take a deeper breath, it's going to do it automatically, when your body does that, just notice how refreshed you feel in that moment, just when you take that deeper breath, now if you want to, if you choose to, you can take a deeper breath, feel your lungs, breathe from your diaphragm, lift your shoulders, breathe it in, but as you're doing it, feel how your body expands, those shoulders lift, sometimes our back has to straighten a little, the moment you do that, as you breathe in, you can feel that, just allow it to go out, you don't have to expel it out, you don't have to push it out, just allow it to go out naturally, if you want to push it out, if you want to breathe out longer than you were breathing in, that's entirely up to you, there's no right, there's no wrong, it's whatever you're comfortable with, but you notice your breathing, you want to maybe practice that a couple of times, but then allow your breathing to go back to a normal natural kind of rhythm, and without forcing anything, just notice anything different in your breathing, does it feel any different? Now we've just talked through a few things there, we've talked about what you can see, your peripheral vision, talked about feeling the temperature of the room, feeling the chair, even the floor under your feet, things we can hear, things we're touching, if you're using your senses, just pay attention to what you're experiencing right now, in this moment, don't force anything, but just try to notice anything different that you begin to feel physically, just take a little moment, then I'm going to sort of scroll through the comments, just to see that anybody noticed anything, just notice anything different, it doesn't have to be better, it doesn't have to be worse, it's just different, you just notice anything that was different. Someone, yep, has noticed they were shallow breathing, okay, they had been shallow breathing, Tim says that's awesome, Polly says Freud ruined the moment, you would have no idea I dismissed my thought really easily, you know, it's a thing about our thoughts, it's not for me or anyone else to say, Amanda says just what we needed, thank you, on my way is yawning and feeling more relaxed, that's my very boring voice, you see, I can put most people to sleep, which is funny because I've been told that when I sing I can empty a building, but there you go, yeah, you notice those little things that are different. Now, during that exercise I was saying that little things that come up, you know, a thought pops into your head, a feeling comes over you, whatever it is, some people might feel, they might feel a little silly, they might feel a little uncomfortable only because it's unfamiliar, a thought might pop into their head, something about have to do tomorrow or something that happened earlier on that day, so it's not that the thoughts aren't important, but you see, going back to choose to think about some of those thoughts after doing a little exercise like that, sometimes, again, we can think with a little bit more clarity, we can, we're doing it without the intensity of the motion, we're doing it without feeling overwhelmed, again, that's whenever we can, again, we can draw on our resources, we can think about the best, the best course of action as opposed to the most experienced, so let's have a look at some comments, if anyone found that, six cents, Amelia, paying attention to physical symptoms helps to recognize having anxiety reactions, yeah, so used to having, something I would say about anxiety is, you know, it is said that the physical reactions we get to anxiety, you know, are so similar, if not the same as the physical reactions we get to excitement, you know, sometimes they're hard to tell the difference, so we could be getting invited to go somewhere, it could be a concert, a huge concert, it could be, you know, a party, it could be whatever and we're feeling, we're feeling certain things and we're feeling it physically and we will probably say it's anxiety, now it could well be and there could well be a normal healthy level of anxiety, but what we forget sometimes is we could actually be feeling excited, that could be a band that we've been waiting years to see, you know, this could be a party that we've been really, really looking forward to, sometimes they're, they're hard to separate, sometimes we will just jump to the conclusion, it must be this, Polly says laughter is therapeutic, I would agree, it's not that we laugh at everything, you know, a big shark bites you in half, you don't laugh and go, ah, look at the shark, you know, things that come into my head, my god, laughter can be therapeutic, there is something healthy, I believe, in being able to see the ridiculous side of things sometimes, there are some things, they're not ridiculous, of course they're not, but being able to see the ridiculous side of things can be very, very helpful, even being able to see the ridiculous side of ourselves, you see just before this live stream, my nose is all bunged up, I'm coughing and spluttering, I have a glass of water here and I'm thinking, McGee, what the hell are you thinking, you know, you're just going to be talking to people going, I'm really not well, you know, it's not going to go well, so I'm starting to panic, and then I started to laugh at myself, do you know what, does it matter, just go ahead and do it, so being able, you know, being able to laugh at the ridiculous side of things can sometimes help, especially, especially being able to laugh at ourselves, don't laugh at people's pain, no, there can be a very cruel humour, no, not necessarily, when you're laughing at people's pain, I think there is a context to it, and that context is usually some kind of comedy, there's slapstick comedy or something, somebody makes a mess or whatever, you know, but it's all pretend, you know, that sort of thing is different, when it comes to real legitimate kind of pain that people are feeling, no, I don't think there's anything helpful or healthy in making fun of that, it's great you're feeling better, I'm feeling a good bit better, right, so I'm going to go back to the beginning, any of the other things I may have missed, so find family very, a man says, find family very triggering, like they don't get glasses, after all these years, some people are going to get it, some people are going to understand, sometimes the most we can do is explain to someone, if they're not going to get it, they're not going to get it, sometimes we will tie ourselves up in knots trying to get someone to understand, the most we can do is give someone information, what they do with that is up to them, it does, it can still hurt, but that doesn't mean that we're, we have to be dependent on them understanding us, there are people out there who will understand us, can understand us and do understand us, okay, Polly says, during a difficult session with a therapist, he stopped and had me count the number of blue objects in the room, simple but effective, that's a really, that, yeah, when you're counting something, something specific, blue objects, round objects, you know, whatever that happened to be, it silences that racing head, that panic and thought and it just brings us back into the present moment, okay, so that manageable level of anxiety, but we're going somewhere, it's like it's exploding out of nowhere, I want to go places but the brain doesn't agree, yeah, when we don't fully understand maybe why we're anxious, we have a good idea that we're frightened of something, there's something we don't like, there's something we want to do, but again, there's that part of us that talks us out of it, a lot of the time, and I'm not saying this is true in your case, because everybody's different, but a lot of the time, it's what our brain is remembering the difficult, the difficult experiences we maybe had previously, either that or it's remembering the catastrophic scenarios that we've created, that we fear could well happen, I did stuff previously on reframing, if there's anything there that you might find helpful, you know, looking at ways to explore our beliefs, challenge our beliefs, do a little bit of emotional dysregulation, this is the thing about emotional regulation, I can't even talk, emotional regulation, when we recognise, you know, what part of this am I open to accepting, we might not like it, it might not feel good, but I'm open to accepting that I feel nervous going into an environment I'm unfamiliar with, we can be open to accepting that, when we accept something, I often say when we accept something, it doesn't mean we're okay with it, it doesn't mean we approve of it, it doesn't mean we're fine with it, we're just acknowledging it is what it is, but it's only when we accept something that we can change something, we can do something, we can change our approach and so on, whatever it is we need to do, where are we, lucky if he carries a pebble, you carry a pebble from the beach in your pocket and you find it reassuring, yeah, that's really good, a pebble from the beach, now I'm just imagining a pebble from the beach, the pebble on that beach, you know, it's been in the water for so long, it's been brushed back and forward, there's water covering it, so I'm imagining a pebble from the beach being very smooth and not really being jagged edges on it, so it's still hard, you know, it's still stone but it's smooth, it's round, so there is something kind of, you know, comforting about that, it's also quite earthy, I told you my mind really does go in strange places, doctor who reference hit the like button, absolutely, the pebble from the beach, yeah, that's having something, something comforting, something personal, you know, again, if that was maybe a trip to the beach and it's a beach you enjoy, maybe it was a good day out or it's one of your favourite places, again, you're having some kind of connection with it, so that's a pretty good, that's a really good example of something you can have, you know, an item that helps ground you, it's a really good example. Tim, I'm glad you found the advice helpful, that's good, I'm glad you found it, it's the important thing, it's again, every time somebody comments, this jumps and I have to catch up, where are we? I like how Darren says, yes, can and cannot, yeah, yeah, I keep saying I never knew I had an accent until I heard other people speak, until other people told me I had an accent, people want to argue, I get stressed, I sometimes imagine a little yapping dog and I laugh, that's a visualisation, okay, if the person gets laughed at and you're in trouble, well, that is the downside of laughing at someone whenever they're angry, chances are that's going to antagonise them even worse, okay, so that is just, that was just an idea, talking about the concept of grounding, again, what it is, what it isn't, there's different kinds, I say there's the mindfulness, there's using your senses, there's, you know, doing body scans, there's having personal items, there's counting, there's taking the focus off yourself, going on to other things, and then that little exercise at the end, now the thing about that little exercise at the end, you can take any part of that, practice that any time you want, or you can do a combination of it, or you can try and do it all, you don't necessarily need someone to talk you through it, if you just remember the little things you're doing, you're paying attention to the sounds, you can hear them, but you're not necessarily listening, you're aware of them, you do the visualising, you know, whatever it is you're resting your eyes on, you pay attention to what's in your peripheral vision, chances are you can take in more of the room than you're giving yourself credit for, there's the touching, there's the smelling, there's feeling the temperature, all of those things, you're paying to the physical, paying attention to the physical sensations, you don't have to necessarily change your breathing, but you can monitor your breathing, if you want to choose to change your breathing, again, you're breathing from your diaphragm, when you're doing it, you're noticing even how your moves, you're noticing how refreshed you feel in that moment, so you can take any part of that, you can do a combination, you find whatever bits work for you, what I would say is, again, like any other coping strategy, I said this at the beginning, it's not there to take away the uncomfortable feelings, it's there to help dilute them, so that you can maybe manage things a little differently, perhaps a little bit better, something you can do as well, just if you want to measure your own progress, scale yourself, you know, zero being you're absolutely calm, 10 being you're maybe at your wits end, you put yourself on a scale before doing an exercise, whatever it happens to be, whatever one you choose to do, you know, as I say, there's a lot of stuff on YouTube, there's a lot of stuff online you can download, you can maybe measure yourself before you do it, you can do it and then maybe measure yourself afterwards and that way you'll get a good indicator, before doing it, you might have been a 6 out of 10, okay, the time you'd have finished, you might be a 2 out of 10, maybe a 3 out of 10, so there's a pretty good jump, so you're recognizing how it works and when you practice these things, when you practice these things, just become familiar with them, whenever you find yourself overwhelmed, you'll probably find they're going to work a lot better for you, they're not an escape route, a lot of people think of a coping strategy as some kind of escape route but no, it's there to make it easier for you, okay, and when you're familiar with it, you'll recognize it does make it easier for you, you might notice your confidence starts to increase, you might find you become a little bit more courageous, you might find your comfort zone starts to widen, that's going to take a bit of time, that's perfectly okay, give yourself as much time as you need, also give yourself permission to get it wrong because sometimes we try something and it doesn't really work, so what we do is we pay attention to why it didn't work and what could we try instead, so you just keep on trying until you find something, so I'm off to get a hot lemony drink so that I can maybe breathe again, as always I hope you found something helpful tonight, as always I would say, remember these things can be a lot easier if you're maybe talking with the therapist, you're in therapy, they can talk you through particular exercises, they can help you find one that works for you, these are just ideas, not necessarily a substitute for actually seeing a counsellor, but you know, as I said, a counsellor could maybe talk you through them, so the other thing I will say is not my next live stream, which is going to be on a Sunday, but the live stream after that, I am going to be talking, if you want to check out our channel, I'm going to be talking to Dr Ruth Ann Harper, she is an expert with talking about personality types, personality disorders, relationships and things like that, her and I will be doing a collaboration, we will be providing, I know how to do it, we're going to be doing a joint live, so I will put out before we do that, that we'll be doing it, asking for questions that you might want us to cover, but of course we will be taking questions as we will be doing, taking questions live as they come up as well, so I'm really looking forward to that, absolutely delighted to find out that she comes from the same part of the world as I do, even though she seems to have a little bit more of a sophisticated accent than I do, but she still comes from the same part of the world as I do, so that's interesting, that's nice, and that's going to be in the, it's not the next one which will be on a Sunday, it will be the following one in another 10 days, so actually 20 days from now, it'll be on the Wednesday night, let everybody know about it long before that, as I say, get your questions in, they'll be the topics we'll be discussing, so thank you again for joining me and until next time, thanks for watching, bye all.