The garden has been one of the best places to lower my everyday stressors and, in turn, anxiety. A place of solace, comfort, and peace, gardens and plants can help you refocus your mind and calm the body. Using the garden as your base, here are my go-to grounding techniques for anxiety.
The first time I had an anxiety attack, I thought I was dying. It was such a terrifying, terrifying experience, and unfortunately, I know many people can relate to it.
It’s amazing how common anxiety is. Even those who aren’t openly talking about it in their lives probably feel it, too.
I’ve had anxiety my whole life. As an adult, I feel it even more as I’m able to identify it. And as a woman who has experienced many hormonal changes in her life, I know how anxiety can go hand in hand. And how it can be absolutely crippling at times.
The garden has always been a place of therapy for me, both physically and mentally. It has helped to keep me grounded when my anxiety is spiking. It is my hope that someone out there can learn from my grounding techniques for anxiety and find solace in the garden as well.
Lowering Everyday Stress and Anxiety
Stress and anxiety go hand in hand. Stress is our body’s physical and mental response to the not-so-fun external situations in our life. This can be something short-term, like being late and stuck in traffic, or long-term, like managing a chronic disability.
Anxiety is your body’s reaction to stress, even if there are no active threats. Our minds can create threats that may not even be big or exist altogether.
When you face a perceived threat, the brain triggers an alarm system. As a response, your body releases a surge of hormones, including adrenaline and cortisol.
Adrenaline gives your body more energy and gets the heart pumping, while cortisol increases sugars and enhances the brain’s use of them. While both are handy during actual threats, they don’t help much when say, you’re stuck in traffic. They’ll just make you more agitated.
By lowering our daily stress levels, we can also lessen our anxiety, bringing down our cortisol and adrenaline. It can be hard when our society has constant stressors around us, like seeing bad news on Facebook or receiving a work email while on vacation.
Being with plants and the peacefulness that surrounds nature can really help to ground us. I have found plants to be an essential tool to regulate my emotions, whether that’s taking a walk outside, gardening in the backyard, cooking with fresh herbs, or watering my plants inside.
What is a Panic Attack?
Our body does a pretty good job of regulating itself. After a threat has passed, our hormones will return to their typical levels, stabilizing your heart rate, blood pressure, and other bodily systems.
But when there is always a perceived threat, our flight or fight reaction remains on. This can result in anxiety attacks, which build up gradually, or panic attacks, which come quite suddenly.
During a panic attack, the body reacts quickly and usually peaks after about ten minutes. Symptoms include:
- Sweating
- Chest pain
- Difficulty breathing
- Trembling and shaking
- Racing heart
- Nausea
- Intense terror
It truly can feel like you’re dying, and they’re quite scary to experience, especially the first time. When you know what’s happening and that you’re experiencing an anxiety attack, you can use grounding practices to refocus your mind and, in turn, calm the body.
It may feel like you’ve lost control of yourself, but the grounding activity will bring you back. Plants and gardens can really help to do this. Let me explain.
The Five Senses Grounding Technique for Anxiety
Plants can ground us because of the sensory engagement they provide. We can link our five sensory senses—sight, smell, texture, taste, and sound—into a grounding activity that is typically used for anxiety.
Plants and nature can offer us comfort in all five of these areas and provide a quick way to bring us back to ourselves when we feel like we’ve lost control. Going out and touching a soft leaf or tasting a herb from your garden anchors your attention to the plant rather than the emotional issues popping up.
We can also use them every day to lower our stress levels. Reconnecting with our roots in nature can ease overstimulation. The plants are our allies, and we’re connected to the earth as being part of nature.
Here are just a few ways you can use plants and the five senses to ground yourself.
Sight
There are many mental health benefits to just surrounding yourself with greenery. By getting outside or looking at the plants in your home, you’re already on the road to refocusing your brain.
- Look at the most beautiful flower in your garden.
- Focus on something tiny and small. A detail that might go unnoticed.
- Stare at something large and how it fills the space.
- Look at the structure of a plant or tree. Follow the branches and how they all connect together.
Touch/Texture
Feeling something physical and tangible in our hands can instantly distract the mind. There are many different, calming textures out in the garden (but please avoid the cacti).
- Run your fingers over moss.
- Trace the veins of a leaf.
- Hold a smooth stone.
- Feel the weight of a potted plant.
Smell
Many plants are known to have healing and calming properties. Aromatherapy allows you to enjoy these properties by smelling the herbs.
These plants are some of my favourites for grounding. Rub the fresh herbs between your hands and breathe in their scent, or include them in a diffuser or candle.
Hearing
If you don’t already have something for sound in your garden or deck, perhaps it’s time to add one. Closing my eyes and focusing on the sounds around me brings me much comfort.
- Listen to a fountain or water feature.
- Listen for wildlife such as the buzzing or bees or birds chirping.
- Add a wind chime or a rain drum with a pleasant sound.
- Listen to the plants rustling in the wind.
Taste
Most herbs have a strong taste when you eat them fresh, as do produce you grow yourself. Grab something edible from your garden and put it on your tongue. Note the feeling of it, like how it crunches, as well as the taste.
- Strong but pleasant herbs like mint or lavender.
- Strawberries for a sweet (or tart) flavour.
- Tomatoes, warm and ripe from the sun.
The 54321 Anxiety Technique
Another way you can ground yourself is by using the 54321 anxiety technique. This can help in the most severe instances, like a panic attack or when you feel your anxiety beginning to climb.
Start by focusing on your breathing. Try to slow it down with long, careful breaths. Once you’re in a rhythm, follow these steps:
- Locate five things around you to see. Look and acknowledge each one.
- Find four things around you to touch. Walk to them if possible.
- Listen for three things around you can hear. Close your eyes.
- Find two things you can smell, bringing them to your nose if possible.
- One thing to taste. Perhaps it’s what your mouth already tastes like or something near you can try.
I really like to focus my energy on this since it’s tactile and can be done anywhere. It will bring me out of that spiral and quickly ground me.
Create a Grounding Kit
With the senses in mind, creating your own grounding kit can be helpful. Keep it somewhere in the house, your car, workplace, or small enough to fit in your bag.
Include items inside that you can use to ground yourself using all of the senses, such as a small stone to touch, a picture of your pet to look at, a roll-on botanical perfume to smell, a candy to taste, and headphones to listen to music.
This is super helpful to have if you’re alone and face anxiety attacks at unexpected times.
It can also be helpful to bookmark this page or screenshot the 54321 grounding technique to quickly turn to when you feel an attack creeping up.
I hope these grounding techniques for anxiety bring you as much help as they do for me. If you feel comfortable, please leave your own tips and comforts in the comments below so others can find inspiration and help.
