Grounding vs. Regulation: Simple Trauma-Informed Techniques for Anxiety & Stress

Grounding vs. regulation — what’s the difference?

A lot of us have questions about the difference between grounding and regulation. They’re very close, so let’s talk about it for a second.

Grounding, when we’re talking about emotions, is about grabbing our senses in a moment and coming to the present. Instead of thinking about the future or worrying about the past, we use our senses to come into the moment. That’s typically what people mean by grounding.

Regulation is usually when I’m dysregulated — my emotions, my body, I’m feeling a lot of intense feelings — and I want to take the stress or anxiety of the moment from here down to here. That’s usually regulation.

So they’re really related — a little bit different — but the goal of both is the same: to stabilize my mood, to stabilize my emotions in the moment.

What grounding does

If we take an awareness of our senses and come into the moment, the advantage is that it takes us away from worrying about the future or the past. It brings us into what we’re experiencing right here, right now — and that can actually help our brain focus more on our breathing and where we are, and calm us down. This works better for some people than others, so choose the technique that works best for you.

The 5-4-3-2-1 technique

One great grounding technique is called 5-4-3-2-1. It’s pretty common — you can look it up. (I’m looking at the University of New Hampshire’s psychological and counseling services page, which has the 5-4-3-2-1 game.) Here’s how it goes:

Name five things you can see in the room. For me: a light, a microphone, a computer.

Then four things you can feel — the chair beneath me; if I really concentrate, the sweater on my shoulders, or the cold air that hit this region today.

Three things you can hear — that depends on your environment; for me, the wind against the trees outside, or my dog barking downstairs.

Two things you can smell — this can be intentional (grab a candle or a cookie), or just something you notice, good or bad. It just has to be something you’re experiencing right now.

And one thing you can taste — do you have food or something near you? It doesn’t necessarily mean eat; it could just be taste.

So that’s 5-4-3-2-1: five you can see, four you can feel, three you can hear, two you can smell, one you can taste. A lot of people really love it.

What regulation is

Regulation has more to do with taking our stress — our mood — from that anxious level up here, down to baseline. There are so many regulation techniques, and I’m a huge fan of a lot of them; we can unpack more in future videos. But I wanted to highlight two today.

Technique 1: Deep breathing

The first is breathing. There’s so much happening when we’re consciously, deeply breathing — so much happening in our bodies, and it’s so basic to our biology. For me, I have faith in Jesus; I believe in God as our creator, and it gets me excited when I’m using the creation I’m experiencing in my own body. God made us to breathe deeply, and for it to help us calm down.

So here’s one thing we can do — a really deep, long breath. I invite you to do it with me: take a deep breath, then two more quick breaths even deeper on top of it, then exhale really slowly. (If I were really doing it well, I’d go even slower.) The cool part about those extra two lifts of deeper breathing is that there’s research showing that pushing it to its limit helps regulate us even quicker in the moment.

Now, for some of us, breathing feels a little scary or vulnerable — maybe you feel embarrassed about who you’re sitting with. And when we’ve been in a state of anxiety or stress for a long time, deep breathing can feel vulnerable. What it’s going to take is practice. And for those of us who have faith in Jesus, it can help to invite him into those moments: “Jesus, help me feel safe. Help me use the body you’ve given me to take my extreme stress or anxiety from here to here.”

Technique 2: Scent (my almond-biscotti candle)

The second technique is really personal to me — this specific candle. This isn’t just any candle. I bought it in Lake City, Colorado, several years ago, in the middle of a really challenging season. I went into a little shop, smelling from one candle to the next, and came across this one, and it just hit me in all the good ways. I’m sure it wasn’t cheap — a little shop in a little mountain town — but I thought, “I’m buying this, it doesn’t matter.” I brought it home, and something about the lid has really held onto the aroma.

I don’t know why — this wasn’t planned — but over time, whenever I was stressed or anxious (which, in that season, was pretty much multiple times a day), I’d grab this candle, unscrew the top, and just breathe in. Oh my gosh — this lovely smell. It happens to be called almond biscotti. I don’t even know how it works, but it would just calm me down. This was years ago, and the only reason it still smells so good is probably that lid.

So that’s another way we can regulate — by smelling something. It can be a candle, something food-related, even the laundry detergent on your clothes. It doesn’t matter — it’s whatever feels regulating and comforting to you.

Why smell works: the amygdala

Here’s the fun fact. We have a part of our brain called the amygdala, and two fun facts about it. Number one: it’s looking for danger four times a second. When I first heard that, I thought, “Okay, that actually stresses me out.” But when I dug in — the amygdala’s job is to help us understand our fear. So the amygdala, four times a second, is looking for danger, and the rest of our brain, four times a second, is saying, “No, we’re fine, it’s good.” That way it can activate us when we really need it, and hopefully, over time, deactivate when we don’t.

We actually have not just five senses but eight (that’s another video). And the sense most directly connected to the amygdala is the olfactory sense — smell. Isn’t that wild? That’s why you can walk into your grandmother’s house, smell the tamales, and think, “Whoa, I’m in — this smells amazing.” It can also go the other way: you walk into a room, or the mall, a smell hits you, and suddenly you feel anxious and don’t know why — because the olfactory sense connects directly to the amygdala, and your brain is trying to process whether that smell means danger or means you’re okay.

I love looking at creation and how God made us this way. If we smell something burning — if my house is on fire — that’s not something to be chill about; I need to know and act immediately. So these are things we have in our bodies, that God created us to have, that we can literally use to help us ground or regulate.

Trauma doesn’t get the last word

So that’s an explanation of the basics of the difference between grounding and regulation, and how we can use some of these things. And remember: on this journey, trauma doesn’t get the last word.