Grounding

What is grounding?

Grounding (Dutch: aarden) is coming back to the here and now with your senses, your breath or touch, when your feeling or your attention has drifted off. In care it is used to break off a dissociative or panicky state, and in the scene to come round again after an intense scene.

What is and isn’t settled about it

There is a gap between how often it is recommended and how often it has been studied.

Joshua Hammond and Wilson Brown found, in Trauma, Violence & Abuse, 1,894 search results, of which 19 remained after de-duplication and text analysis that genuinely dealt with it. Of those nineteen, 21.05 percent defined the technique, 15.79 percent described it, and 63.16 percent only mentioned it.

Their conclusion is striking for something named in almost every treatment room: grounding has never been subjected to effectiveness research, precisely because there was no agreement on a measurable definition. They propose one themselves, with the emphasis on restoring physiological balance.

That is no reason to drop it. It is a reason not to present it as a proven method.

How it looks in practice

Small, dull and concrete, and that is the point.

Thuisarts.nl gives three things for a panic attack. Breathe in through your nose for three seconds and out slowly through your mouth for six. Tell yourself, “This is a panic attack. It’s unpleasant, but not dangerous. It will pass and I can handle it.” And go and do something for a moment, like drinking a glass of water or reading something out loud.

Notice there is nothing in there you have to feel. There is only something you do. A panic attack passes on its own, according to that same source, often within half an hour, and grounding mainly shortens the time you are stuck in it.

What you can do with this

• Choose something you can point at. A glass, a floor under your feet, the temperature of your hands.
• Let the out-breath last longer than the in-breath. Thuisarts names three counts in and six counts out.
• Speak out loud. With a panic attack that is one of the three pieces of advice, and it works better than thinking.
• Go to your GP if panic or drifting off happens more often. This page explains a term and is not medical advice.

Sources

• Building an Operational Definition of Grounding. Joshua Hammond & Wilson J. Brown, Trauma, Violence & Abuse, 2025 (DOI 10.1177/15248380251343189). Supplies the finding that grounding techniques are often named in clinical practice as a first response to dissociative episodes, that they have never been subjected to effectiveness research for lack of a measurable operational definition, the numbers from the literature review (1,894 hits, 19 remaining sources, of which 21.05 percent defined, 63.16 percent mentioned and 15.79 percent described), and the proposed definition with the emphasis on restoring physiological balance.
• Ik heb een paniekaanval. Thuisarts.nl, Nederlands Huisartsen Genootschap. Supplies the three concrete pieces of advice for a panic attack: breathe in through the nose for three seconds and out slowly through the mouth for six, tell yourself “This is a panic attack. It’s unpleasant, but not dangerous. It will pass and I can handle it”, and go and do something for a moment like drinking a glass of water or reading something out loud. Also supplies the finding that a panic attack passes on its own, often within half an hour.

Related terms

• Fight-or-flight response. The alarm response grounding tries to put the brake on.
• Subdrop. The delayed backlash afterward, where grounding is often part of the response.
• Aftercare. The phase where this belongs in the scene.