Wind-down Wednesdays

Welcome to Wind-down Wednesdays where we work through a new grounding or soothing tool on every third Wednesday! 🌺

The purpose of this thread is

• To learn more about various grounding/soothing strategies (can add them into your self-care toolbox)
• To understand why we do it and how it works in calming us down
• To create a safe space for members to visit whenever they need to wind down and catch their breath. You can work on the strategy by yourself here, or tag community members to join you (please be mindful of our guidelines - remember that members may not always respond immediately, and let’s not place pressure on others to respond)
• Promote self-care and self-reliance in regulating your emotions!

Got a grounding tool/soothing strategy you’d like to share on this thread? Email us (team@saneforums.org) to let us know and we’ll save you a Wednesday slot! 😊

The first grounding tool we’ll be exploring is the 3-3-3 technique.

3-3-3:

• Name 3 things you see: scan the space around you. For each item you identify, really focus on the details of it – what colour is it? Is it heavy or light? Big or small? What’s the texture of the object?
• Name 3 things you hear: what are some sounds near you or far from you, are they soft or loud? Listen closely to identify them.
• Move 3 parts of your body: it can be light or dramatic movements such as slowly rolling your shoulders, clenching and unclenching your fists, wiggling your fingers and toes, jumping up and down, shaking your wrists, etc.

So how does this work?

Well, when we’re feeling anxious and overwhelmed, it can sometimes trigger a stress response where our body’s fight-flight-freeze system is activated, which you can learn more about here: The Four 'F' Trauma Responses - SANE Forums.

This system is typically activated when our body identifies a physical threat, our body enters a heightened state of arousal to help survive – this can look like increased heart rate, increased muscle tension, decreased appetite, etc. When our anxious thoughts keep activating this heightened state of arousal, it can lead to a very dysregulated nervous system where our bodies keep reacting out of proportion to the threat, making it hard to calm down.

Moving our focus from internal things (like anxious thoughts/feelings) to external things (like what we can see/hear), helps us slow things down and calm the stress response. It gives our body a chance to focus on things that it perceived as non-threatening (i.e. identifying a cup or a bird flying around), which gives our body a chance to slowly calm down.

Practicing grounding techniques regularly can help regulate the nervous system with time. For more information, feel free to read this article: 3-3-3 Rule for Anxiety: How to Use, Scientific Basis, Other Coping Strategies

Now let’s give it a go! Feel free to share the 3 things you saw, heard and the 3 body parts you moved – and any other reflections you’d like to add.