Use This Simple Method To Vastly Improve Your (and Your Child's) Mental Health

Barbie Atkinson is a Licensed Professional Counselor with 15 years of experience working with children and adults through their mental and emotional challenges. She is the owner of Catalyst Counseling in Houston, TX and is an Expert on the SocialMama app.

What does it mean to "ground" yourself? I explain it as the opposite of "floatyness" (yes, I made this up).  It is simply a type of tool within the CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) framework used to help someone learn to ‘ground’ him/herself and, in doing so, they may be better able to stay in the present. I have heard clients say that not being in the present as feeling numb, or in a dream, or having "lost touch" with the present environment. 

While we can work over a longer period of time to help people examine and restructure their thoughts, we need to also give them the tools to interrupt those thoughts in the moment! Therein lies the goal of grounding - to calm the emotional and irrational part of our brain so that we can begin to think more logically about what is going on.

But, How?

1. Think of Grounding Images