Step-By-Step: Describe A Familiar Activity Grounding Technique

This grounding technique is a thought exercise, so it can be done anywhere. The idea is to imagine a familiar task in detail, step by step. This exercise is useful when we are having anxious thoughts about the present, our current surroundings, or overwhelmed by thoughts. This activity can help by giving us something familiar and simple to focus on instead.

The Exercise

Think about a task, something that you know very well how to do, that you either feel neutral about or actually enjoy. This might be cooking a meal, knitting a sock, changing a tire, driving home from work, checking out a book at a library, applying make-up, playing a song on an instrument, or completing a level of a game you’ve played before. This works best with tasks that are very familiar and performed often.

First make a list in your head of all the things you would need for the task. It’s okay if it’s just one thing like yourself, your car, or a pencil. If the task is something like  cooking a meal with a lot of ingredients it might be a longer list.

Think each step through in the order that you would do them. Try to be very detailed. When you are thinking about the steps, include very small things like moving your arms, opening doors, and picking up and putting down objects.

Avoid judgement of the tasks, don’t think about whether you enjoy the steps or do them well, instead focus on facts about the tasks. If you find your thoughts drifting try to gently bring them back to the next step in the process. 

Keep going until you’ve listed all the steps in detail. Check in with yourself and see how you’re doing. If you still feel activated, you can repeat the exercise with the same activity, or list the steps of a different familiar activity. 

The Takeaway

You can pick longer activities for a longer time period of grounding. The important thing is to choose something to hold your focus. And of course, different exercises work better for different people, at different times, in different situations. Check out the other posts in this series to learn more!