5-4-3-2-1 is a brilliant grounding technique. The reason why it’s called grounding is because it brings you back into the here and now.
It can be hard to actually bring yourself back into the present moment. 5-4-3-2-1 uses your five senses to do that. So if you’re struggling with dissociation, trauma, or future-thinking where you’re thinking about what could happen that’s bad in the future, you can easily get caught up in your own thoughts. Here’s a way to stop that:
The 5-4-3-2-1 Process:
5 things that you see.
4 things that you hear.
3 things that you feel/touching.
2 things that you smell. If you don’t really smell too much, don’t move past it. In this case you want to go and sell something like coffee, or something sweet – really trying to activate your sense of smell.
1 thing that you taste.
Do it when you’re trying to bring yourself back into the present moment. Hopefully you can distract yourself from future-thinking, overwhelm, anxiety, trauma reactions, or anything else that has you anywhere by where you are.
