Grounding 5-4-3-2-1

When anxiety carries you off into thoughts and the body tenses up — or, on the contrary, feels distant and "unreal" — grounding through the senses brings you back to the present moment. It's not magic but simple arithmetic of attention: the brain can't vividly sense the here-and-now and spin a catastrophe at the same time — capacity is limited. So we shift attention from the head to the senses, counting down step by step: five things you see, four you can touch, three sounds, two smells, one taste sensation. Name them out loud or silently — out loud is usually stronger. Don't rush: the task isn't to "report" but to really notice. You can do this practice anywhere — on transport, at work, in a queue.