What Do You Do When You're So Stressed You Can't Think Clearly? Grounding I

What do you do when you're stressed or triggered and you're so rattled you can't think very well? We recommend that you get grounded. And that means coming back in your body, not being caught up in the thoughts and the fears, but being in your body in the present, grounding in the now. And this is Rick from Thriving Now, Rick Wilkes, and I'm Kathy Bertulli from Thriving now in the Infancy Dojo. And. And we have a series of techniques that help people ground and we research them and put them together because a lot of people get triggered when we're disappointed, we're tired, we're stressed. We are not taught as a society how to come back and be present with ourselves and calm ourselves to ourselves. And these techniques that we have allow people to just kind of go, okay, this is happening. What can I do? What's one small thing I can do to get out of the turmoil and feel more calm and grounded? And sometimes when we're in a spot where we can't do a lot of tapping or work, we might be in the middle of a meeting or something. What we can do is actually a visualization called Putting it in a Box.

Putting it in a Box, Yes.

Okay, so say your boss in the middle of a meeting with a bunch of people. And this is just one example. But your boss drops a bombshell on you. Yeah. Like, you're gonna have to go to Europe tomorrow. Like, or just like you're on this new project, whatever it is, and you're like, oh, my God. And your primitive brain is like, danger, danger, stress.

Oh, my God, what do I do with this?

And maybe you have to present next. Or maybe just the meeting's going on and they're moved on to something else and you want to be present. You also don't want all that stress. You don't. Your primitive brain, when it's terrified, will flood us with stress hormones. And that's not really good for us. It doesn't help us because you really can't fight him right then and there or run away or it would be bad if you probably most of the time if you left the meeting in the middle of that. So if you imagine taking a slow, deep breath and have a box, imagine this pretty box, it's very sturdy, and you can make it, customize it for yourself. And what you're going to do is you're going to create a habit of doing this. Mental patterns get stronger when we do them over and over again.

That's true.

So create this magical box. And for Mine, because I love nature and wood. It's like a wood, polished wood box, beautiful grains on it. And if you can just imagine it now, while hopefully you're not completely stressed, and imagine it's in a safe room somewhere. It might be in the room all by itself. It might be in a room you feel safe in. Just imagine this box and it has a lid on it. Open the lid and that mine is lined with soft material, like reddish soft material, because that feels good for me. It's not that I want to throw away the part of me that's stressed or the information, but I want to put it in this box so that I can deal with it later and I can take the thought, oh, I have to go to Europe tomorrow, or I'm being pulled off this project that I was working on for so long. I'm going to take that information and I'm going to put it gently in the box. And then I'm going to close the box and I'm going to let my brain and my body be present with that. And some of the things, like little things I can just put in the box and just close the lid and I'm fine. Things that are really big and I'm overwhelmed. I have to lock the box, okay? And I can even ask someone, you know, and, you know, put the key someplace safe. But I can imagine asking, you know, guardian angels or spirits of the wood or whatever to, you know, the universe, whatever you. Your thought, whatever resonates for you to guard the box. And that can let our brain. Our brain feels like it's not imminent. It's not that visualization takes the tiger out of the room about to eat you and puts it someplace else. Now, the thing is, you can't just leave it in the box forever, right? Because if we do that over and over again, we're actually repressing things.

A lot of people have done that they suppress and dissociate. This is different. This is using your conscious choice to say, this is not the time or place specifically for this situation. These emotional reactions, it's not helpful to me. And our primitive brain will go, oh, okay. It knows how to do that. And by taking and putting it in a sacred place. I view my box as a sacred place. It's a place where I've made a commitment to myself to honor that. The things that I put in the box are things that I do want to look at with new eyes, perhaps after a meditation or prayer time to.

Do some tapping on them, do some.

Tapping on them to journal about them or get clear about what are a couple of menu of choices. One of the things that the primitive brain doesn't give us when we're aroused and activated is many choices. Whereas when you're in a grounded place, a place where you can feel your sit bones, you can feel your feet on the floor, you open the box up again, well, now you can be more present with it and you can get clarity from your whole body, your head, your heart, your gut, your groin, your feet, your connection to the earth and your own wisdom. You can more readily access that. And to me that's emotional freedom, the ability to take situations that come up and take care of ourselves emotionally self manage and in a way that doesn't deplete us long term. And that's what these grounding exercises are designed to do. They're habits that nourish you long term. They take the sharp edges and spikiness off of a current situation by tapping on them, by grounding feeling yourself in your body and get you to a place of resourcefulness when the time is right.

And we encourage you to practice these when they're, you know, sometimes we have a 12 and we're like, it's hard to remember those things. We do have a PDF you can print out and leave near your desk or to help you remember, but just practicing them when, when you have small stresses and then actually clear them out afterwards because otherwise you, you open the box, put something else in and who knows what will happen but clear them out. Talk with a friend, do some tapping. But practicing this and building up the muscles to do this and the visualization power, that will give you more power. So if suddenly you're hit with something big, you can put it in the box and take care of yourself and remain calm and grounded.

Exactly.

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