Grounding with Taste
Grounding skills help ground us into the reality of the here-and-now. This can be useful if triggers bring us into a past traumatic memory, and can reconnect us to our bodies if we get dissociated, numbed out or frozen.
Look around in your current, present day, surroundings. Name (out loud or say it in your head) 3 red things that you see. Don’t just notice them and skip onto something else, do take a moment to simply notice and name the red things that you see. We want this to be a task you are doing mindfully.
Now, following the same strategy, look around your current environment and name 3 orange things you see. Then move onto 3 yellow, then 3 green, then 3 blue and finally 3 purple things that you see.
If you do not have three of each, that is okay, just notice that you do not have items for this step.
Now check back in with yourself, how do you feel? Are you still triggered? Are you still dissociated from your body or your surroundings? If so try a different grounding strategy. What works for one person may not work as well for another, the important thing is that you find what works for you.