I have been wanting to write about ‘grounding’, and the state of being ‘grounded’. Ironically though, sitting down now to write I can’t help but acknowledge how ungrounded I’ve felt for the last few days. I wriggle and wince at this thought - and wonder if I should admit to that. Some would say that, as a therapist, I’m supposed to have all my shit together. Or at least hold the illusion of that. But I’m also a human being who is constantly experiencing life with its ups and downs. It would be madness to think I never face life challenges, or that I always manage them smoothly and serenely.
Like everyone else, there are times when my life feels messy and overwhelming and my way of managing through it is far from pretty. Pretending otherwise feels hierarchical and suggests that my choice of work somehow makes me humanly superior. Quite frankly that just gives me the ick - to say the least. Being a therapist has certainly not made me immune to emotional challenge. What it does mean though is that I’ve learned to recognise many of my own patterns that come up, and when they come up. Being more aware of the disruptors within these patterns can help me to find more life-honouring ways to navigate them.
Grounded is defined as ‘being connected to the present moment — calm, steady, and aware — with your mind, emotions, and body in the same place.’
What I’ve learned over time though is that groundedness isn’t a state that you hold or hold on to. It’s much more of an ongoing returning. I’ve found that it’s less about reaching a final destination and more about returning, again and again, to a place that feels steady after being in unsteadiness.
“Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.” — Henry David Thoreau”
While I know I have felt particularly ungrounded these last few days, I’m allowing it to be, and acknowledging the feelings as I reground again. I breathe more easily, I settle into both feet, my pelvis holds me steady. My breath can let go and yield. And I am more present again.
A cycle has come and gone. It has, this time, been a short time of feeling unsettled to then settle once more.
What ungrounds me will be different from what ungrounds you (although there may be similarities). Over time I am less ungrounded by some of the things that once rocked me, and many don’t even register now. But there are shadows and shades of the same thing and when I am less resourced I am open to the old ungroundings. This is my pattern - or my “complex” as one of my previous therapists called it.
I think of these repeated cycles as a fractal pattern we keep meeting at different scales of our lives.
A fractal is a shape or pattern that repeats itself at every scale — the closer you look, the more you see the same kind of structure unfolding again and again.
The same patterns return in new forms, each loop familiar yet here to teach us something different. We unground, we reground, and then we will unground again to reground once more. Groundedness ebbs and flows, but our centre of gravity can become more stable over time.
When we’ve put work into understanding and shifting our patterns, it can feel frustrating to feel some of the familiar ‘ungrounded’ feelings again. We might wonder if we’re back to where we first started and even if our self-work was all in vain. But the loops tend to change over time. They get wider, the peaks gentler, and we meet the same shapes with more room to breathe and more understanding.
When clients notice they’ve felt ungrounded again, I often ask: What was different this time? How long did it last? How did you find your way back? Almost always, there’s something. They noticed sooner, or steadied faster, or understood it more. That’s the pattern changing, even though it looks familiar.
As humans we feel shifts, not baselines.
We notice change more than constants. When someone has lived with a lot of tension or dysregulation, it becomes the norm. It’s what feels steady, simply because it’s familiar. So, moments of grounding can for some people feel dramatic, even unsettling.
There’s a paradox in that it can feel unsafe or unfamiliar before it feels good.
That’s why titration, or drip-feeding, is so important. Too much, too fast, can be destabilising rather than helpful. But bit by bit moments of presence and calm can, over time, get longer and more regular, until periods of feeling grounded can occur rather than just brief or highly managed moments. The more we get used to that feeling, the easier it becomes to stay there.
And then the balance shifts. As our regulation becomes more stable, the wobbles can feel bigger than they used to. Not because things are getting worse, but because you now have something more steady to compare them to.
Why is why we might read that contrast as regression, and ask, ‘Why am I back here again? Maybe nothing has actually changed.’
It’s understandable to question it when you’ve worked so hard to find steadiness. But really it can be a sign of how much has shifted.
Finding yourself feeling ungrounded again doesn’t mean you’ve lost the ground you gained. It’s likely that you’ve noticed it sooner this time, or found your way back a little more kindly, or could see it as a wobble rather than the whole of you. You haven’t gone back to the start. You’re meeting an old shape with more of yourself on hand than you had before. Coming undone and then coming back isn’t a sign that something has gone wrong. It’s part of how we grow.
And maybe that’s all grounding is: not perfection, not steadiness without wobble, but the widening of space inside ourselves to meet whatever comes.