When you feel withdrawn you are likely to be feeling some of the following:
Apathetic
Depressed
Feelings of sadness, shame, grief or disgust
Your skin may feel dry
Your hands and feet warm or cold
Contact with self or others withdrawn
It’s unlikely you are able to think logically or rationally
Integration with the world around you is not likely.
Integration is the link between emotional self-regulation and sensory integration with the world around you. Just reading this article is taking a huge amount of effort for your processes. You are reading the article “top-down” and consciously focussing on it.
But also there are other things happening in a “bottom up” way.
Your body and nervous system constantly chat to your brain about the demands of the environment around you. When your nervous system feels overwhelmed, you may find yourself shutting down, or withdrawing from the world, and it will feel challenging to respond to the environmental demands upon you.
This could mean you become more sensitive to noises, or leaving the house. Engaging with other people might feel difficult.
Maybe you find your self bursting in to tears when you are on your own. Or sitting on the sofa, just staring into space. Maybe your legs take you straight to bed again, every chance you get, especially when people you live with go out, so they can’t judge you for lying in bed again.
Maybe you wake up through the night and feel you’re in a flash back, a frightening memory playing out as if its happening now.
This is when grounding or breathing techniques can be helpful to use.
But why?
Because they can help you to come up and out of your body, like a tortoise emerging from its shell and taking a good look around, ready to move. Back to the present and back into integration with the environment around you.
One good technique for this is a sensory technique. The 54321 grounding exercise or the Rainbow technique if you like colours. You can read or download both of these by clicking on the button below.
Read or download
Remember Grounding Techniques take practice. At first practice the techniques when you feel calm, that way when you need them, you will be familiar with what you are trying to do.
It’s okay to get it wrong, so keep practising. You’ve got this!
If it doesn’t work for you, then that’s okay, keep looking.
There are plenty out there online and you will find one that suits you.
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