Do not under-estimate the postive power of Grounding.. emotional electrician's union local 151

"Grounding" seems like a very abstract, new age-y word. It's a technique that therapists who treat people with PTSD use to deal with stress and pain. There are a lot of ways to do it, but the four that I've adopted (after googling it on the googley-goo) are as follows...:

1. I found a rock that was dirty and rough. I decided to pick it up and wash it. I hold it and scratch it with my thumb. I've done this for a couple of hours and now it's relatively smooth. Now, it doesn't sound like much, but I run thumb over it, feel it and it off-sets my concentration enough so that my shoulders, my head and my eyeballs aren't roiling with stress. It's a gradual process, it's not going to magically make things go away right away, you have to make a habit of it.

2. Mind games: Pick a category of things. for example: Car makes: Ford.... Chevy.... Jeep... Chrysler... Nissan.... Honda... start searching your mind for different examples of a category (like the ones I just listed) and see how many you can come up with. If you run dry, switch the category: Trees: Maple.... Pine... Oak.... Dogwood... Silvermaple... This searching also takes your brain off of whatever is stressing you out for a bit.

3. Deep breathing: Ugh... People can be so ignorant, and I don't blame them.. but I need to explain something about deep breathing.. It sounds like you're trying to use the force and sadly Obi-wan, nobody on earth has figured out how to do that yet. What people fail to realize is evident in a quote from another movie "Oxygen... gets you high...." Tyler Durden, Fight Club. Now I'm not suggesting running out and buying a tank and some tubes, no, but if you start taking long and deep breaths; you're brain gets more oxygen and YOU START TO FEEL BETTER for a while. So, by all means, TAKE A BIG OLE' HIT OFF OF LIFE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!!

4. Positive words... Okay Moon Unit, You have your magic rock, your spacey mind-games, your "use the force" breathing now I give you: Magic words... (roll your eyes, go ahead! it won't relieve your stress, but you'll feel a little superior..). The idea is this, your brain makes associations with words as it uses them, when you're stressed out, you can change what your brain is doing by repeating positive words to yourself... I find myself saying "It's okay" and for a couple of seconds, my brain thinks "it is" and I get relief. If I keep doing this, I'm sure my brain will change it's pattern of irritability.

Now you can look up this stuff anywhere on the web, I'm not the one who discovered any of it. However, I was very skeptical for a long time about the effectiveness of this and I really didn't need to be. I'm trying to save you that trouble. Like anything, you get better at it with repetition. If you got yourself into the habit of stressing out with repetition, you need to get yourself out of the habit with repetition. I hope that my experiences help you to see that this is less of a "tune into the mother ship" stress relief method, and more of a " Gravity is a real scientific principle, just jump off a building and you'll find out. So it THIS!"