Imagine you’re at work. It’s 2:30 pm. You’re looking at a to-do list that has only grown since the morning. There’s an email in your inbox from your manager asking why the project isn’t ready yet. Your sandwich sits untouched next to the keyboard, and the phone is ringing again, and you already know it won’t be a pleasant conversation. You feel irritation building up, and at the same time anxiety and stress.
You feel your jaw clenching and your shoulders tensing. Thoughts pop into your head: “I can’t do this”, “I’ve had enough” and “Everything is falling apart”. Your heart starts beating faster, and it becomes harder to focus on the text on your screen. You read the same sentence for the third time, but it still doesn’t sink in. Your attention keeps narrowing onto what is going wrong.
In a moment like this, it’s easy to react on autopilot: to pick up the phone, answer more sharply than you meant to, send a message you haven’t thought through, or try to do many things at once, even though it’s hard to think clearly.
Strong emotions can make it difficult to focus on anything and can weaken your ability to see the situation from a different perspective and choose the response that will be most helpful. This may be a good moment to take a step back and spend a little time noticing what is happening in your body and mind. After such a pause, it may be easier to decide what to do next.
In this article, we present three simple self-regulation techniques that work with attention, the senses and the breath. You can reach for them, for example, when you feel you’re about to explode, or when your thoughts keep circling around one thing and you can’t think about anything else.
It’s worth remembering, however, that these exercises are tools for in-the-moment self-regulation. They are not meant to eliminate emotions or replace professional help, but they can help create a moment of space between an emotion and your reaction to it.
Stress: what happens to me under the influence of strong emotions?
When a person encounters a potential threat, the body responds with a series of automatic physiological processes. During this response, the sympathetic nervous system is activated, while the activity of the system responsible for calming us down and for recovery, the parasympathetic nervous system, decreases.
When we experience strong emotions, especially those linked to stress or a sense of threat, our attention may narrow onto whatever seems most important at that moment. This reaction can be helpful, because it lets us quickly concentrate on a potential problem, but it can also make it harder to notice other information, change the way we think, or consider different courses of action. Research shows that negative emotions can narrow the scope of attention, and that acute stress can make it harder to switch flexibly between strategies and can lower the quality of our decisions (van Steenbergen et al., 2011; Goldfarb et al., 2017; Doroc et al., 2025). That’s why, in moments of high arousal, it is sometimes worth reaching first for self-regulation techniques that help reduce tension and regain a broader perspective, and only then deciding what to do next.
Grounding
There is a group of techniques known as grounding methods. Techniques of this kind are used, among other things, in work with people experiencing strong emotions, intrusive memories or dissociation (Center for Substance Abuse Treatment, 2014; Hammond & Brown, 2025).
Their shared goal is to bring attention back to present experience, to the body and the surroundings, in other words to the “here and now” (Hammond & Brown, 2025). One way of grounding is to consciously pay attention to the information coming in through the senses: to what we can see, hear, feel, smell or taste at a given moment. This kind of exercise aims to shift part of our attention away from intense inner experiences and towards the stimuli present in our immediate surroundings (Hammond & Brown, 2025; National Center for PTSD, 2023).
The 5-4-3-2-1 technique
One example of an exercise that uses the grounding mechanism is the 5-4-3-2-1 technique.
It involves noticing:
5 things you can see
4 things you can touch
3 things you can hear
2 things you can smell
1 thing you can taste, or could taste.
STEP 1
One by one, find 5 visual stimuli around you. It can be anything: notice the chair against the wall, the wall itself and its colour, the clothes of someone walking past, or a tree outside the window.
STEP 2
Pay attention to the sensations connected with 4 objects that are touching you or that you can touch. These might be the glasses on your nose, your shoes, the chair you’re sitting on, or the mug in front of you. Focus on what your skin feels, how intense the sensation of touch is, and the small changes you can notice. Perhaps the chair you’re sitting on is soft, and the mug in your hand is cold.
STEP 3
Turn your attention to the different sounds around you. Notice 3 sounds, one after another. They might be traffic noise, birds singing, the sound of a conversation or music. You can focus on each of them and hold your attention there, noticing its different aspects and details that escaped you before.
STEP 4
Focus your attention on 2 different smells around you. Smells have a strong power to evoke emotions, so paying attention to them can have a strong effect on how you feel. Try to find a scent you find pleasant: look for the smell of flowers, greenery, food, coffee or perfume. If you can move to a place where you’ll notice a pleasant smell, do it.
STEP 5
We don’t always have access to a particular taste. If you can, take a bite of food and focus on its taste. Notice how it feels in your mouth and try to appreciate the sensations that come with eating. If you can’t eat anything, try to focus on the taste you’re currently noticing in your mouth. You can also try chewing gum or brushing your teeth.
If the exercise feels very long or complicated, you can also try a shorter version, doing only steps 1 to 3.
This method is often attributed to the psychotherapist Betty Alice Erickson, and its aim is to bring us and our thoughts “back down to earth”. The exercise engages our senses and allows us to direct our attention consciously. According to research, paying attention to our physical surroundings broadens awareness and effectively redirects our attention away from strong emotions (National Center for PTSD, 2023). This technique is useful because it gives our body and mind a moment to calm down and gain some distance from an unpleasant emotional experience.
Box breathing
Breathing techniques are another way of grounding. One of them, which works really well when we need to take a step back and calm ourselves and our nervous system, is box breathing. The technique involves breathing in a 4-4-4-4 pattern.
STEP 1
Counting to four in your head, take a calm, deep breath in.
STEP 2
Counting to four again, hold the air in your lungs.
STEP 3
Counting to four, slowly breathe out through your mouth.
STEP 4
Pause before the next breath in, counting to four.
Repeat this cycle for as long as you need. While using the technique, you can also draw a square in the air with your hand, so that each four-second phase corresponds to one side of the square.
If holding your breath feels unpleasant, makes you dizzy or increases tension, stop the exercise and return to your natural breathing. You don’t have to hold the four seconds at all costs. Not everyone is suited to the same breathing rhythm, and studies comparing different patterns show that there is no single technique that is clearly best for everyone. In that case, you might try, for example, the 4-7-8 method or the six-breaths-per-minute method (Marchant et al., 2025).
Focusing on the breath, organising it and slowing it down, is one way of influencing the body’s physiological arousal. Research shows that this method can effectively slow the heart rate and reduce perceived stress (McAllister et al., 2026). The technique can also help us learn to direct our attention consciously, because it redirects our thoughts to the task at hand.
The STOP technique
The STOP technique is a short mindfulness exercise that can be helpful when strong emotions push us to react immediately. Its aim is to take a short pause, notice what is currently happening in our body and mind, and then consciously decide what to do next.
STEP 1
S: Stop
Pause what you’re doing for a moment. You don’t have to react straight away to the emotion or thought that has appeared.
STEP 2
T: Take a breath
Turn your attention to your breath. Don’t try to force it to change, just notice the in-breath and the out-breath.
STEP 3
O: Observe
Notice what is happening right now. What emotions are you feeling? What thoughts are appearing in your mind? What do you feel in your body? Simply try to notice them, without needing to act on them immediately.
STEP 4
P: Proceed
Consider which response will be most helpful in this situation, and only then take your next step.
The STOP technique is not meant to get rid of emotions. Rather, it is meant to create a short space between the moment an emotion arises and our reaction to it, making more conscious action possible (Stahl & Goldstein, 2019).
Summary
All the techniques presented in this article aim to calm our body and mind. You can try each of them and see which suits you best. Each one may work for you in different situations.
The 5-4-3-2-1 technique redirects our attention from overwhelming emotions or thoughts to the present moment.
Box breathing calms our body by slowing the heart rate, and our mind by redirecting attention to the breath.
The STOP technique helps us step out of the automatic thought, emotion, reaction sequence by turning our attention to the breath and to the thoughts appearing in our mind.
