Last time I wrote about grounding, and about how it’s introduced gently in the Resolving Chronic Pain process. A suggestion to do roll-downs. A question about how your tummy feels. Through this subtle seeping-in of trust in your felt sense, grounding begins to take hold.
If you’ve lived with chronic pain for any length of time you’ll probably have been given plenty of advice: seeing particular specialists, meditating, thinking positive, doing breathing exercises or attending a retreat. Yet this has often failed to make a long-term difference, and neuroplastic symptoms persist. People tell me they can’t help thinking that something still feels missing.
When I worked as a movement specialist in the Theatre Studies department at Lancaster University some years ago, I began to understand why. As a lecturer teaching groups of postgraduate students, we would begin with interoception: sensing our bodies internally through grounding exercises to initiate a feeling of being present. That understanding was so effective it became the foundation of my Resolving Chronic Pain approach. Before someone can take on new ideas about their pain, before they can rewire old neural pathways or challenge fear-based thinking, they need something much more basic. They need to feel present in their own body.
This is why the process begins with your beliefs, the introduction to grounding. An in-depth discussion about what matters to you brings an awareness of who you are, beyond the discomfort you’ve been experiencing. Because the RCP process is person-centred, this examination of beliefs differs from person to person. Exercises associated with physical grounding are interwoven, usually beginning with an invitation to start each day with three roll-downs.
Developmental building blocks
The psychologist Erik Erikson described human development as a series of stages, each building on the one before. Infants learn basic trust. Toddlers discover autonomy. Children develop initiative, a sense of competence, and eventually a coherent identity. This is the ideal scenario. When these stages are disrupted by trauma, neglect, insecure attachment or simply growing up in a household where feelings aren’t safe to have, the route to coherent identity is disrupted. This can result in developmental gaps that remain, for example using a survival strategy of people-pleasing to stay safe. These gaps are often hidden beneath years of coping, spiritual practice or sheer determination, until life’s pressures eventually expose them.
The paediatrician and psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott observed something similar. A child develops a stable sense of self when caregivers consistently mirror, protect and delight in who that child really is. Over time the child internalizes the foundational belief: I exist. I matter. My feelings make sense. I can survive disappointment without losing myself. When that mirroring is missing or inconsistent, children can grow into adults unsure of what they actually feel, want or need. They may struggle to know where their own boundaries belong. This uncertainty can leave people vulnerable: to relationships where someone else defines their reality, to over-giving, to chronic self-doubt. These uncertainties can show up in the body as a nervous system that never learned to feel safe and may be stuck in the stress response. The healing hormones of the rest-and-digest response don’t get a look in.
Beginning with beliefs and gently introducing grounding and trust in the body is where the RCP process differs from so many approaches to chronic pain. Recovery doesn’t begin by asking someone to detach from themselves or ‘rise above’ their symptoms. It begins by helping them become more securely attached to themselves.
What grounding opens up
Grounding isn’t a one-off exercise, it’s a physical experience. Noticing your feet on the floor, where the weight of your body is in the chair, your breath moving in and out. Once someone is grounded, they can begin to
Notice their feelings and bodily sensations without being overwhelmed by them
Trust their own perceptions of reality, rather than deferring automatically to others
Tolerate conflict and hold people accountable in a constructive way, without collapsing
Protect their boundaries, even when that feels familiar or uncomfortable
Recover a sense of agency over their own life and body
Stay connected to others without disappearing into them
This is slow, patient work. In my opinion, based on many case studies, it’s a strong foundation for change.
Paradoxically (and thanks to Lissa Rankin MD for a thought-provoking discussion on this), the stronger someone’s psychological foundation becomes, the less desperately they need to defend it. People who feel securely anchored in themselves don’t cling so tightly to being right, or need constant reassurance. They don’t fall apart when criticised and they don’t lose themselves in relationships. Becoming internally steady means they become more flexible, compassionate and open.
As so many of the people I teach have found, this is where healing from chronic pain often leads: not just to less pain, but a fuller, more grounded way of living. The first steps of the RCP process - your beliefs, grounding, noticing, trusting yourself - aren’t the easy part before the ‘real work’ begins. Everything else builds from there.