Dropping Anchor: A Quick Reset for Summer Overwhelm
Feeling flooded by summer chaos? Here’s a quick mental reset to pull you out of your racing thoughts and back into the present moment when everything feels like too much.
By mid-summer, despite your intentions it might feel like you’re treading water—juggling kids, work, schedules, travel, and family, all while trying to get a moment of summer relaxation somewhere. When the stress becomes overwhelming, and your mind starts spinning with anxious thoughts or emotional storms, there’s a simple, evidence-based way to steady yourself: Dropping Anchor.
This quick grounding technique comes from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), developed by Dr. Russ Harris, and follows the acronym ACE. It is designed to help you steady yourself when your inner world feels like a storm of stressors, thoughts, and emotions. The idea isn’t to push away your stress or “fix” your feelings, but to anchor yourself in the present moment so you can acknowledge and move through the discomfort— putting yourself back in the driver’s seat, so you can navigate stress with more clarity, calm, and purpose.
Practicing this skill regularly builds the ability to move through difficult thoughts and emotions, rather than getting stuck in them.
A - Acknowledge your thoughts and feelings
Pause and notice what’s happening inside your mind and body. Feelings are a part of life, you’re not trying to push those feelings away, judge, or solve them— you’re just witnessing and building an awareness of them, with curiosity and compassion. Notice the thoughts and feelings at play in your internal experience.
You might say to yourself: “I’m having the thought that I can’t handle this,” or “I notice tension in my neck,” or “I’m feeling overwhelmed.”
C - Come back into your body
Now shift your attention to physical sensations. Wiggle your fingers and toes. Press your feet into the floor. Roll your shoulders with a slow, steady breath. Feel your body’s contact with the chair or the ground beneath you. Wiggle your fingers, press your feet into the ground, and take one more deep breath.
E - Engage with the world around you
Look around and ground yourself in the here and now. Notice five things you can see, hear, or touch. The texture of your jeans. The breeze on your face. The hum of the AC. The color of the sky.
Then ask:
“What’s one small thing I can do right now that truly matters?”
“What’s in my control in this moment?”
Sometimes when we feel like we're drowning, the most powerful thing we can do is pause, ground ourselves, and take the next small step. Even the smallest intentional action can reorient you toward what you value and bring you back in the driver’s seat.
In just a minute or two, Dropping Anchor can help you shift from spiraling to steady—even if the chaos of summer isn’t going anywhere. You don’t need silence, solitude, or a yoga mat. Just your body, your breath, and the willingness to come back to now.
It’s not a cure-all, but it creates space to breathe, come back to yourself, and regain some control. You don’t need to be perfectly calm to move forward—you just need to be here in life’s messy, beautiful chaos, showing yourself you can move through the waves that come with it.
Emily Johnson, LMSW/LSW, is an individual and group therapist at Collaborative Minds Psychotherapy LLC available both virtually and in person on the UWS, NY, and in Teaneck, NJ. Emily is neurodivergent and LGBTQ+ affirming and practices holistically, specializing in psychodynamic, ACT, and CBT with teens and adults struggling with navigating life changes, social issues, anxiety, and depression.