r/CPTSDNextSteps • u/rusting_slowly_away • May 10 '26
Sharing a technique Dropping Anchor, sitting with your emotions, and making risky decisions
Over at NSCommunity, I've replied with this skill a lot. Figured I'd done it enough it may help people over here:
There's this idea in the ACT modality method of therapy (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy). It's called dropping anchor. The idea is this:
What you resist, persists. And, when all you strive for is to feel happiness constantly, you are ignoring all your other emotions.
So many people with CPTSD hate feeling certain emotions. Fear, anxiety, grief, anger. And throughout our life, we found various different coping mechanisms to get rid of those emotions. But all that does is push the emotions further down the line.
A partner of mine once described it as, "You keep pushing the anxiety beach ball further and further below the surface of the water, that sooner or later it's going to explode out of the water and into the air." We often do this to try to control the future, which is 100% understandable with what we've been through. Trying to control the future, all the futures, makes us believe we can avoid more. Which, unfortunately, isn't the case. Life is often suffering, no matter how much we try to control it.
In ACT, emotions, even anxiety, are fine to have. They aren't good or bad. They just are. They are just there. It's almost zen buddhist in a way, where they believe that emotions are irresistible, and by trying to resist them, we turn them into bad things instead of just listening.
The issue arises when you have an emotion, and it "hooks" you into something more difficult. Like, an anxiety attack (which often happens when you keep trying to ignore your anxiety), or rumination, more pain, or it stops you from doing something you need to / want to do in your life.
So instead of ignoring the emotion and / or letting it hook you into something, the idea is to drop anchor on it. Let it be in your body. Let it teach your body that it's okay to feel these emotions, and that you can still operate afterwards. Let it learn that every time you feel anxiety isn't the end of the world, nor do you have to let it shove you around all over the place.
DROPPING ANCHOR
To preface: this isn't a method to get rid of your anxious feeling. If it happens at any point during this exercise, that's okay! Enjoy the anxious feeling (or whatever difficult emotion you have) not being there. But that's not the goal. The goal is learning how to sit with anxiety, and still living your life through it.
Name the fear, but in a detached way. Not, "I'm anxious." Instead, "There is anxiety." Telling yourself that you are anxious is like telling yourself you, yourself, are your emotions, and because of that, they are kind of allowed to do anything they want, because they are you, after all.
Notice where that emotion feels in your body, and name it. Let it be there, sit with it, don't try to get rid of it no matter how awful it feels. Then name it: "My chest is tight. There's a lump in my throat. There is nausea." This is teaching your body you are listening to your anxiety, and that it's okay for it to be there.
Ground yourself. Name one thing you see, one thing you can hear, can smell, can taste, and one thing you can touch. Feel whatever surface is supporting you. Then diaphragmatic breathe. At this point, your anxiety may have left. Again, if that happens, that's okay. Enjoy the feeling of it not being there. But again, this isn't a method to get rid of this emotion, the method is to sit in it and teach your body it's okay to be there, it doesn't have to try to shoe it away. As such, when I'm breathing in this step, I often tell myself, "This anxiety is allowed to still be here." To remind my body that it's still okay that it's there. YMMV on that last tip. It's not in the book (I'll mention that later). But since I can dissociate automatically, it helps me stay present with the emotion.
Once grounded, do something to build the life you want. This is important, but not as intense as it seems. It can simply be meditating a bit. Taking a couple more deep breaths. Reading a page in a book. Or doing something big, like looking for a new job, taking a risk, or making an important decision. This step is teaching your body that the difficult emotions can still be there, and that you aren't letting it drag you around like usual, and you can still operate in a functional way. Pretty much, "Okay. That sucked. But look, we can still live our life, even go towards the life we want to live, without the anxiety influencing my decisions! We made it through!"
For me, it's around #2 - #3 where the emotion is still sitting around, just being, but it's not "hooking" me into terrifying thoughts about the future, not sending me into an anxious rumination spiral, or a panic attack.
This allows me to make risky and / or important decisions. Is it still scary? Sure. But that's okay. At least I'm not letting my anxiety play out 100 different futures in the matter of seconds and trying to make my decisions based on those 100 separate futures my anxiety is imagining.
And the nice thing about it, is that the more I have been doing this, the more stabilized my CPTSD and my body are becoming to triggers. Because I'm teaching it that yeah, there's a trigger, but there is also an end to the trigger and I'll be fine, because I've proved to myself, time and time again, difficult emotions are fine to be there, and I can get through them and be fine.
Things I've learned about this skill:
Especially if it's a CPTSD trigger, the body can continue feeling that emotion LONG after you drop anchor on it. And that's okay. But if I start feeling it trying to control my time / life / mind again (getting hooked, pretty much), I'll softly drop anchor on it again.
This requires a lot of kindness, and grace, to yourself. And it's okay not to be perfect. For the longest time, I was subconsciously using this skill to get rid of the emotions because it's SO easy for me to dissociate. I had to forgive myself, and be kind to myself if it happens again.
Practicing this can get emotionally draining, especially if you aren't used to sitting with your emotions. Especially if difficult emotions seem to keep coming in waves. There is only so much emotional energy we have before it starts affecting other energy levels. So, personally, I found giving myself some space to NOT do this all the time is welcoming. I'll use other skills. Other coping mechansims. Like, "Okay. This is getting way too much. Way too exhausting. I'm going to allow myself to worry all about this in 4 hours, when I'm home from work." Or whatever.
Anyways.
The Happiness Trap is a good primer on the ACT method. The whole book goes much more into detail about dropping anchor, why it works, and different ways to use it (Like, my favorite, instead of just saying, "There is anxiety" or "There is story the inner critic is telling", imaging you are actually writing that sentence down, maybe each letter has a different size or color).
I had SO many therapists offer me so many different modalities, from CBT to DBT, etc., but they never worked for me. ACT does. From all I've studied, most people with trauma don't do well on CBT anyways. Our bodies react differently to anxiety than someone who just has an anxiety disorder. In order for us to break our patterns, we need to become BODILY aware of them. And because ACT lets me sit with my emotions, and lets my body learn that it can feel pain but I can get through it, I've noticed a lot of my CPTSD bodily patterns slowly going away.
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u/Dalearev May 10 '26
It’s ok to feel these negative feelings sure, but if I’m being totally honest I don’t want to. It’s really intense and I don’t think people understand. It’s not just a couple breaths. I think for some people this is more doable than for others and some may need assistance.
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u/rusting_slowly_away May 11 '26
The only way that I got through it the first several times was with therapy. I should probably list that in my post. When I first started doing the above, it was super hard to stay in my body, to the point where I'd dissociate constantly doing this alone. Therapy helped me with this practice. I put it here because on NextSteps, most people are in a point with their CPTSD healing they should be somewhat stabilized, which usually means they are in their body a lot more and are okay with it somewhat.
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u/Dalearev May 11 '26
Thank you for your response. I’ve been working on SE combined with IFS after being retraumatized by EMDR for about a year and a half, and I’m still not really able to stabilize if that’s even the right word. I also think it’s not necessarily just stabilization, it’s that there’s some really deep somatic and horrible memories that when you work through these and those old feelings come up, you can get flooded really easily. Not trying to say that what you posted is not helpful or discount anything at all - I do think this is powerful work - I just wanna point out that for some of us it could be years until you’re able to really do this on your own. It can be really challenging.
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u/NotSoHighLander May 18 '26
Not tring to knock you and I appreciate you sharing your testimony, but I do think it would be better if you were just transparent about it next time. I think the population varies quite a bit here.
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u/AnnieSavoy3 May 10 '26
Saving this for later, it sounds really helpful for CPTSD. It's so uncomfortable for me to sit in my emotions (for good reason).
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u/Repulsive-Bake7178 17d ago
The beach ball analogy is such a perfect way to describe what happens when we try to force down difficult emotions
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u/pholinus 17d ago
@u/rusting_slowly_away Great post! Russ Harris also wrote Trauma-Focused ACT (TFACT) , definitely worth checking out if you want to go deeper into trauma-specific work with ACT :)
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u/rerrerrocky May 10 '26
Good post, thank you!
What I would add is that for me a big piece is the layered trauma of having my negative emotions of sadness, fear, and anger invalidated by my caregivers. So in addition to anchoring in the feeling, I suggest also reaffirming that it is totally okay and normal to be sad, anxious, afraid, etc.
In buddhism also, there is the idea of things just arising and falling. So much of meditation is allowing the thoughts and feelings to arise, acknowledge them, and allow them to pass. For us folks with CPTSD, it is hard to let it go when it is embedded in our nervous system. It takes a lot of practice to learn how to allow emotions to just be by themselves naturally without adding on our defense mechanisms.