I’ve had many of those broken moments… the ones that start with sinking onto the floor and losing all sense of space and time.
Then the swell of emotions starts to hit, be it sadness, fury, shock, or despair.
And then—because I generally only crumple in the safety of my home—a furry creature finds me within minutes and buries their face in my lap or nuzzles my hand or licks my cheek.
Very quickly, I feel better. Not necessarily healed or happy, but one teensy bit less desperate. The slightest nudge closer to calm.
That’s the magical power our pets offer us. From a mental health standpoint, it’s called grounding.
And so today I want to explore what that is and why it works, why pets need grounding too, and how to function when this mystical connection goes away.
The Mysterious Power of Dispersing Emotions Into the Earth
Most people know grounding as the practice of using simple strategies to pull your mind back to the present moment.
Grounding techniques are meant to interrupt the spiral of emotions that come with a panic attack or high anxiety. It’s useful for everything from intense fright, like traumatic flashbacks, to commonplace habits, like negative thinking.
Grounding for mental health is a term that’s been around since the 1950s, when physician and psychotherapist Alexander Lowen borrowed the literal idea of an electric ground wire dispersing excess charge into the earth.
He combined this concept with the everyday phrase of having your feet on the ground, and from there coined the term “grounding” to describe how posture, body tension, and deep breathing can help a person let go of or discharge psychological and emotional energy downward into the ground.
Modern psychology went on to adapt the concept of grounding into cognitive and sensory regulation tools that help individuals experiencing trauma or dissociation return safely to the present moment. The 5-4-3-2-1 technique is an example. It involves:
Naming five things that you see around you
Acknowledging four things you can physically touch
Listening for three distinct sounds
Identifying two things you can smell
Noticing one thing you can taste
All of which, when combined, interrupt your brain with sensory input that pulls you out of an emotional tailspin.
So it’s interesting to consider that in hard moments with big feelings, we instinctively do this if we have pets around us. Consider whether you’ve ever intuitively reached for your pet while contemplating a crisis…
maybe sitting down on the floor beside them and burying your face in their fur…
listening to the steady, ordinary rhythm of their breathing…
inhaling the warm-earth scent of their fur…
looking into gentle eyes.
And in so doing, your spinning thoughts slow.
That is grounding.
When you think about it, reaching for your pet to rebalance your emotions involves loads of sensory input that pulls you out of pain or panic. It’s science and energy and love, all braided together.
Not a One-Way Gift
Given all this, and whether we realize it or not, our pets are natural grounding companions. They help us come home to ourselves every single day. It happens regularly, subtly, throughout any time spent with them
What’s even less known and appreciated is how much we can return the favor and ground our pets by helping them feel safe, regulated, and connected.
For a dog, that might mean:
a slow walk that involves lots of sniffing and greeting passersby instead of a rushed lap around a block, or
sitting quietly with them after a thunderstorm and speaking softly and keeping your own breathing calm.
For a cat, grounding might look like:
predictable routines, like a sunny spot by the window or a familiar blanket,
or simply petting them every evening as they rest on your lap.
At the root of it all, grounding is all about communicating,
“You are safe right now, and you don’t have to figure this out alone.”
It’s a mutual gift and a priceless one that we can give and receive from our pets.
What We Lose When They Move On
But what if you’ve lost your pet, or will soon?
Then I believe it’s even more important to understand the gift of grounding, because it helps explain why, when our pets are gone, the grief feels so disorienting—far and away beyond the sadness.
Yes, losing a pet has profound effects on the humans left behind, but it isn’t just emotional; it’s physical. Your body might still reach for that presence that regulated it daily and finds nothing there.
Instead, there’s an absence of presence, not just in knowing that your pet is gone, but also because you no longer have those sensory touchpoints. Maybe because the specific weight on the bed is absent, or the collar jingle that greeted you at the door each day is silent.
In other words, the deeper your pet grounded you, the harder the ground shifts when they’re gone.
Doctors have documented a rise in cardiac risk in the days after a major loss, sometimes called broken heart syndrome. This is just as possible with a loss of a pet as it is with the loss of a human loved one.
Memorial-Centered Grounding
If you are actively grieving the loss of your pet, please be gentle with yourself in those moments of deep sadness.
Put your feet on the floor, and hold your pet’s collar, a favorite toy, or a photo.
Remember the feel of their fur beneath your fingers, and say their name.
Step outside and take the walk you used to take with them.
It’s going to be painful, absolutely. But in a sense, it’s a way to honor their memory while also remembering the grounding gifts they gave you, as you transition to a time and place where you no longer crave their physical form to ground you.
In the interim, as you grieve and crave the grounding presence they offered, try to find grounding techniques that connect to your own sensory input and honor your pet’s memory as you remember the sense of calm they gifted you.