Simple Ways to Use Your Senses to Check In with Your Wellbeing

When you're navigating anxiety, relationship trauma, or patterns rooted in past experiences, you're often disconnected from your body. You learned early that what you felt wasn't safe—so you stopped feeling.

The problem is, your body never stopped trying to communicate with you. It's been sending signals this entire time. You just haven't had the tools to listen.

Using your senses to check in with your wellbeing isn't about adding another self-care task to your list. It's about reconnecting with the part of you that knows what you need—even when your mind is telling you to push through, stay quiet, or keep acting like you're fine.

Why Your Body Matters in Healing

Your nervous system stores experiences that your conscious mind might not even remember. The tightness in your chest when someone raises their voice. The knot in your stomach before family gatherings. The way your shoulders creep toward your ears when you're around certain people.

These aren't random physical sensations—they're information. Your body is flagging danger based on patterns it learned in past relationships.

Traditional talk therapy asks you to think your way through problems. Somatic approaches recognize that trauma lives in the body, not just the mind. You can understand intellectually that you deserve boundaries, but if your nervous system still believes that boundaries equal abandonment, rejection or a lack of safety, the knowledge won't translate to action.

Engaging your senses helps you access what your body knows without needing to explain or justify it. It creates a bridge between the intellectual understanding and the felt experience.

Why This Works When Other Things Don't

When you're dysregulated—anxious, shut down, emotionally flooded—your prefrontal cortex (the part of your brain responsible for logic and reasoning) goes offline. Telling yourself to "calm down" or "think rationally" doesn't work because you literally can't access those functions in that moment.

Your senses, though, are always available. They bypass the need for cognitive processing and directly engage your nervous system.

Focusing on what you can see, hear, touch, taste, or smell brings you into the present moment. It interrupts rumination, grounds you when dissociation pulls you away, and gives your body something to orient toward besides the threat it's perceiving.

Simple Practices Using Your Five Senses

These aren't elaborate rituals. They're brief moments of intentional attention that help you reconnect with yourself and assess how you're actually doing—not how you think you should be doing.

Sight: Name What You See

Look around and name five things you can see. Out loud if possible, silently if not. Be specific.

"I see the coffee mug with the chip on the handle. I see the tree outside the window swaying. I see the stack of mail on the counter."

This interrupts racing thoughts and gives your brain something concrete to focus on. It reminds your nervous system that you're here, now, in this room—not in the memory or the worry.

Sound: Notice What You Hear

Close your eyes and identify four sounds. The hum of the refrigerator. Traffic outside. Your own breathing. The click of the heater turning on.

When you're anxious or dissociating, sounds can feel overwhelming or nonexistent. Actively listening helps you locate yourself in space and reconnect with your environment.

Touch: Feel What's Beneath You

Press your feet into the floor. Feel the weight of your body in the chair. Run your hand along the texture of your jeans, the smoothness of the table, the coolness of a water glass.

Touch is grounding. It reminds you that you have a body, that you're solid, that you're here. When you've spent years leaving your body to survive difficult experiences, this simple act of feeling can be profound.

Taste: Engage Your Mouth

Keep something on hand with a distinct taste—a mint, a piece of dark chocolate, a sip of cold water, a slice of lemon. Let the taste fill your mouth. Notice the temperature, the texture, how it shifts as you hold it there.

Taste is immediate and impossible to ignore. It pulls you into your body and this moment with clarity.

Smell: Anchor with Scent

Scent is directly connected to memory and emotion, which makes it powerful for both grounding and regulation. Find a scent that feels calming—lavender, eucalyptus, coffee, fresh air, your partner's sweater.

Keep it accessible. When you're overwhelmed, breathe it in. Let it signal to your nervous system that you're safe enough to slow down.

How to Actually Use This in Real Life

You don't need to engage all five senses every time. Pick one or two that feel accessible in the moment.

Before a difficult conversation: Ground yourself using touch (feet on floor, hands on your legs) and sight (look around, name what you see). It helps you stay present instead of slipping into old patterns of shutdown or reactivity.

When anxiety spikes: Use the energy that it produces within you by moving to deplete the activation in your body - run in place, do modified burpees, wall sits, go up and down stairs or use progressive muscle relaxation. Then, when you feel calmer, try sound and breath. Notice what you hear. Then add three slow exhales, lengthening the exhale beyond the inhale. This signals safety to your Vagus nerve.

After an emotionally heavy interaction: Use taste and smell. Drink something cold or warm. Light a candle. These small acts help you transition back into your own space instead of carrying the residue of the interaction.

When you're dissociating: Use touch intensely—ice on your wrists, a textured object in your hand, splashing cold water on your face. The goal is to bring you back into your body when you've left it for protection.

What This Actually Tells You

As you practice using your senses to check in, you'll start noticing patterns.

Your jaw clenches every time your phone rings. Your stomach tightens before opening your email. You hold your breath in certain rooms of your house.

These aren't problems to fix—they're information about what your body perceives as unsafe.

When you know what dysregulates you, you can start making choices that honor that. You can respond to yourself by soothing the distress that signaled you and...Maybe you don't answer the phone immediately. Maybe you set a boundary around when you check email. Maybe you rearrange your space so it feels less triggering.

This isn't about controlling your body's responses. It's about listening to them and responding with care instead of override.

You Don't Have to Explain What You Feel

One of the most damaging patterns from relationship trauma is the belief that your feelings don't count unless you can justify them. If you can't explain why something feels wrong, you've been taught to dismiss it.

Your senses bypass that requirement. Your body knows before your mind can articulate why.

If your stomach drops when someone walks into the room, you don't need to rationalize it. If your shoulders tense during a conversation, you don't need proof that something's off.

The sensation is the answer. Trust it.

Start Small

You don't need to overhaul your entire life or develop an elaborate mindfulness practice. Start with one sense, one moment, one time a day.

Before you get out of bed, feel the weight of the blanket.

When you're washing your hands, notice the temperature of the water.

During your commute, name five things you see.

These small acts of attention accumulate. They teach your nervous system that it's safe to be in your body. They remind you that you have agency over how you relate to yourself.

Healing from relationship trauma isn't about thinking your way to safety. It's about helping your body feel safe enough to be here—with you, in this moment, exactly as you are.

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Simone Adkins, LMFT is a trauma therapist in Benicia, CA, specializing in somatic approaches to healing anxiety, trauma symptoms, and patterns rooted in emotional abuse and past relationships. If you want support reconnecting with your body and building trust in yourself, reach out for a free 20-minute consultation at (707) 200-8222 or visit attunedcounselingservices.com.