Areas › Your body › Grounding and settling
Steady pressure suits both directions. A weighted blanket, a firm squeeze of your own hands, lotion rubbed in with real pressure, bare feet pressed into the floor.
This is the one thing on the list that works whether you are wound up or gone flat, which makes it a good default when you cannot tell which you are. Firm and constant beats light and moving, and a light stroke can be more unsettling than nothing at all. If you have no weighted blanket, a folded quilt across the lap does most of the same job.
Qur’an and Sunnah
and make the mountains to keep it stable (Quran 78:7). Weight here is what holds something steady rather than what presses it down, and that is the difference a person feels under a heavy blanket.
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A systematic review of 132 self help strategies used without a professional found that for most of them, relaxation and distraction included, the evidence is much thinner than their popularity suggests. Weighted blankets and deep pressure sit in exactly that space: widely loved, lightly studied. Worth trying, and worth being honest that you are trying it rather than relying on it.
Wolpert M, Dalzell K, Ullman R, Garland L, Cortina M, Hayes D, Patalay P, Law D. (2019). Strategies not accompanied by a mental health professional to address anxiety and depression in children and young people: a scoping review of range and a systematic review of effectiveness.. The lancet. Psychiatry doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Even, unchanging pressure gives the body one clear signal to hold on to instead of many uncertain ones.
When not to
Weighted blankets are not suitable for young children, or for anyone who could not easily move out from under one.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
If your child is learning to settle, learn it alongside them rather than supervising. Parents who practise report less stress of their own and less flying off the handle.
To come down, move slowly and rhythmically: rock, sway, walk at half speed. To come up, move properly: jog on the spot, jump, dance fast, or carry something heavy.
Start with a couple of minutes of movement before any of the difficult talking. Not a warm up for its own sake: a body that has moved is easier to think in.