Grounded in the Chaos: Self-Care for Stressful Times
Let's start here: you are not imagining it.
The world right now is genuinely a lot. The political noise, the economic uncertainty, the social media scrolling that somehow leaves you feeling more drained than informed, the very real grief of watching things you thought were stable start to shift all of it is registering in your body, even when you tell yourself you're fine.
You are not imagining the exhaustion. You are not weak for feeling it.
April is Stress Awareness Month and while we don't need a designated month to acknowledge that stress is real, we do think this is a good moment to pause and take it seriously. Not with a listicle of 'quick fixes.' Not with toxic positivity. But with honesty, some important context, and some practices that actually help.
Self-care isn't a reward for surviving. It's a practice of deciding again and again that you are worth tending to.
This post is about finding your ground. About low-cost, accessible ways to regulate your nervous system, come back to your body, and move through uncertain times without completely losing yourself.
Let's get into it.
THE REALITY WE'RE LIVING IN
The stress numbers are real and women are carrying more of it
Before we get to the tools, let's sit with what the data is telling us. Because sometimes naming the reality is the first step to not feeling so alone in it.
More than 1 in 5 U.S. adults experience mental illness each year — NAMI, 2025
26.4% of women in the U.S. experienced a mental illness in the past year, compared to 19.7% of men — SAMHSA, 2022
54% of adults globally say stress has reached a level that has prevented them from working at least once in the past year — Ipsos, 2024
Half of U.S. adults report feeling isolated, left out, or lacking companionship often or some of the time — APA Stress in America, 2025
These are not small numbers. They reflect a collective weight that many of us are carrying — often in silence, often alone, often while still showing up for everyone else.
And here's what those numbers don't capture: the specific exhaustion of being a woman in this moment. Navigating systems that were not built with you in mind. Caring for children, parents, partners, and colleagues often simultaneously. Processing the news while still making dinner. Feeling the pressure to hold it all together.
When over a quarter of women are experiencing a mental health condition in any given year, that's not a personal failure. That's a systemic reality that deserves a systemic response starting with how we care for ourselves.
THE PRACTICE OF GROUNDING
What it actually means to find your ground
Grounding is one of those words that gets thrown around a lot in wellness spaces, so let's define it clearly: grounding is the practice of bringing your awareness back to the present moment and back into your body. When you're overwhelmed, anxious, or running on autopilot, your nervous system is often stuck in the past (replaying worries) or racing toward the future (anticipating threats). Grounding interrupts that loop. It brings you back to right now. To this breath. To this room. To this body.
It doesn't require anything expensive. It doesn't require a lot of time. It just requires a moment of intentional attention.
Try this: The 5-4-3-2-1 grounding technique
This is one of the most evidence-backed grounding techniques available and it works because it engages your senses and pulls your attention into the present moment. You can do it in the car before a hard meeting. In the bathroom before a difficult conversation. Sitting at your desk before you open your email. Anywhere.
5. Things you can see: Look around. Name five distinct things in your environment; a plant, a mug, the color of the wall, whatever's there.
4. Things you can physically feel: Your feet on the floor. The fabric of your clothes. Air on your skin. The weight of your body in the chair.
3. Things you can hear: The hum of the AC, a bird outside, your own breath, whatever is present right now.
2. Things you can smell: If nothing's obvious, walk toward something; a candle, your coffee, the air outside.
1. Thing you can taste: Take a sip of water, chew a piece of gum, or simply notice what's already present.
By the time you reach the end, your nervous system has had a moment to settle. It's a small thing that creates real change.
LOW-COST SELF-CARE THAT ACTUALLY WORKS
You don't need a budget to tend to yourself.
The wellness industry has done a masterful job of convincing us that self-care is something we need to purchase. A retreat. A subscription. A supplement. And while there's nothing wrong with those things when they're accessible to you, real self-care doesn't require a credit card.
Here are practices we return to again and again, free, simple, and deeply effective:
Go outside, without your phone.
Even 10 minutes of natural light reduces cortisol (your primary stress hormone) and signals to your nervous system that you are safe. A walk with no destination. Sitting on your porch. Standing in your parking lot and looking up at the sky. It counts.
Put your hand on your heart and breathe.
This is a form of self-compassion touch that activates the parasympathetic nervous system — your body's built-in rest-and-recover mode. Press your palm against your chest, feel your own warmth, and take three slow, deliberate breaths. In through the nose, out through the mouth.
It sounds simple. It is. And it works.
Journal for 5 minute, without a prompt.
Put the guided journals down for a moment. Open a blank page and write whatever is alive in you right now. No structure, no performance, no getting it right. Just you and the page. This kind of free-writing externalizes the noise which is the first step to metabolizing it.
Stretch before you check your phone.
Before your nervous system is hijacked by notifications, give it something different. Five minutes of gentle movement reaching your arms overhead, folding forward, rolling your neck slowly — wakes up your body and signals intention for the day ahead.
Call someone who makes you feel like yourself.
Not to vent. Not to problem-solve. Just to connect. The APA's 2025 Stress in America report found that half of adults feel persistently lonely and loneliness amplifies stress in measurable ways. A 10-minute call with someone who genuinely sees you is medicine.
Sit in silence, on purpose.
Not the silence between one task and the next. Intentional silence. Close the door, put the phone face down, and just sit. You don't have to meditate. You don't have to do anything. You just have to stop doing for a few minutes. Notice how rare that is. Notice what comes up.
GOING DEEPER
Somatic shaking: the practice your body already knows
If you've been following Chez Trendi for a while, you may have encountered somatic practices through our "Movement as Medicine" post from Elana Goodman. We want to go a little deeper today into one specific practice that is gaining real scientific traction: somatic shaking, also known as Tension and Trauma Releasing Exercises (TRE).
"If given appropriate guidance, human beings can and do shake off the effects of overwhelming events and return to their lives using exactly the same procedures that animals use." — Peter Levine, PhD, developer of Somatic Experiencing
Here's the foundational idea: your body has a built-in mechanism for discharging stress and tension. You've seen it in animals a dog shakes after a stressful encounter, a deer trembles after a near-miss, and then they return to grazing as if nothing happened. That shaking is the nervous system resetting itself.
Humans have the same mechanism. We've just been socialized to suppress it.
When we experience chronic stress, anxiety, or trauma, that unprocessed energy gets stored in the body, in our muscles, our fascia, our nervous system. Somatic shaking gives it a way out.
What the research says…
This isn't just anecdotal. A growing body of research supports the effectiveness of tremor-based therapies:
A 2024 peer-reviewed study with East African refugee women found a 33% reduction in trauma symptoms after eight weeks of weekly TRE sessions, a significant result in a group with limited access to traditional therapy.
A 2025 randomized controlled trial in Denmark found TRE significantly reduced fatigue, spasticity, and pain in individuals with multiple sclerosis, supporting the hypothesis that the practice regulates the autonomic nervous system.
A 2014 pilot study with 21 non-professional caregivers found that ten weeks of self-induced tremors improved quality of life and emotional resilience, with 91.3% adherence, suggesting the practice is sustainable, not just tolerable.
Research with veterans showed TRE lowered PTSD symptoms through parasympathetic nervous system activation, the same calming pathway engaged by slow breathing and other grounding techniques.
Body-based therapies are increasingly showing up as equal to or more effective than talk therapy alone for processing stored stress and trauma. TRE is particularly accessible because it requires no special equipment, no verbal processing, and no prior experience.
COMMUNITY AS MEDICINE
You are not supposed to do this alone.
One of the most important things we want you to take from this post is this: isolation amplifies everything.
When we carry stress alone, it grows. When we move through it in community, even imperfectly, even messily, it becomes more manageable. The data backs this up: people who feel connected to others experience lower rates of depression, anxiety, and chronic disease. Connection is not a nice-to-have. It is a health outcome.
COME BE WITH US
Two upcoming events to ground you this season.
Return to Yourself Workshop
A guided experience exploring grounding practices, somatic movement, and what it means to come back to yourself when life gets loud.
→ Register at cheztrendigroup.com/empowerment-webinar
Walk the Beltline
Movement is medicine. Join us for a wellness walk, fresh air, easy conversation, and community in motion. No pace requirement. Just show up.
A FINAL WORD
You are living through genuinely difficult times. The noise is real. The weight is real. The exhaustion is real.
And you are allowed to set some of it down, even just for fifteen minutes, and come back to yourself. That is not a luxury. That is not selfishness. That is how you stay whole enough to keep going, keep giving, and keep becoming the woman you are here to be.
We're rooting for you. And we'd love to see you soon.
SOURCES
• NAMI Mental Health By the Numbers, 2025 — nami.org
• APA Stress in America 2025 — apa.org
• SAMHSA National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 2022
• Ipsos Global Mental Health Report, 2024
• Parker et al., TRE Study with East African Refugee Women, 2024 — peer-reviewed
• Skovgaard et al., TRE Randomized Controlled Trial, 2025 — BMC Complement Med Ther
• Moore et al., TRE Pilot Study with Caregivers, 2014 — PMC
• Peter Levine, Somatic Experiencing — treglobal.org
