We all know what it's like to get caught up in a storm of thoughts and feelings. Maybe it's the tension before a big meeting, the anxiety on the train into work, or that familiar voice telling you "you're not good enough for this." When a wave like that hits, most of us do one of two things. We either try to fight it, by overthinking, analysing, and trying to get rid of it, or we get swept along by it. Neither tends to help for very long.
Dropping Anchor is a simple practice for exactly those moments. It's quick, you can do it anywhere, and no one around you needs to know you're doing it. Think of it as a pause button. We're not trying to make the feelings disappear, we're trying to stop them from running the show while you find your feet again.
This is also a practice worth returning to, so if it's one we've been working on together, you're very welcome to keep this page and come back to it whenever you need a reminder.
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What dropping anchor is
The metaphor does a lot of the work. A ship caught in a storm can't control the wind or the waves, but by dropping its anchor it holds steady rather than being driven wherever the sea wants to take it. The storm still rages. The ship simply isn't at its mercy.
Dropping Anchor works the same way for the mind. It's a grounding practice from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), developed by Dr Russ Harris. The aim isn't to get rid of difficult thoughts and feelings, but to give you a way of steadying yourself when they show up, so that you can choose how to respond rather than being pulled around by them.
The short version
When you notice you've been hooked, move slowly through these three steps, and repeat them as many times as you need.
- Acknowledge what's here. Quietly name it. "Here's anxiety." "Here's the self-doubt again."
- Come back into your body. Press your feet into the floor, sit or stand tall, feel your breath and your contact with the chair or the ground.
- Refocus on what matters. Take in the room around you, then bring your attention to what you're actually doing, and what makes it matter.
That's the whole exercise. Everything below is simply there to help you get more out of it.
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Walking through the three steps
1. Acknowledge what's here
Start by noticing whatever has shown up inside you, and name it plainly. Something like "here's anxiety," or "here's my mind telling me I don't belong here," or "here's that familiar self-criticism again." The point isn't to argue with it or push it away, but to turn towards it just enough to see it clearly. Naming a feeling, rather than being swallowed by it, already creates a little space between you and it.
2. Get into your body
Next, reconnect with your body and the present moment. Push your feet firmly into the ground, sit up tall or gently stretch, notice the weight of your body in the chair. You're not doing this to distract yourself from the feeling, but to widen your attention so the feeling is no longer the only thing you're aware of. The discomfort can be there, and so can the floor beneath your feet.
3. Refocus on what matters
Finally, broaden your attention outwards. Notice the room you're in, the sounds around you, the task in front of you. Then gently bring your focus back to whatever matters most right now, whether that's listening properly in a meeting, finishing the email, or being present with your family at the dinner table. You're not waiting for the discomfort to leave before you re-engage with your life. You're choosing to re-engage while it's still there.
Why it helps
None of this makes anxiety or self-doubt disappear, and it isn't meant to. What it does is interrupt the spiral. When your attention has narrowed onto a worry, gently widening it again loosens the grip of the thinking. Bringing the body in, through your feet, your posture, your breath, tends to settle the nervous system a little, which makes it easier to think and to choose. And every time you practise, you're strengthening a genuinely useful skill: the ability to notice what you're caught up in, make room for it, and act in line with what matters anyway. In ACT this is called psychological flexibility, and it's one of the things that most helps people handle difficulty well.
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Using it when imposter feelings hit
Say you've got a presentation coming up. As you open your laptop to rehearse, your mind starts up. "You're going to mess this up." "Everyone else knows more than you." "They'll finally realise you don't belong here." Your chest tightens, your stomach flips, and you feel the pull either to back out or to over-prepare until you're exhausted.
This is exactly the moment to drop anchor. You acknowledge what's happening: "here's my mind telling me I'm a fraud, and here's the anxiety showing up in my chest." You come back into your body, planting your feet, straightening your back, feeling the chair beneath you. And you refocus on what's actually in front of you, the slides, or the reason this presentation matters to you in the first place.
The doubts may well still be there. But you're no longer at their mercy. From that steadier footing you can choose what happens next, whether that's carrying on rehearsing, pausing for a breath, or coming back to it in a few minutes. Practised often enough, this gradually loosens the hold of imposter thoughts, because you start to experience them as just thoughts, not instructions you have to obey.
Small moments to practise
Dropping Anchor isn't only for high-pressure situations, and it's actually easiest to learn in low-stakes ones. You might use it when the emails pile up and you feel the overwhelm rising, when your mind drifts into self-criticism during a meeting, before a difficult conversation, or at home in the evening when you're stuck going round and round in your head. The more you practise it in these smaller moments, the more naturally it comes when the pressure is really on.
A few final thoughts
Dropping Anchor won't stop self-doubt, anxiety, or uncomfortable feelings from showing up. What it can do is stop them from sweeping you away. Like any skill it takes repetition, and it can feel a little mechanical at first, but with practice it gives you a steadier footing when imposter feelings try to knock you off balance.
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Recognise yourself in this?
If this is a practice we've been working on, keep this page somewhere handy and come back to it whenever you need the reminder. And if you're reading this and recognising yourself in the overthinking, the self-criticism, and the imposter feelings, this is the kind of thing therapy can help with. You're not broken, you're stuck, and stuck is something we can work with.
I offer a free 15-minute phone consultation if you'd like to talk it through.