Weighted Blankets, Nervous Systems & Finding Safety in a Busy World

Episode 55 · Laurie Groh, MS LPC SAS with Elizabeth Grojean, founder of Baloo Living · 2025-06-23

We can get stuck in fight or flight and forget we're even there. We just live every day like that. This episode is about a very simple tool for getting out of it, and about how you come back to yourself when your day-to-day doesn't leave any room.

Show notes

My guest is Elizabeth Grojean, founder of Baloo Living, a company known for weighted blankets designed around nervous system regulation and better sleep. Her origin story took up the first half of the conversation, and it earned it.

Following the discomfort

Elizabeth was living in New York in her mid-30s, single, with the job and the apartment, and a sense of discomfort she couldn't pin down. She'd followed the rules and it wasn't enough. She journaled every morning and the feeling only got louder. So she sublet her apartment and flew to Bali on a one-way ticket.

She came home three months later feeling filled up, and then hit reverse culture shock. I see this constantly: the calm from a vacation lasts a couple of days and then you're right back in it. Elizabeth had a decision to make with no savings left.

The part I want people to hear is how she made it. She checked which option felt better in her body, not which one her mind could justify. And she went back with a plan: build a business she could run remotely, and learn from people who had already done it. Weighted blankets came up as something in demand in 2017, before they were everywhere, and when she tried a sample it was so comforting that the project stopped being a lifestyle opportunity and became something she felt moved to share.

She's not in Bali anymore. She's at a laptop for hours with a small child at home. Making quiet time for herself is a struggle she still has. That's most of us.

What deep pressure does

Elizabeth explained the mechanism as deep pressure touch, the same thing that makes a massage or a swaddled baby feel calming. She said it's been studied extensively, and that it increases serotonin, which the body converts to melatonin, and reduces cortisol. Her favorite part is that you don't have to do anything. Lie down, put it on, and the body does the rest.

That's what got my attention as a therapist. The feeling after a yoga class, in that final resting pose, is close to what she's describing. If you can get some version of that without a 60-minute class, on a Tuesday at noon, that's the kind of tool I'm always looking for. Not "I'll feel better on vacation in three weeks," but "I'm stressed right now, here's something."

The question she gets most often is whether it will make you hot. She built hers with breathable cotton and glass microbeads, partly with friends in perimenopause and menopause in mind. Her three-year-old sleeps under one too and calls it his heavy blanket.

What the studies showed

Baloo wanted more than testimonials, so they ran an at-home sleep study with a company that makes a biometric sleep headband. Forty participants slept with and without the blanket, unscreened for sleep problems. Elizabeth reported that 78.5 percent said it had a positive effect on sleep quality, deep sleep went up about 10 percent, time to fall asleep improved by 27 percent, and readiness scores rose by 10 percent.

She also described an informal study with a grad student in Texas where 90 students used a blanket for two hours during the day and showed a statistically significant improvement in anxiety compared with a control group.

Ten percent might not sound like much. If you wake up wondering whether you slept at all, it's a lot.

Why I always ask about sleep

When someone new comes to see me, sleep is one of the first things I ask about. If you've been sleep-deprived for a long time, you usually don't notice it, and it can mimic depression. It also feeds anxiety: in fight or flight we get hypervigilant, more thoughts, more doing, and that keeps us from sleeping. Sometimes what a person assumes is a mood disorder is a sleep problem first.

Elizabeth added that knowing how important sleep is can make people more anxious about not getting it. Fair.

Beyond sleep

Elizabeth is now thinking more about mental health uses than sleep alone. Her own experience was less about insomnia and more about feeling safe and at home in her body, especially after reading the news. I've been thinking about what a tool like this could do in our own offices, something a client can reach for in a hard conversation. That's a conversation we agreed to continue.

Key takeaways

1. A tool that regulates your body in five or ten minutes matters more than a vacation three weeks away.
2. Deep pressure touch is the mechanism behind weighted blankets, and it works without you doing anything.
3. Long-term sleep loss often goes unnoticed and can look like depression or anxiety. Check sleep first.
4. When your mind keeps replaying the same script, ask what your body says instead.
5. Coming back to yourself is a daily practice, even for people who've done the dramatic version.

If this one hit close to home

If you're exhausted, wired, or not sure whether it's sleep, stress or something else, Shoreside Therapies offers therapy in Wisconsin and online in several other states. Our intake coordinator will help you find the right fit, even if it isn't us.

More on this topic: Burnout & Nervous System hub · Exhausted but Can't Relax: Your Nervous System · Tired All Day, Wired at Night · Holistic Sleep Strategies for Midlife Women

This episode is for education and entertainment. It is not therapy and does not create a therapeutic relationship. Hosted by Laurie Groh, MS, LPC, SAS.