RAIN: A Meditation for Overwhelming Emotions

As I’m writing this we are a few weeks into the pandemic and I’m hearing various of how people are adjusting to the drastic changes in our daily lives.  Everyone is having new things to adjust to unique circumstances. Parenting without schools, employment changes changes, adjustments in how we socialize and even how we go to the grocery store.  

One of the things that I have noticed is that some people have loss various forms of distractions in their lives.  But with the loss of distractions people are noticing they have to sit through difficult emotions without their typical diversions.  The distractions might have been helpful with not feeling overwhelmed by our emotional states. If someone feels high anxiety about climate change, but feels powerless, they might try to distract themselves by digging into a work project.  Some of these distractions are adaptive or helpful, but other distractions might be avoidance.  

Helpful distractions remove our minds from ruminations or feeling overwhelmed in the moment, particularly when we don’t have control over a situation.  Unhelpful or maladaptive distractions are things that numb us from the feelings. Our daily life is a mixture of adaptive and maladaptive distractions. Our jobs, feeling productive, social media, food, and even relationships can be a distraction from our minds.  So what happens when we lose access to those distractions? Again we are left to sit with them without a skillset to sit with the overwhelming.  

Years ago, not in a pandemic, I had a friend go through a break-up.  It was only after the break-up that she realized she had put so much effort into her relationship and trying to fix it that she distracted herself from her own feelings.  In truth if she stopped and listened to her own feelings she would have realized sooner how unhappy and unfulfilled she was in her relationship. Her former partner didn’t want kids and it was becoming more important to her to have kids.  She worried about her age and the “biological clock” women are often reminded of by society. But instead of shifting through her emotions to recognize this anxiety in her, she focused all her efforts into fixing her relationship. When it was finally over, and she could no longer distract by fixing her relationship, she realized that she wanted a baby.  She had worked so hard on a relationship that wasn’t going to give her what she wanted.  

We often try to rationalize our thoughts and feelings, but often we need to be able to sit with our feelings to try and understand them.  Below is a medication structure that is helpful in sitting with difficult emotional states. I came across it reading Tara Brach, a therapist who specializes in Mindfulness practice and wrote the books Radical Acceptance and Radical Compassion.  The medication is RAIN:

R  for Recognize what is going on

I often use the term “canary sign” to talk about signs in the body or mindsets that give cues that you are dealing with something.  Often in our day-to-day experience we have so much to do that we hardly notice that we are sitting in discomfort or pushing past our limits.  I often ask clients WHERE do they feel their emotions? Where is the anger or frustration building up in your body? When you feel anxious where do you hold it?  A canary sign might also be a mindset, such as a mindset of unworthiness, or a mindset of apologizing, or a mindset of confusion.

When you start this medication it is checking in with ourselves.  What is your body holding? What is the mindset that is currently active?  Recognize is simply checking in with yourself.  

The first part of this medication is to Recognize.  

A Allow the experience to happen

I sometimes re-label this one as Accept.  Can I Allow or Accept that I am in this headspace?  Can I Allow myself to sit with this uncomfortable emotion?  Ideally we should try to welcome sitting with these uncomfortable feelings.  (It is the point of the writing afterall.) However sometimes it is too much.  We all have a Window of Tolerance of how much we can take on. When we move past this Window of Tolerance, we have a tendency to shut down or get overheated.  It is okay if you need a moment before you can sit with whatever it is you are dealing with.  

Allow is where we will be tempted to use distracting and/or numbing strategies.  It is sometimes helpful to give yourself a deep breath and then give yourself permission to be curious.  Be curious to what is going on for you and not dread the experience. What is going on with your thoughts? What is your body holding? What emotions do you feel?  What is my current mindset?

I use the term Accept, because sometimes we struggle in Accepting our current state.  I have seen people struggle with jealousy and they don’t want to admit to themselves that they are jealous in that moment.  “I should be here” their inner critic might say, “There is something wrong with me if I’m feeling this.” Accept is just to Accept where you are at in this moment in time and Allow yourself to experience.  Through experiencing it and gaining knowledge from our emotional self, we can move past the experience as a whole-hearted person.

I Investigate with kindness

Investigate is fostering that curiosity we cultivated in the previous step and putting it into action.  What do our emotions need to tell us? If we sit with the emotions long enough it begins to tell a story.  It is often to attempt to name your emotion. Are you anger, frustrated, annoyed? If so what might be feeling unfair?  Are you anxious, timid or fidgety? Then explore where those feelings are concerned about.

Sometimes we hold intro our stress, thoughts, and emotions during the day that we don’t understand what we are feeling.  Sometimes the answers can be surprisingly easy. More than once I had someone do this medication only to realize they were hungry and their body just needed food.  During the pandemic many people are feeling overwhelmed, tired, and frustrated. Everything feels harder and many people are adjusting to so many changes.

Many good articles have come out at the time of writing that we are experiencing grief.  Grief is the loss of attachments. We might be missing out jobs, access to touch, access to our autonomy to just move around, and being about to see friends and loved ones.    We might feel frustrated that this is an unfair situation we are in and nobody asked for this. We might feel guilty that we might have more security than others right now, emotionally, financially, or just shelt situations.  We might feel anxious about many different things and not know what the future might hold.  

Investigate is where we sit with these emotions and explore what it is we are feeling in this moment in time.  I usually say that if we ignore emotions, they typically start bringing out their microphones and scream louder.  By listening to our emotions and connecting them to our cognitive thoughts we gain knowledge of just where we are at.  

I will also add this phrase: Emotions are always valid; It doesn’t mean they are right.  What we are feeling is what we are feeling. It is what we are expressing in a moment in time.  Just because you feel guilty for being safer than others does not mean you are not worthy of being safe.  Also just because you are anxious about something doesn’t mean it will happen. Validate your emotions for what you are feeling right now, but do not hold it as a universal truth.  

N Nurture your wounded self

This step, traditionally, is Non-Identification with the experience; meaning that you recognize that this is just a moment in time.  If you are anxious then you are anxious in that moment and not label yourself as an anxious person. If you are envious of your friend’s fortune, then that is what you feel in that moment and not that you dislike your friend or are an envious person.  

Brach’s version of RAIN goes further into exploring what would be Nurturing to the self in the here-and-now.  This is where we invite self-compassion into our headspace and hearts. In Nurture we actively try to witness the hurt or wounded part of ourselves.  I often ask people, what do you need in this moment? Many people struggle with this question. It often involves pulling what knowledge you gained from Investigate and think what would I offer a friend or loved one in the same situation.  Do you need to give yourself permission to make mistakes? Do you need to hear you are worthy of love? Do you need to give yourself patience? Do you need to be told that it is okay that this is hard?

Self-compassion is hard for most of us.  It is okay to struggle here. The importance here is to give yourself kindness.  I’ve had some clients imagine that they are giving themselves a hug. Particularly in times of social distancing we may need to physically give ourselves a hug.  Take a moment to embrace (either through imagery or physically do it) they area in your body that is under duress. Hold it, comfort it and let yourself know it will be okay.  

It is okay that this is hard.  Just do your best.