RAIN Method For Dealing With Difficult Thoughts

This is a quick walkthrough of Michele McDonald's famous RAIN approach to dealing with difficult thoughts and challenging situations, with instructions for understanding and applying it in a situation where emotions threaten to overwhelm you.

It offers a wonderful in-the-moment intervention.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to what I believe to be the most powerful intervention we had on our program.

And that's the four step brain process for dealing with difficult or stressful emotions in the moment as they occur.

So let's dive straight into it.

The first thing to remember is that when you feel the onset of stress and over time,

As you start to become aware of it and pay attention to it,

You feel it earlier and earlier in the process.

But as soon as you become aware that you're under any sort of stress,

The first step is to formally recognize that.

Basically to say,

I am feeling stressed.

And the first thing after you recognize that is just to find and to identify,

Where am I feeling that in my body?

Now this is really,

Really important.

Bringing awareness to where the stress is manifesting physiologically is the first step in dealing with it.

Because that sends the message to the brain that this is just a physiological response to whatever adversity I'm facing.

So the first step is recognizing I'm feeling stressed.

Where am I feeling that stress?

I'm bringing awareness to it.

Now for the rest of the four steps,

You want to be maintaining that awareness.

And if you like,

Monitoring the body.

So the next step is to recognize that it's actually normal and natural to feel stressed.

The bottom line,

As you saw on the program,

Is that stress is a response to adversity.

It's your body trying to keep you safe.

It's an alarm system saying,

Watch out,

There's some kind of a threat.

So if you're feeling stress,

It's because your body perceives some kind of a threat.

So there's a great saying that says,

What we resist persists.

What we tend to do when we start to feel stress is to want to push it away.

Because in general,

Stress is not a pleasant thing.

In the body,

It can often feel tight,

Maybe hot,

Maybe hollow.

It can manifest in different people,

Different ways.

But in general,

We don't tend to like it.

And so we tend to push it away.

And what you need to do as part of that second step,

Allow,

Is not to resist it.

Just let it be.

Don't push back against it.

And in fact,

Say to yourself,

It's okay to feel this way.

This is a normal response to what I'm going through.

This is just stress.

It's just my body trying to keep me safe.

The third step is one that over time gives you a greater awareness of what is it that stresses me and how do I avoid it in the future.

And that's the A step,

Which is investigate.

So what happened to cause this?

What was it that triggered this?

What knocked me over the edge to a sudden realization that I'm feeling stressed?

Now,

It could be genuine adversity.

It could be a challenge just facing you.

It could be something that somebody said to you that you really don't care for,

Or it might be a worry about something that's gone on in the past or something that's gone on in the future.

And your body,

Which doesn't know the difference between thoughts and reality,

Is responding to that as if it's a present threat.

But it could also be that your blood sugar has dropped and you're a little bit hungry.

Or as the new word in the English language says now,

Hangry.

Sometimes when our blood sugar drops or when we're tired,

Our mood can drop with it.

We become angry,

We become sad,

We become uncomfortable.

So one of the best things you can do when you've noticed you've been stressed and you're allowing it,

You're bringing attention to it,

Is say,

What triggered this?

Do I know where it came from?

Now,

This is not to say who is the cause of this?

Whose fault is this?

Who can I blame for this?

This is what is the incident that has triggered this?

And the more you ask this as you experience these difficult,

Stressful emotions,

The more over time you'll become aware of what is it that stresses me?

So that you'll find that those things don't stress you quite as quickly or quite as deeply in the future because you understand the way it's working.

So asking yourself,

What happened?

And more particularly,

What do I really need in this moment?

The final step is one that we mentioned during the program.

It's to recognize that this is just an emotion.

It's just an emotion accompanied by some thoughts,

Likely it's not,

But it's just a physiological sensation in the body and it's not me.

And I don't have to follow it because,

As we mentioned,

One of the things that frequently happens is we feel a negative emotion.

And we start to rationalize that with messages in our head.

And so one message begets another negative emotion and then another message comes up from that.

And we deepen and deepen and deepen that mood.

We can stop that cycle of spiraling downwards into stress by saying,

Hang on a second,

This is just a reaction.

It's just a physiological reaction and if there are thoughts accompanying it,

These are just thoughts.

I don't have to follow them.

So the four step process,

Again,

Easy to remember because of the acronym RAIN.

The first one is R for RAIN,

Which is recognize.

And just say to yourself,

The first moment you notice I'm stressed,

I'm feeling stressed.

And then ask yourself,

Where do I notice it in the body?

And allow yourself to stop and drop into the body and bring some awareness to it.

So the first thing is to recognize it and bring some awareness to it.

And by awareness I mean,

Notice what does it feel like?

Is it tight?

Is it loose?

Is it hot?

Is it cold?

Is it pulsing?

Is it sharp?

Is it blunt?

For you,

It may feel different to everybody else you ever meet.

So just notice where is it manifesting in my body?

You're not trying to get rid of it.

You're not trying to change it.

You're just observing it and you're just bringing some curiosity to it.

The second step,

Which is the A in RAIN,

Says it's okay to allow this to exist.

Resist the temptation to,

What's the word I'm looking for?

To push back against this unwanted emotion.

We sometimes automatically jump into just pushing it away.

And as I said earlier,

That which we resist persists.

So allow the emotion to arise and just reassure yourself,

You know what?

It's okay to feel this way.

This is a normal reaction for the situation I'm in.

And just get used to recognizing that stress is just a normal reaction to the challenges that you're facing in the environment.

Then the third thing,

Which is the investigate,

You know,

What's going on here?

What actually triggered this?

What was it that suddenly knocked me over the edge?

It might be,

As I say,

That your blood sugar is low.

It might be that you're tired.

Or it could be that some set of circumstances have arisen that are putting you into a worried state about the future or about the past.

Maybe somebody said something that just hurt you a little bit.

But what is it?

This is not about blaming.

It's just about investigating and understanding why did I suddenly get triggered there?

And then the final step is just one of non-identification.

It's of not allowing yourself to become identified with the emotion.

This is just a thought.

This is just an emotion.

I don't have to follow this.

Isn't that interesting?

I'm feeling this way because that happened.

Non-identification.

Let me tell you that the first time you try this,

You may get a result.

Or the first time you try it,

You may get to the end of it and say,

Derek,

You know what?

I felt little or no result.

What you need to do is recognize that it's taking you a long time to get into the habits of responding to stress the way you do right now.

And it's going to take you a little while to create new habits.

So be patient with the technique.

It works.

But you have to develop it so that it becomes a natural part of the way you respond to stressful situations,

Difficult emotions and adversity.

Over time,

It really will change your life.

So that is the RAIN or A-I-N approach to handling difficult or stressful emotions.

Thanks,

Amelia.

Reviews

Useful reminder...I will definitely add this skill to my repertoire! Thank you...