Dealing With Difficult Emotions (RAIN) Meditation

In this meditation, we take a pause to recognise difficult emotions, carefully noticing how they make us feel. Rather than changing our emotions, we simply let them be there. We note them with curiosity, staying with any urges, and allowing kindness towards ourselves. In doing so, we can learn to deal with difficult emotions wisely and with self-compassion.

Transcript

Take a pause from whatever you're doing,

Close your eyes and come to stillness.

And now recognize with great kindness that you are right now experiencing a difficult feeling.

And see if you can mentally name that feeling.

Maybe stress is here or anxiety.

Maybe sadness or restlessness.

Recognizing what difficult emotion little is feeling right now.

Allow.

Now seeing whether you can allow that feeling to simply be there.

So rather than trying to make it go away,

Dropping your resistance to the feeling and letting your experience be as it is.

Allowing little to feel what it feels.

Where in your body is the feeling?

How strong is it?

If it had a color,

What color would it have?

And if it had a texture,

What texture would it have?

Try to be as allowing and curious about this feeling as you can.

Opening up to it.

Investigate.

Now see what urge has arisen in response to this difficult feeling.

How is outer child manifesting itself?

Maybe there's an urge to consume something.

Maybe there's an urge to ruminate.

Maybe there's an urge to withdraw or hide away.

So once you've identified the urge,

Check how this urge manifests itself in your body.

And where is it in your mind?

How strong is the urge?

If you can,

Give it a number on a scale of 1 to 10.

1 being very weak to 10 being very strong.

Surfing with kindness.

Now if it's okay,

Placing your hand on your heart and see if you can with great kindness for yourself,

Stay with that urge for a couple of moments.

Simply being with it rather than acting on the urge.

Surfing it with great kindness towards yourself.

Recognizing that this is a difficult moment.

Nurturing action.

Now ask yourself how you can take care of yourself in this moment in a wise and caring way.

Engaging in nurturing self-care.

Letting big take action rather than outer.

And now letting go of this practice and for a couple of moments coming back to your breath.

Feeling your in-breath and your out-breath.

One breath at a time.

And when you're ready,

Opening up your eyes.