Mindfulness for Writers Podcast Episode #2: Using RAIN to Work with Difficult Emotion

Welcome to the Mindfulness for Writers podcast!

Here is a 20-minute guided mindfulness meditation where I walk you through R.A.I.N, a game-changing mindfulness technique that will help you deal with difficult emotions when they arise in a skillful way. This mindfulness technique has absolutely changed my life. Got another rejection? Creatively blocked? Freaked out about the publishing industry? It R.A.I.N is in your back pocket, you'll be able to navigate the writer's life much more easily.

I talk a bit at the beginning of the meditation, walking you through what R.A.I.N is. The actual meditation begins at the 7-minute mark. Once you learn this technique, you're good to go - just keep working this technique so you can build this mindfulness muscle.

For more on R.A.I.N., be sure to check out Episode 2 of the Mindfulness for Writers podcast, as well as this blog post I wrote on the MFW blog (mindfulnessforwriters.com/2017/10/05/b…the-r-a-i-n/).

Breathe. Write. Repeat.

Transcript

Hello,

Welcome to the mindfulness for writers podcast.

This is episode two and my name is Heather Demetrius.

So in today's podcast,

I'm just going to talk a little bit about the meditation that goes with this,

Which is a meditation on working with emotions called RAIN.

It's an acronym that is a mindfulness technique is extremely helpful for skillfully dealing with emotions as they arise so that we don't fall into behaviors and thinking patterns and story patterns that are not helpful for us.

So there's a couple things I want to talk about with this in the meditation,

Which I hope you check out,

I go into what RAIN is,

And I'll talk about that here too.

But the meditation gives you a chance to actually work with it for yourself.

But I'll give you sort of an example of working through one emotion through this whole process.

And then you can kind of begin incorporating that into your life.

So RAIN is particularly helpful for what's helpful for everybody,

But it's very helpful for writers,

Because we have such uncertainty in our work life.

You know,

Our creativity is is an endless well,

Yes,

But it's one that has to be replenished a lot.

So we often experience blockages,

Burnouts,

Just bad writing days,

They happen.

And so our work life is very much affected by our environment.

And that's why mindfulness is so helpful as a practice for writers,

Because it allows us to work constructively with our environment as opposed to butting our heads against things in our environment that are frustrating.

But it's also really helpful for dealing with the rejections that come along,

Bad reviews,

The rude reader comments on Goodreads,

Which if you're a published author,

I hope you're not reading your Goodreads comments,

It's not helpful.

Just all those sorts of things.

And so having a technique in your back pocket to deal with those moments on the spot can really be a game changer.

I don't know about you guys,

But I have definitely had many times where an emotion would arise during my writing session,

Perhaps I broke my rule and I checked my email or something as a little break between writing and,

You know,

Got a not great email from my publicist or my agent or an editor or saw that a review was posted on Kirkus about my new book,

Whatever it is.

And it completely took over the rest of my day and I had like,

I had nothing left from my writing.

So having a technique like this can really help keep those those moments from happening.

So RAIN again is an acronym a mindfulness technique.

The R stands for recognize what's going on.

I'll be quiet for a sec so you can write that down if you want.

A is to allow the experience to be there just as it is.

I is investigate with kindness,

Gentleness.

And the N is to have natural awareness,

Which comes from not identifying with the experience.

So non identification.

So I'll walk you through what this would look like in a typical situation.

It's important to note that while at first,

It might take a couple minutes to go through this and try to remember the acronym and you know,

All of that very quickly.

If you work with it,

This is something that almost starts to happen unconsciously.

That's when a mindfulness technique is great,

Not that you're not conscious of it,

Because you're not mindful,

But where you have really trained yourself to work effectively with emotions so that,

You know,

It's kind of like the stop drop and roll of emotion and mindfulness.

And so that can just happen over the over a few seconds,

Really,

Kind of stopping those upsets or overwhelms in the in their tracks.

So let's say that you got a rejection,

You got a rejection from an editor you may or may not have worked with before and an emotion arises.

Now,

It might be sadness for some people,

It might be anger,

Frustration,

Which is,

You know,

A form of anger,

Despair,

Deep sadness.

And so the first thing you do is you immediately recognize the emotion,

You articulate it,

You name it.

So I'm angry.

Let's just say it's anger.

I'm angry.

Okay,

That's the first part.

All you're doing is identifying the emotion instead of just like,

Letting the emotion carry you away and going through a whole like,

You know,

Ranting process and,

You know,

Crying and calling your best friend and telling them what a horrible person this editor is and,

You know,

Going back and reading the submission and getting upset about it again.

All you do is say,

I'm angry.

A,

Allowing the experience to be there just as it is.

This,

I find to be the most important step for me.

It might not be for you.

But for me,

It was really profound to begin to see where emotion physically is in my body when I feel it.

So as I mentioned on the meditation,

When I am stressed,

Angry,

Sad,

Ashamed,

Any of those sorts of feelings,

I feel it in my chest and kind of goes up into my throat,

It could be kind of hard to breathe a little bit.

And in my chest,

It feels like almost like that tightening,

But also a little bit cold.

Sometimes the emotion drops down into my belly,

Especially if it has to do with like,

Nervousness,

Uncertainty,

Doubt,

That that's where that goes.

And so basically,

You just sit with it.

So you've identified that you're angry.

Now you're allowing yourself to just experience the anger,

You're not pushing it away.

You're not trying to ignore it,

Or fix it,

Or deal with it in any way,

You're really allowing yourself to feel the full spectrum of feeling that's inside you for that emotion.

And this isn't a process where you're thinking,

You're really in your body,

You're letting your body do the thinking,

The feeling.

And you can sit with that emotion for as long as you want.

The cool thing about allowing yourself to feel something is that once you give yourself permission to feel a feeling,

And to really just sit with it,

Be with it,

Not 100% of the time,

But often,

That feeling is going to burn out,

It's going to dissipate,

Because it doesn't have a super long shelf life,

Any emotion that you feel has to be fed in order to keep going on.

So it's like a furnace that you're feeding,

And it keeps burning,

Burning,

Burning,

But if you don't feed it,

It's going to burn out.

And then of course,

You know,

Once that strong emotions gone,

There's a lot more potential for dealing with it skillfully as opposed to,

I'm angry at this editor.

And so I'm going to call my agent and yell at her,

Why did you send it to this editor?

How could she have treated me this way?

That's not going to happen.

Because that spark just isn't there to do that.

Okay,

I is investigating with kindness.

So this,

It's really important that you don't allow this to turn into like overly psychoanalyzing yourself,

Or devolving into a storyline.

So in mindfulness,

We talk a lot about the stories that we that we have that we tell ourselves,

Which of course,

As writers,

It's like a great analogy.

So one of my stories is that I'm invisible.

And so when something in my life happens that confirms that for me,

It strengthens that story.

And I want to strengthen that story,

Because in a weird,

Sick way,

It makes me feel empowered,

Or it allows me to feel like a victim and to feel sorry for myself,

Or it at least gives me an explanation for something that just like doesn't make sense.

And so,

You know,

If I were to get a rejection from my editor,

In this part of rain,

I'd have to be very careful not to start telling myself that I'm invisible.

But instead,

To just kind of investigate,

Why am I angry?

And it might seem really obvious to you,

But oftentimes,

The feeling is the feeling is the big thing.

And then underneath that is the why do I feel the feeling,

But there's something even a layer lower,

Oftentimes.

So if I were to investigate with with kindness,

I would think,

Okay,

I'm angry that I got this rejection from this editor.

Why am I angry?

Because I need to pay my rent,

I need to live,

I need to eat.

And if I don't sell books,

Then I don't make money.

And then I can't do those things.

Okay,

So what's under that fear,

Right?

Fear of uncertainty,

Impermanence,

This idea of wanting to feel like we know what's going to happen.

And so what mindfulness does when you're really mindful,

Is to be okay with uncertainty,

To really accept that that is the nature of things impermanence,

Right?

Everything dies,

Nothing lasts.

And you can see that as a really like scary thing,

But it doesn't have to be it can actually be really freeing.

So if I'm investigating with kindness,

First of all,

I'm being kind to myself.

I'm not saying oh,

You're such a loser.

Look at you like you're invisible because you're not a good enough writer or whatever.

You know,

No harmful self talk involved here.

I'm investigating with curiosity and curious.

Why do I feel this way?

What's going on?

Curiosity is not necessarily charged positive or negative,

Right?

It can be a very neutral exploration.

So you're investigating.

And now that you have a handle on the fact that you feel angry,

You know how it feels in your body,

You've allowed yourself to experience it,

You've investigated it with kindness.

And now you're going to bring in the last part of rain,

Which is non identification,

Which is just simply saying I'm not my anger.

I'm not my rejection.

My identity doesn't rest in whether or not this editor buys my book.

Yeah,

It's totally shitty that they didn't buy it.

But that's just the thing that happened.

And it doesn't have to be the end all be all of this moment,

This day,

This week,

This month,

This year,

This lifetime.

It's a shitty thing that happened.

And permanence is the nature of things.

Let's move on.

And the really important part of rain with this non identification,

What non identification basically means is letting it go.

Seeing that thing as separate from you is saying,

That's a rejection.

A subjective decision about this writing.

And that's the thing that happened outside of me.

That's not me.

That's not where my value and my worth lies.

Now,

When you first do rain,

And even if you've done it for years,

That non identification part,

While being the most important part is also the hardest part.

And sometimes you will feel like you might feel like you're telling yourself this that you're kind of tricking yourself,

You know,

Because to be able to not identify,

Especially with your your writing with your work is really,

Really,

Really hard.

So just keep working the process,

Right.

And you'll find that it gets easier.

And you'll find that even if you can't fully detach and not identify that this process of recognizing what's going on inside of you,

Allowing yourself to feel it,

Treating yourself with gentleness will still have a ripple effect on your emotional landscape.

So I hope you do the meditation because I kind of walk you through it.

We start off with some mindfulness,

And then I was just focusing on the breath.

And then we go into rain.

And I also have a blog post,

Which I'll link up to the podcast and the meditation that you can read,

Where I go into it a little bit more.

There's some cool graphics and stuff like that that might be helpful for you to visualize the process.

Another thing that's really helpful when thinking about emotion is an expression from Joseph Goldstein,

Who is a meditation teacher in the Insight Meditation tradition.

He is amazing.

And he has this phrase that I heard Dan Harris,

Who wrote a couple of books about meditation,

That he's a journalist,

Broadcast journalist,

Who meditates.

And the phrase that Joseph Goldstein uses is,

Is this useful?

So if you're struggling with the end part of rain,

With the non identification part,

Just ask yourself,

Is this useful?

Is holding on to this anger,

Feeding it,

Calling your agent,

Calling your best friend,

You know,

Being pissed off all day,

And despairing,

Is that useful at all?

Will it get that editor to change his or her mind?

Will that get this book published?

Will that help your writing get better?

Will that open you up and in an expansive way for new projects?

No,

Right?

That anger isn't useful.

It doesn't actually do anything.

Some anger is useful.

You know,

If you are upset about something happening in your community,

And you get angry,

And you channel that anger into running for office locally,

Or,

You know,

Starting up a petition,

Or calling your senator,

That is anger that is constructive.

Of course,

That anger stops being constructive when you hold on to it.

But allowing that anger to cause a transformation can be a good thing.

But in this case,

This,

This anger,

Feeding it,

Letting it grow,

It's not useful.

So recapping,

When you are dealing with an emotion that arises,

Go through the rain process,

It can take a matter of just a few seconds.

And just keep working it just like they say in,

In AA,

You know,

Work the steps or whatever.

It's like you're working this mindfulness technique.

It's a muscle that you're,

That you're working.

And then also that phrase is this useful can be extremely helpful in that last part in terms of detaching and non identification.

And you know,

The non identification part,

And the investigation part,

The last two parts of rain are really useful for trying to identify the stories that you tell yourself.

I'll be talking a lot more about that in a future episode.

But just quickly,

You know,

What is that narrative that you're sponsoring for yourself?

Is it I'm invisible?

No one loves me.

I'm a terrible writer.

Because of my,

My religion,

Color,

Gender,

Whatever.

I'm not going to be successful because of the statistics or whatever.

What is that story that you're sponsoring?

And again,

Is this useful?

Is this story helping you or hurting you?

And that's just something that is kind of a lifelong exploration,

But you can start start that process now.

So as usual,

I blog regularly on mindfulness for writers.

Com.

So that is where you will see future guided meditations,

Podcast episodes,

Blogs,

Resources,

I have an Instagram with fun quotes and such,

And Twitter,

All that good stuff.

So also,

Please feel free to reach out to me,

My contact info is on the blog mindfulness for writers.

If you have questions about your practice,

Anything like that,

Don't hesitate to reach out and hopefully I can help you out a little bit.

So work this technique.

Let me know what it shifts and transforms for you.

I'd love to hear how your practice is helping you in both your writing process,

Your flow,

And in your writing life as a writer and as an artist and as someone who is in this whole publishing world that we're in.

Okay,

Take care.

Reviews

Thank you. Had never come across the R.A.I.N process before and I think it will be very helpful.

A more helpful explanation of RAIN than I've heard before.

Thank you. Keep creating€<3

Thank nice talk

Hopefully will see the meditation example elsewher (as it wasn't attached?)

RAIN. Important & revealing even for non-writers. 🙏🏼

Very practical and helpful. 🙏

Thank you. This resonated with me. Everything from staying away from GR for the past few years, that exact description is how and where I feel, and one of the same invisible stories I have constructed about myself. I am definitely going to begin trying this technique. Breaking it all down as you did made me want to try it from now on. Thank you again.