How to Work Through Difficult Emotions

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0:00:00.9: Hi, everyone. Today, I want to talk a little bit about an acronym that I found really useful in working with some of my clients lately. This acronym is called RAIN, R-A-I-N, and it stands for Recognize, Accept, Investigate and Nurture. I found this acronym from some mindfulness meditation teachers, and they use it to describe a process of managing through thoughts when you're in meditation, so a way to deal with thought patterns that might be getting in the way of your focus, but I've also found it really useful in working with my clients who are working through negative thought patterns in general in their lives, and also any negative or difficult memories or emotions that might be recurring. So I'm going to walk through a little bit on how you might use this in your life, and I hope that you find this helpful. Real quick, if you don't know who I am, I'm Connor Moss. I'm a psychotherapist offering online sessions for anyone in California and based in Oakland. I specialize in trauma therapy, addiction therapy and couples counseling. I'm making these videos just to share a little bit of tips and insight that I've learned through my years of working with clients and studying psychology. So I hope you find this helpful.

0:01:23.0: Okay. So RAIN. So the first letter of RAIN is R, and it stands for Recognize. So the most important step with any negative thought pattern or emotion that you might be dealing with is to recognize it. I've said this before, when you ask a fish to describe water, it really doesn't know what you're talking about 'cause it's just surrounded by it, and this is true of our emotions as well. So if you can't recognize a negative thought or a negative emotion as it's happening, it's going to be really hard to do anything about it. So the first step with any negative thought pattern or a negative emotion or a negative memory that might be coming up is to recognize what's happening. So in order to do this, you just need to notice more clearly how your emotions and thoughts are changing. Mindfulness can be really helpful in this, a meditation practice can be really helpful in this, but in general, if you're just working with trying to notice more about your experience, you can journal or you can set aside a couple of minutes every day to intentionally notice and ask yourself, "What am I experiencing right now? What thoughts am I experiencing? What emotions am I experiencing? What physical sensations am I experiencing?" And this can help you get more in touch with yourself and maybe notice things about your experience that you wouldn't otherwise notice.

0:02:47.9: So the next step in RAIN is to accept. So once you've recognized the negative emotion that's coming into your system, it might seem counterintuitive, but you really want to try to learn to accept it. So if there's something really negative happening in your life and you go kicking and screaming and trying to push it away every step of the way, it's going to be really hard to work with it. So even though this can be really painful and really difficult, it might sound easy just to say, accept it, but the process is actually... It can be really hard. It's going to benefit you to try to accept this experience that you're in. If you can't fully accept it, maybe at least you can accept the fact that you're having it, if that makes sense. You don't need to love it, you don't need to be shouting, "Yeah, I'm depressed," but at the very least, you need to have some acceptance for the fact that this is your experience right now. It's not pleasant, it's not fun, but you accept the fact that this is happening to you.

0:03:56.0: So the next step in RAIN is to investigate. So once you've accepted that this negative thought or this negative experience is happening in your life, you really want to dig deeper and start to understand more about the mechanics of it. If you're feeling depressed, you might want to try to really understand what are you feeling depressed about. When did it start? How long has it been here? What makes it worse? What makes it better? So you can really break apart this experience and start to understand more of the dynamics of how it's happening. So investigating just helps you get closer and gain more understanding of this negative experience.

0:04:41.9: And last in the RAIN acronym is to nurture. I've also heard the N in RAIN to not identify with, which I think also works, but I find that I like nurture better and I've seen that used as well. So once you've recognized an experience that's happening to you, you've had some acceptance for the fact that it's there, you've investigated more to understand how and why it's affecting you, you really want to find a way to nurture this experience. Again, this might sound counterintuitive. Why do you want to nurture a negative experience? This is really self-care. You're finding a way to care for and attend to this negative experience as it's coming up. So if you're really depressed, there's probably a reason, and there's probably something you can do to support yourself and make yourself feel better. Maybe that's therapy, maybe that's eating cake, maybe that's going for a run, maybe that's closing all the blinds and watching your favorite TV show, it doesn't need be this perfect nurturing where it's this perfect healthy option, but you want to come up with a way to attend and nurture to this experience. If you're anxious, maybe you need to do a grounding exercise, maybe you need to call a friend and talk to them on the phone, maybe you need to do some journaling and self-reflection on why you feel fear.

0:06:14.0: So this last step of nurturing is really about taking that step forward into an active act of self-care. So you've recognized this emotion, you've accepted it, you've investigated it and understood more, and now is the chance to take action and actually support yourself. So that's generally how RAIN might work for you. I find that this works really well with negative thought patterns, with negative emotions, if there's been trauma with negative memories that might be coming in, you really are thinking about these negative experiences as this whole experience that's coming in and you want to treat it well. A lot of times when we have negative experiences or negative thoughts, I think people just clamp down and get really negative about it and blame themselves and think, "Oh, I just wish this thing would go away. Why do I have this depression? Why do I have this anxiety?" And it can really get into a negative thought loop. Instead, if you approach it as a visitor who is coming into your life and you try to welcome it at least a little bit and try to treat it well, it's actually going to help it move through and release faster.

0:07:40.5: So attending to these negative experiences and treating them with care and compassion, with recognition, and acceptance, and investigation, and nurturing, is going to help them not have such a strong hold on you and hopefully, will help you move through them faster. So I hope this is helpful. If you have any questions about this or needing support looking through some negative emotions like this, feel free to reach out. I'd certainly be happy to talk. And I hope this was helpful and I'll talk to you all next time. Take care.

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