I came across the RAIN acronym from Tara Brach, Ph.D. and I wanted to share this with you because it’s very similar to what I use personally and teach counselling clients and also in the Accidental Counsellor Training.
RAIN is a way to bring mindfulness, understanding and compassion to difficult emotions. The acronym stands for:
R—Recognise What’s Going On
A—Allow the Experience to be There, Just as It Is
I—Investigate with Interest and Care
N—Nurture with Self-Compassion
Before I go into each aspect I want to share why I think this process is so important.
What I’ve noticed is that humans (generally speaking) struggle and find it difficult to navigate their own and other people’s emotions. This leads to untold conflict within ourselves and with other people.
The number one pattern I see in how we respond to emotions is to resist and judge them. That is we resist emotions by suppressing them usually by distracting ourselves with a range of habits some helpful most not so helpful.
The other pattern I’ve observed is we can be very judgemental of our own or others emotion. You can see this yourself when you notice thoughts or self-talk like this, “I shouldn’t feel this way…” or when responding to others, “Don’t worry things will work out”
The reason I’m saying this is judgemental is because when we think or say any variation of I or you shouldn’t feel a particular way we are saying this emotion is wrong or bad or not good for me.
The reality is you or the person you’re responding to are experiencing the emotion and what we resist does tend to persist. Rather than resisting, avoiding and being judgmental of our emotions simply allow and accept that you’re having this experience.
In the Accidental Counsellor Training we teach that to connect with people we need to respond with empathy and to do that we need to acknowledge, validate and normalise how a person is feeling.
A favourite line from my good friend Dr David Lake is, “Of course for good reason” I use this at times when responding to people who are having intense emotions. Connect to another person or yourself by acknowledging, validating and normalising how you are feeling.
So let’s quickly look at the RAIN acronym a little further:
R—Recognise What’s Going On
Recognising means consciously acknowledging, in any given moment, the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that are affecting you.
This can be a done with a simple mental whisper, noting what you are most aware of. The whisper I use is “I see/feel you” or “Hey I’m here for you”
A—Allow the Experience to be There, Just as It Is
Allowing means letting the thoughts, emotions, feelings, or sensations you have recognised simply be there, without trying to fix or avoid anything.
You might recognise fear, and allow by mentally whispering “it’s ok” or “this belongs” or “yes.”
Allowing creates a pause that makes it possible to deepen attention and avoids resistance.
I—Investigate with Interest, care and curiosity
To investigate, call on your natural curiosity—the desire to know truth—and direct a more focused attention to your present experience.
You might ask yourself:
What most wants attention? How am I experiencing this in my body? What am I believing? What does this vulnerable place want from me? What does it most need?
Whatever the inquiry, your investigation will be most transformational if you step away from thinking,conceptualising and analysing and bring your primary attention to the felt-sense in the body.
In other words get out of your head and into your body.
N—Nurture with Self-Compassion
Self-compassion begins to naturally arise in the moments that you recognize you are suffering.
To do this, try to sense what the wounded, frightened or hurting place inside you most needs, and then offer some gesture of active care that might address this need.
Does it need a message of reassurance? Of forgiveness? Of companionship? Of love?
You can find the a PDF of the RAIN acronym here at https://www.tarabrach.com/rain/
For more information about the Accidental Counsellor Training go to http://accidentalcounsellor.com/