Four Steps to Work Through Difficult Emotions

Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness. Today, I'm going to share four steps to help you work through difficult emotions. So as human beings, our first instinct is to try and avoid, escape or struggle with difficult emotions rather than facing them and moving through them. And the problem with this is that when we fight difficult emotions in these ways, we tend to prolong the feelings and make them more intense. This is where the RAIN practice comes in.

So first developed by Michelle McDonald over 20 years ago, this practice was popularized by Tara Brach and RAIN is an acronym. So it's R A I N for this four step mindfulness practice to work through difficult emotions. So here are the steps. R is for recognize. So recognizing means bringing awareness to, and acknowledging the thoughts, feelings, and reactions that are present.

So this can actually be done by mentally noting what you're most aware of. So for instance, you might say to yourself mentally, okay, right now I'm feeling sad. A is for allow and allowing means letting the thoughts, emotions, feelings, and sensations that you have simply be there. So we're not trying to fix them, not trying to avoid them, not trying to fight against anything that's happening. You might even say to yourself mentally in this step, something like it's okay for this to be here.

I is for investigate. So to investigate in this step, you're bringing a gentle curiosity to your present moment experience and inquiring into what you might perhaps learn from this, or understand about what's happening. Your investigation can simply mean keeping a focused attention on the sensations of the emotion and just feeling them, just listening to them. If you find it helpful, you can also ask yourself, what is it that I'm thinking or believing right now? What is this emotion want or need from me? What does it want me to understand? Are there any deeper emotions underneath? So N is for nurture with self-compassion. So to nurture yourself in this moment of hurt, fear or suffering, you try to bring a compassionate and kindly awareness to the sensations of the emotion in your body.

Try to sense what the hurt, frightened or tender places inside you kind of most needs. Does it need love? Does it need acceptance? Does it need rest? And in this step also seeing if there's something yeah. Can actually do to meet those needs. You know, for instance, perhaps you could go and take a nap, run a bath, call a friend for support, or simply offer yourself some words of kindness in that moment. You know, perhaps saying to yourself, I forgive you.

I love you just as you are, everyone makes mistakes sometimes or, it's okay, you know. So when we learn to meet our difficulties and our pains with compassion and awareness, it can be truly transformational and empowering. So I'd like to invite you to join me in today's meditation, where I'll guide you through a longer practice of this so you can really feel it and experience it. But also for the rest of the day today, perhaps making an intention now not to run from difficult emotions, but instead to meet them and investigate them with a kindly, curious and compassionate awareness. So let's settle in for our meditation.

And as always, thank you for your practice and your presence here with us.