My therapist will be the first to tell you that I’m not always super nice to myself—and for a while, I disagreed. Anytime I talked about myself or my experiences in a way that my therapist pointed out might be unkind, I had an excuse at the ready. I’m not beating myself up, I’m just a perfectionist. I’m not being harsh, I objectively deserve the criticism. I’m not judging my emotions unfairly, I’m just being honest. But spoiler alert: I’m often a total monster to myself and don’t even realize it. Which, TBH, is how negative self-talk and feelings of unworthiness tend to work.
It’s human nature to accept our thoughts as true and normal instead of unpacking them. In turn, they slowly become internalized beliefs that impact how we treat ourselves. Because I don’t often feel like I’m outright bullying or insulting myself, it took me a while to recognize certain thought patterns for what they were: manifestations of a lack of self-compassion that was getting in the way of my mental health.
Realizing all of that is the first step. The next step is a lot harder: actively working to undo the habitual self-judgment that, for many of us, is second nature. It’s easy to tell ourselves—or for our therapists to tell us—to be more self-compassionate, but what does that actually look like in practice?
Realistically, it looks like a long journey of interfacing directly and honestly with our most vulnerable thoughts and feelings. I’m still figuring it out. But there is one tool my therapist taught me that I’ve been getting a lot of mileage out of lately. If you’re trying to practice more self-compassion, you might find it helpful too.
RAIN is a four-step process.
It stands for Recognize, Allow, Investigate, and Non-identification. Mindfulness teacher Michele McDonald is popularly credited for creating RAIN as a meditation, and several psychologists have since adapted and expanded on it, including Tara Brach, Ph.D., in her book Radical Compassion. In Brach’s take on RAIN, the N stands for Nurture.
Like many therapeutic tools, there are many uses of the various iterations of the RAIN meditation, whether you’re using it to battle negative self-talk or calm anxious thoughts. In general, though, most versions of RAIN are based on mindfulness, which basically means it’s about taking the time to pause and pay attention to what you’re experiencing. In this case, certain thoughts or emotions.
For the purposes of this article, I’m talking about how I learned RAIN from my therapist: as a mindful self-compassion tool.
Here’s how the RAIN meditation breaks down.
Recognize: The first step here is about getting in the habit of putting words to thoughts and feelings as they’re happening. That could be anything from “Ah, I’m worrying that my friends hate me because they ignored my contribution in the group chat” to “Oh, I’m feeling like a failure after getting feedback on that presentation.” Sometimes it’s difficult to do at first, given how emotions can roll over us as physical, difficult-to-name sensations, but you can get better with practice.
Allow: As in, allow the thought and emotion to exist without immediately trying to push it away, change it, or judge it. This is an easy step to skip, especially if you’re in the practice of pushing against your negative voice. And while it might sound like the right call not to engage when your inner monologue is being a dick, oftentimes that just shoves the feelings down deeper. Giving yourself a moment to feel your feelings and allow the thought in without jumping to correct it or judge yourself is a necessary step, even if it can feel raw or uncomfortable.
Investigate: Your thoughts and feelings may seem obvious at the Recognize step, but some intentional investigation might reveal something you didn’t know or deepen your understanding of yourself. Ask: Why do I feel this way? What might this emotion be trying to tell me? What does it feel like physically? What else might be influencing how I feel? What started as “I’m mad at myself for not being productive today” might turn into “I’m frustrated and stressed because I have a lot to do, but need to remind myself I didn’t get a great night’s sleep last night and haven’t paused for lunch yet.” Which, look! Some self-compassion.
Non-identification: A common refrain in self-compassion work like this is you are more than your thoughts and feelings. That’s because it’s so damn important to remind yourself. Too often we focus on what our thoughts and feelings mean about us. For example, when we feel angry, we can be quick to feel guilty about feeling angry because we don’t want to be an Angry Person. Or we feel insecure and self-hating and we rationalize that those feelings be true or that we must deserve them. The non-identification step helps us start to untangle our feelings and thoughts from our sense of self-worth and identity—and start making it easy to reach compassionate conclusions.
Here’s what it looks like in action.
If you’re not totally sold yet, don’t worry, I wasn’t at first either. Believe me, my therapist patiently repeated, “This sounds like a good opportunity for RAIN,” for weeks before I even gave it a try on my own time. Once I did, I started to see the appeal.
Let’s walk through an example of one of my recent uses of RAIN. A friend of mine was telling me about the cute dates she and her girlfriend had been having in quarantine, and I (a single human who’s living alone during the pandemic) started to feel the stirrings of sadness, jealousy, and loneliness.
Typically, I would not only swallow down those feelings, but I would also start to feel guilty. My inner monologue would unfold pretty mercilessly: You’re such a bad friend. Why are you making this about you? Can’t you just be happy for her? This is exactly why you’re single. You’re a rotten person who deserves to die alone. (Hey, this is a safe space—I know there are people out there who can relate.) After that, I would probably spend the next therapy session ranting about how I’m a cranky monster who’s incapable of feeling happy for other people. Right on cue, my therapist would be like, “You’re not being very kind to yourself,” and I would be like, “I’m just being truthful.”
And you wonder why my therapist loved to tell me to just please, God, try RAIN. So here’s how I’d walk myself through those feelings with RAIN in mind:
Recognize: Shit, I’m jealous! I want that! And the fact that I don’t have it makes me feel insecure and shitty about myself! Even though I’m happy for my friend in theory, wow, my big ol’ yearning heart is louder than that happiness right now! I’m even feeling resentful and annoyed that she keeps talking about how happy she is!
Allow: Obviously I don’t want to feel unsupportive and resentful and annoyed, but instead of telling myself how I should be feeling, I’m going to focus on what I am feeling. I’ll let my feelings be so I can investigate them with an open mind.
Investigate: I’m probably feeling this way because I’ve been particularly sensitive lately due to loneliness and the pandemic. It has more to do with me than my friend. Although, hm, now that I’m thinking about it, I might even be feeling a little hurt and insecure that my friend doesn’t seem to realize how intimacy-starved I’ve felt since the pandemic began, and that’s making me feel lonelier.
Non-identification: I’m not a bad person because I feel this way. I can be happy for her and sad for me at the same time. Also, I don’t actually want my friend to hold back from sharing with me just because I felt a certain way in the moment. All these things can be true at the same time, and I can work with that.
Is that the end of the story or my emotions? Of course not—there are still plenty of opportunities to unpack, manage, and decide what to do with them. That’s where other mental health tools come into play. But compared to my knee-jerk process of judgment and self-loathing, RAIN is a big step up.
My favorite part of RAIN is that it doesn’t ask me to talk myself out of my feelings. Is it probably unhelpful to think, for example, that I’m going to die alone? Sure, but just because it’s not helpful doesn’t mean I don’t feel it. Where popular advice might tell me to combat my thoughts with loving affirmations, RAIN meets me—and all my messy feelings—where I’m at. In doing so, self-compassion actually feels within my reach on a day-to-day basis, and I can hope that with practice it might even come naturally to me.
Can’t hurt to try, right?
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