Mental Well-being Through Lockdown: Right as R.A.I.N.
Unless you've been living under a rock for your many years, you'll know that The U.K. and the rain are synonymous. It's like tea, without tea we'd be a chaotic band of uncivilised islanders forever on the quest for domination of our tribes. Its just part of our DNA.. Okay, well maybe that's just the fiction in my mind that our society is built on rain and tea but nonetheless, today we'll be talking about R.A.I.N. Although the picture may be a little misleading later on, this technique is amazing for our anxiety and support through lockdown. See it as a cue word or a reminder as a tool to use on the go.
R.A.I.N is a great technique as it allows us to really get to grips with ourselves within our own environment as a result of something that makes us stressed, anxious or angry. in the modern day, we don't feel aligned with our emotions as for the most part in our fast paces lives, we don't take the time to deal with our emotions. Humans instinctively anticipate what is going to go wrong in the environment. The reason for this is that when we were cavemen and cavewomen, a negative feeling would be a motivator for us to progress, for example: No food = being hungry = get food = happier. In the modern life, we don't need such negative emotions to be a motivator as we already have our basic needs there, our brain has just not evolved to this way of living. In the modern day, we're constantly worrying and strategizing trouble and we really miss out on what is here right in the moment. A Harvard study found a decade ago that we spend 50% of our time thinking about things that isn't really happening. As this is our default "autopilot" method of operating and that humans focus on the negatives, it explains why we end up in a negative rut.
Ask yourself, how often are you in the mindset of "I have to get things done", "somethings missing" or " I haven't done enough, this needs to get done"? When we get like this most people will say I or they like to keep busy, but this may be more a result of using our thoughts in avoiding the rawness of our feelings to use this as an escape route in avoidance of our own feelings. I like to call this The Last Taboo, we feel we cant deal or speak about our thoughts and emotions because its our deep personal core that we will be exposing to others, we feel exceptionally vulnerable and we keep busy to take ourselves out of the body (where the feeling reside) and redirect our focus.
With this avoidance tactic, we miss out on the challenging emotions like shame and guilt (its our go to) but we also miss out on the core positives such as love and joy. As a young man whom experienced trauma growing up I used to do the exact same. Such thoughts, evolutionarily anyway, are key for surviving and thriving but since we are so habituated to get lost in those thoughts almost like a trance. Before you know it, hours have passed by and we can't remember a moment when we focused on our breath or feeling the air on our skin on even take in the sounds around you (the rain, birdsong etc). We're always living in the future or the past, but never in the now, feeling what's real. Another example is that we spend (especially in lockdown) a whole day, evening, 4 hours on the settee binge watching Netflix, eating a whole Doritos or even spending far too much time online. Those times the hours pass by and we say "where has the day gone, is it that time already?" It's all just happened.
What if I told you it was driven by our survival brain, the fear of what's coming up, we're grasping to avoid the unknown. We all develop what Psychologist Tara Brach calls "The Spacesuit", this protective bubble to defend us from the magnitude of the unknown. Within the Spacesuit, we develop our own strategies to manage, navigate, to gain approval, to get what we want out of life, to defend and protect ourselves. Think of it like a face that we show the world but we don't show our real face to anyone but ourselves. With time, we identify with the Spacesuit to say id we are the one with the addiction or the one to prove themselves with the achievements, we focus/identify on the surface of this but with it all going on in our heads, we forget who is looking through the visor. Many Spacesuits take different shapes and one of the trances most shows through is the Trance of Unworthiness.
As humans, we tend to not like ourselves nor do we trust ourselves, within these trances, we tell ourselves a sheer amount of negative stories about what is wrong with us " I don't feel I can be successful" or " I was always a loner". This has a profound impact on the way we behave in the world. In this trance, we try to avoid the world with our own addictive behaviour such as smoking, alcohol, gambling, drugs, self-harm etc. We lost the sense of intimacy with others because we feel that if we got close to someone and they knew about our story, then they would run a mile. I remember having these thoughts as a teen, from there I could never have a relationship and it took me years to find out why. This can even be in the office where we wont take risks as we fear that we will fall short and that would hurt us. These beliefs really keep us in a mind prison, locked up with little movement.
This is all within the Spacesuit, but the key to reversing it is the most simple and hardest of them all; taking the Spacesuit off. This is so difficult for us to do, especially if we are used to blaming others, but really underneath we are blaming ourselves in a twist of lacking self-worth. This doesn't mean putting another protective suit on such as " I need a better salary" or "I need that summer beach body" but rather it's about looking at that deep scary area that we are really afraid of directly. Think of the Spacesuit as your "ego" self, it's not about trying to get rid of our self, its about trying to come back to the moment, to think and feel "what is underneath this".
As a result of this, we will feel in our body is that deep squeeze of deep fear or insecurity that's begging for our attention. Take this time now to think? have I experienced this? is it that butterfly or stressed feeling that makes sense now? Have a long think on this, if it is you're most likely experiencing what we are talking about now.
BACK TO R.A.I.N.
R.A.I.N is an great tool for you to use, it's an extension of the mindfulness and self-compassion practices we spoke about in our previous article Dropping Your Drill Sergeant, it's an easy to follow check list that you can use whenever you feel that stressy tightness wherever you are. RAIN is the acronym for Recognise, Accept, Investigate and Nurture. This has been my go-to-strategy since i learnt it, it helps me with when I'm stress at work with colleagues, if I'm constantly making mistakes, if that Sunday driver is being too slow and even if I cant control the situation.
How it works.
Anytime there is a negative experience or suffering is an invitation to find out what's going on and make a healing presence. R.A.I.N. starts with pausing in the moment. If you remember the BBC children's TV show Bernard's Watch back in to early 2000s, when Bernard got into a "spot of bother" he'd pause the situation by stopping his watch, to take a step back and the go on to do what he needed to do. So pause.
The R of R.A.I.N is Recognise, this means to recognise whatever it is that is predominant whether it is anxiety, maybe guilt, maybe both. With Recognise, it's really helpful to mentally whisper to your mind what it is that you're feeling at that moment. The reason for this is because in that exact moment or naming what we feel, we are not quite as caught (we're processing the scene) in the moment of what's going on that activates the Prefrontal Cortex (the forehead part of the brain), its a little more of being present of what we're seeing.
The A of R.A.I.N is Allow. This means that by not steaming ahead or making quick judgement or snapping to your go to behaviour, you let it be there (this is the really tough bit if you haven't done it before yet it only gets better as the more we do it). Say to yourself "okay this is happening, this belongs, they're just the waves in the ocean right now, it's going to change but this is the situation right now" you will come out the other side like a ship travels the seas.
The I of R.A.I.N is Investigate. This is your chance and time to investigate the feelings in your body, many people think Investigate means to look at why your response has occurred "it started when I was a child", that's a conversation for a different time, this Investigate is for "In The Now". Investigate is about to focus on how your feel in your body such as your chest, your throat, the pressure from your hands on the desk or each other (are they in a fist?). These are looking at the feelings of the squeeze in the body that we don't really notice normally or anxiety. The investigation phase looks into the own beliefs such as "if I don't work hard at this, I'm a failure" so this comes into your awareness.
Finally the end of R.A.I.N. is Nurture. Really interesting fact, in this stage, if you put your hand on your heart and focus internally on how you feel, research has shown that this soothes our body. Oxytocin, the hormone that we get from a hug or touch that allows calming and self soothing is activated and we feel the effects almost immediately, I imagine its the little fireman from the Gaviscon TV advert soothing our inside. This calming suppresses the Sympathetic Nervous System, the area that is associated with the Fight Or Flight response. When we are here, with the feeling of anger or anxiety in the Nurture stage, send a kind message to yourself, something compassionate like "it's okay Dan, it's going to work out, what you're doing will com through" or " its okay, you don't need to struggle so hard".
After The Rain
Like after the spring showers, or even rain after a dry period, we enter the Blossom Phase. The grass grows so fast and the flowers come out at once, we are exactly the same. It's only after these 4 steps that we can feel a shift, it maybe large or small but in the space of directedness, clarity, openheartedness, clarity and spaciousness. What we want to avoid using this techniques is being stuck in the Spacesuit self but more connected to our own body. The R.A.I.N technique is an extension of mindfulness and self-compassion, something we don't spend enough time on at all. Recognise is the beginning of mindfulness in that we notice, Allowing is the beginning of compassion without judgement, creating space for ourselves. Investigate deepens the mindfulness because we are able to bring focused attention to what's actually here, what happening to our body in the now and opening ourselves to in. Nurture allows the fullness of compassion, by nurturing, we are able to free up from the tension that keeps us squeezed and feeling small. This allows us to deepen our understanding and deeper compassion for mindfulness.
In a simple term, R.A.I.N creates a U-turn in our body, it makes us look at what's going on inside of us because our norm is to avoid it. As barmy as it may sound, mindfulness and self-compassion allow us to make more open choices that aligns with what we want to do and this allows us to be happier. As Tara Bach says referring to trances "suffering is separation, the more we are caught in a trance the more we are separate from our own bodies, our peers and our social circle".
R.A.I.N can also be used, especially when we do this a lot, for blame. R.A.I.N on blame really helps us recognise that "judging" we have when we immediately blame others and it brings back that nurturing to ourselves. Think of this metaphor:
You're walking through the woods and you come across a dog. You go over to pet the dog and then it lurches at you, it's ears back, it's fangs showing and it's aggressive. You will go from being really friendly and calm to angry. Then you look over and see the dog has its hind leg caught in a trap. we would empathise such as " you poor thing", you may not go over as it might be a dangerous approach, but your heart has shifted.
This is how R.A.I.N works, there is a lot more forgiveness and compassion.
In the modern world, we forget. We forget that just like us, other people are living in uncertainty and its not about how much achievement they have or how much money. Everyone is in a body that will one day not be here anymore, we live in an insecure world but we're in this together and there is something great about supporting each other on this. When we make this U-turn we begin to trust ourselves more, more belonging to our world.
To finish, lets give you a case study of an US Army Lieutenant. He had anger problems and found R.A.I.N through a mindfulness course. He was at the store getting a big shop in, he was stuck in the queue behind a woman and her little girl whom has only one item. The cashier was spending time oo-ing and ahh-ing over the little girl with the woman. The lieutenant was getting more frustrated, filling up with steam and mad saying internally "who do they think they are, I've got a lot to do" and it was at this moment he thought "signal" and began his mindfulness R.A.I.N technique in the queue. He registered that his madness wasn't anger, it was the fear of not getting things done he needed to do. He took a few deep breaths after his exercise and opened his eyes, from here his perception changed. He thought "that chid is adorable" and when it was his turn with the cashier, he said about how adorable she is. The cashier lit up with a great smile and said "oh that's my daughter. My mother takes her over to visit me, my husband was killed in Afghanistan last year and this is the only time that I have have to spend with my daughter".
Have a read back through that feel the different stages of the story. I bet we can relate to some memories where we may of not looked at the bigger picture.
Food for thought.
