As a brief recap, reparenting is the process of recognizing your responsibility for meeting your own needs. It is not about blaming your parents; instead, it involves moving past blaming external circumstances and taking ownership of your life. Every person, regardless of their family of origin or experiences growing up, can benefit from this journey. You are the best—and perhaps the only—person who knows exactly what you need and want. This journey involves prioritizing yourself and trusting in your intrinsic worth to ensure that your inner child feels seen, heard, and understood.

We have previously reviewed three of the four pillars of reparenting in earlier episodes: self-discipline, self-care, and joy. This week, we will explore the fourth component of this process: emotional regulation. Emotional regulation involves cultivating a stable baseline from which you can navigate the inevitable highs and lows of life.

Several decades ago, a Vipassana teacher named Michele McDonald created a technique using the acronym RAIN to help when feeling overwhelmed by emotions. Many people, including psychologist and author Tara Brach, have adapted this method. I will use this tool to describe an easy-to-remember method for self-regulation when feeling engulfed. RAIN stands for Recognize, Allow, Investigate, and Non-Identification or Nurture.

The first step is to recognize that an emotion has been triggered or activated. If you struggle to identify your emotions, take time each week to get to know them. Emotions are felt first in the body. Start by noticing where you feel the six core emotions: anger, fear, disgust, sadness, surprise, and joy. If you want to go deeper, I highly recommend Brené Brown’s book Atlas of the Heart, which does an exquisite job of mapping the experience of 87 emotions. 

The second step is to allow your emotions. The more we suppress them, the greater the chance they will come out sideways, creating exactly what we were trying to prevent. It is like trying to keep a big beach ball under the water in a pool—it keeps wanting to spring up to the surface. If you continue to push it down, it eventually shoots up into the air. In reality, when we can get out of our heads and into our bodies, it takes just 90 seconds for an emotion to move through us.

Once you recognize an emotion, it is important to S-L-O-W D-O-W-N. Do not make choices in these moments. Don’t continue the argument you find yourself in (whether with a friend, partner, or yourself). Pause what you are doing whenever possible, give yourself space, and breathe. Practice breathwork and self-soothing touch (watch this week’s episode for more on this). Allow the emotions without pushing them away or distracting yourself. If you cannot allow yourself time in the moment, give yourself the gift of time as soon as you are able, and certainly before going to bed that night.

The third step, once the intensity has decreased, is to investigate. Zoom out and observe the big picture. What is at the source of your emotion? It can be helpful to check in with yourself to see how old you feel. Oftentimes, triggers occur when something in the present reminds your inner child of something that happened in the past. We tend to react as though it is happening now. While there may be threads of familiarity, there are also important distinctions. We may be making assumptions about what something means. Stop and investigate as you cultivate a deeper sense of inner knowing.

The final step is non-identification or nurture. Have you become aware of what you want and need through the investigation? Are you able to provide for your needs or ask for support from a friend, family member, or partner? Sometimes, it is through the disappointment of not getting our needs met that we gain clarity and recognition of what they are, allowing us to take responsibility for fulfilling them. It is also important to remember that you are not defined by your emotions and that what you are feeling is temporary. Talk to yourself as you would to a small child (your inner child) or a best friend. As you prioritize your relationship with yourself, my hope is that you will become your own best friend, even if you don’t feel that way at the moment.

If you feel emotionally stuck or need to connect more with recognizing your emotions, it may indicate a need to spend time getting to know your inner landscape. Your emotions are a gift—each and every one of them. They point us to our needs and can help us connect. To become more familiar with your emotions, you can practice mindfulness, spend time in silence to listen within and notice physical sensations, limit screen time, ensure proper nutrition and hydration, spend time in nature, enjoy movement, and allow for rest. Sounds like self-care, doesn’t it (wink, wink)?

The teachable takeaway this week is to practice RAIN when experiencing strong emotions. As with anything new, you may not remember it in the moment, so move through each step as soon as you recognize you’ve experienced a strong emotion, trigger, or reaction. Set an alarm or mark it in your calendar that if a week goes by without noticing a strong emotion, take a situation where you felt the strongest emotion and practice each step with that experience. The more you practice, the more you’ll feel the benefits and the more you’ll remember to use it when it’s needed most.