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My new spiritual practice: Coping with feelings that want to dominate

Lynne Baab • Wednesday May 17 2017

My new spiritual practice: Coping with feelings that want to dominate

I’ve written the last two weeks about a new spiritual practice that I have been engaging in for the past year: separating thoughts from feelings, letting the thoughts go and feeling the feelings. Last week I wrote about the RAIN acronym that helps me feel my feelings. I argued that this is a Christian spiritual practice because it helps me bring my feelings into God’s presence, as modeled in the Psalms. It helps me love and serve God more fully because I am less distracted by negative thoughts and feelings.

In this post I want to talk more about the third step of the RAIN process: investigate the feeling or feelings. Part of that investigation involves figuring out where in my body the feeling has the most impact. That helps me grow in identifying feelings more easily.

Another part of investigating involves trying to figure out if there is something I need to do right now in response to the feelings. Since many of my negative feelings involve fears for the future, occasionally I can see that something specific can be done right now which will help me feel less anxious. Most often, though, there is nothing that I can actually do right now. This is quite enlightening, because if there’s nothing concrete I can do right now, then all I can do is pray and relinquish the situation into God’s hands.

A third part of investigating feelings involves asking the feelings what they want. This takes some practice. Our feelings do have a voice, and we can learn to listen to that voice.

Sometimes my feelings just want to be acknowledged. “Oh, okay,” I say in response as if I’m talking to the part of me that’s having the feeling. “You’re there. I’ve been ignoring you. I hear you and see you.”

More often, though, my feelings want to dominate. They are saying something like, “You’re scared about X. You’re right to be scared. Something awful could happen! Fear is the right response! It’s awful! It’s terrible! Be afraid every moment!”

A few years ago I learned a mind-body technique called the Lightning Process. The first step is to say no to the thing we don’t want to do or think. So when I hear my feelings saying they want to dominate, I simply say, “No, I don’t want that.”

The second part of the Lightning Process involves asking a question: “Do you want that, or do you want something else?” The “something else” needs to be spelled out clearly. So here are two of the questions I ask, along with my response, when I’m on the investigate step of RAIN. Saying the response in our minds, or even saying it out loud, is very significant because it shapes our brains.

Do you want fear to dominate, or do you want to see your fear as only one part of your life? I want to see it as one part of my life, and I want to be aware that I experience many other joyful emotions over the course of every day.

Do you want sadness to overwhelm you, or do you want to let Jesus come alongside you and experience his comfort? I want to let Jesus come alongside me. I want to experience his comfort and peace. I want to know he feels every emotion with me. I want to know I’m not alone and that Jesus bears my burdens.

The “N” step of RAIN, non-identify, is very helpful in dealing with feelings that want to dominate. Saying, even saying out loud, that feelings are like weather and this one is transient, not permanent, is helpful. Equally helpful is naming other positive emotions that have been present that day, no matter how fleeting. Naming tiny moments of joy or thankfulness will help those moments increase.

The challenge with RAIN is remembering to use it when negative thoughts are swirling in my brain or when I feel a strong desire to eat when I’m not particularly hungry. It’s so easy to let the thoughts or the desire for food to dominate. They lead me away from God’s peace. RAIN has helped me grow in experiencing God’s peace so I can love and serve God more fully.

(Next week: dealing with “demonic” thoughts. Illustration by Dave Baab. If you’d like to receive an email when I post on this blog, sign up under “subscribe” in the right hand column.)



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