RIP was initially developed to help with anxiety, but it can be applied to any episodic distressing emotional state or unhelpful behavior. It can be applied to feeling angry, lonely, embarrassed, sad/depressed, uncertain or hurt..any unpleasant emotion as long as that feeling comes and goes rather than is constant. It can also be applied to bad habits: overeating, yelling at my kids, overuse of social media, excessive drinking or drug use, procrastination, too much screen time, and so on.
When these emotions and behaviors occur periodically rather than constantly, it is possible to identify the three phases of RIP: after the episode, during the episode, before the next episode. We recognize during these episodes, the front of our brain, which is responsible for higher-ordered thinking, including logic, reason and problem-solving, is “off line,” which means we are not going to expect to make rational decisions during these episodes. And what is great is the strategies of RIP do not require us to do so. In the Recovery and Prevention phases, when higher-ordered thinking is available to us, we can use the front of our brain to not only to decrease the frequency of the episodes, but to prepare ourselves to end the episodes as quickly as possible when they do occur.
To learn more about the RIP method, check out transcendpersonaldevelopment.com
