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Lesson Objectives
- Learn the Rising Strong process and the critical role that curiosity and recognition of emotion play in rising.
- Practice identifying emotion, recognizing when you are emotionally hooked, and getting curious about emotion.
- Identify the six primary offloading strategies and when/where you are the most likely to use them.
Reading Assignments – Rising Strong
Chapter 4
Lesson Video – The Reckoning
The Rising Strong Process
The goal of this process is to rise from our falls, overcome our mistakes, and face hurt in a way that brings more wisdom and wholeheartedness.
The Reckoning: Walking into Our Story
Recognize emotion, and get curious about our feelings and how they connect with the way we think and behave.
The Rumble: Owning Our Story
Get honest about the stories we are making up about our struggle, then challenge these confabulations and assumptions to determine what’s truth, what’s self-protection, and what needs to change if we want to lead more wholehearted lives.
The Revolution: Process Becomes Practice
Write a new ending to our story based on the key learnings from our rumble and use this new, braver story to change how we engage with the world and to ultimately transform the way we live, love, parent, and lead.
Lesson Video – Offloading Hurt
Exercise One – Getting Emotionally Hooked
Using the Story Rumble Glossary, pick four emotions that you want to explore.
First Emotion:
Enter the emotion you’ve selected.
How’s my body responding?
Where am I physically feeling this?
Is there a thought constantly looping in my mind?
What’s my go-to thought process?
What’s the first thing I want to do?
What’s the only thing I want to do?
Second Emotion:
Enter the emotion you’ve selected.
How’s my body responding?
Where am I physically feeling this?
Is there a thought constantly looping in my mind?
What’s my go-to thought process?
What’s the first thing I want to do?
What’s the only thing I want to do?
Third Emotion:
Enter the emotion you’ve selected.
How’s my body responding?
Where am I physically feeling this?
Is there a thought constantly looping in my mind?
What’s my go-to thought process?
What’s the first thing I want to do?
What’s the only thing I want to do?
Fourth emotion:
Enter the emotion you’ve selected.
How’s my body responding?
Where am I physically feeling this?
Is there a thought constantly looping in my mind?
What’s my go-to thought process?
What’s the first thing I want to do?
What’s the only thing I want to do?
Note: Anger is what we consider a secondary emotion. It’s usually masking other emotions.
Integration and Wholeheartedness
“The Latin root of the word integrate is integrare, which means “to make whole.” Integrating is the engine that moves us through the reckoning, the rumble, and the revolution, and the goal of each of these processes is to make ourselves whole and wholehearted.”
Brené Brown
Integration requires understanding and acknowledging how you are feeling, thinking and behaving. You can only change yourself when you are willing and able to change all three of these aspects of yourself.
Exercise Two – Cultivating Curiosity
“To induce curiosity about a particular topic, it may be necessary to ‘prime the pump’ — to use intriguing information to get folks interested so they become more curious.”
George Loewenstein
The research made it clear that a lot of how much or how little we value emotion comes from what we were taught or saw as we were growing up.
That value usually results from a combination of several of the seven ideas listed below.
Which of the following ring true and how do they resonate with you?
Exercise Three – Offloading Hurt Strategies – Barriers to Reckoning with Emotion
Spend time thinking about each of the six strategies for offloading hurt. It’s important to think about them from both a personal and professional perspective. We can use all of these strategies at different times and with different people.
Chandeliering – The hurt is packed so far down that it can’t possibly resurface.
- A seemingly innocent comment sends me into a rage or sparks a crying fit.
- A small mistake triggers a huge shame attack.
- Constructive feedback hits a tender place and I jump out of my skin.
- Sometimes I work out my anger and hurt on other people.
Bouncing Hurt – Using anger, blame, and/or avoidance when getting too close to emotion.
- Anger: It’s easier to get mad or turn to “I don’t give a damn” than to, “I’m hurt.”
- Blame: Fault-finding, making excuses, inflicting payback, lashing out as self-protection.
- Avoidance: Thinking “I’m fine – no worries” or pretending it doesn’t matter or saying “whatever.”
Numbing – I can take the edge off emotional pain with: __________________________
(Examples include alcohol, drugs, food, sex, relationships, money, work, caretaking, gambling, affairs, religion, chaos, shopping, planning, perfectionism, constant change, the Internet, and the list goes on.)
Stockpiling – I keep firmly packing down the pain and it’s taking a toll on my body and my health.
- I just continue to build up hurt until the wisest part of me, my body, decides that enough is enough.
- The body’s message is always clear: Shut down the stockpiling or I’ll shut you down.
High Centered – I struggle with sharing emotion because once I’ve opened that door I feel like it’s too hard to share more when people ask, and I can’t take it back.
- Once I engage even a little, I won’t be able to move backward and pretend that it doesn’t matter, but moving forward might open a floodgate of emotion that I can’t control. I’ll be stuck.
- What if I recognize the emotion and it dislodges something and I can’t maintain control?
- I’ll regret letting someone know I’m in struggle.
The Umbridge – I don’t give myself permission to experience dark emotions so I pretend everything is okay while those dark emotions fester and grow.
- I’m overly sweet and accommodating when I feel resentful, hurt, frustrated, etc.
- I say yes when I mean no.
- Sometimes my niceness is inauthentic and I can feel like a ticking bomb.
Exercise Four – My Reckoning
“Owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing we’ll ever do.”
Brené Brown
It’s time to dig into your reckoning. Think about the fall you identified earlier in the class and let’s explore a little deeper by answering the following questions. We are going to build our daring new story at the end of every lesson. It may feel repetitive but it’s important that we revisit our experiences, from top to bottom, after every lesson.
Art Journaling Exercise
Journaling Instructions:
- Find or take a picture that represents the offloading hurt strategy(s) that showed up during your story. Feel free to attach one or more pictures to your journal.
- Add a description(s) of how you offloaded hurt during your story.
- Examples:
- Stockpiling: getting ill and racing heartbeat.
- Numbing: watching hours of TV and taking the edge off with food.
- Examples:
- You can use the supplies you have available to get creative when completing and decorating this journal page.
