Vulnerability, Courage, Shame, and Empathy | The Reckoning

Lesson Objectives

• Describe 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

Exercise: Getting Emotionally Hooked

        
“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.

Using the Story Rumble Glossary (found in the resource tab on the left), pick two emotions that you want to explore and answer the questions below. 

Note: Anger is what we consider a secondary emotion. It’s usually masking other emotions. 

When I experience: 
The emotion you've selected

I'm feeling (affect/ emotion): 
How’s my body responding? Where am I physically feeling this?

I'm thinking (cognition): 
Is there a thought constantly looping in my mind? What’s my go-to thought process?

I do/I act (behavior):
What’s the first thing I want to do? What’s the only thing I want to do?

Using the story rumble glossary, write down the names of all of the emotions that often show up as anger for you. 

Exercise: Cultivating Curiosity

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.

• Being emotional is a sign of vulnerability, and vulnerability is weakness
• Don’t ask. Don’t tell. You can feel emotion all you want, but there’s nothing to be gained by sharing it with other
• We don’t have access to emotional language or a full emotional vocabulary, so we stay quiet or make fun of it
• Discussing emotion is frivolous, self-­indulgent, and a waste of time. It’s not for people like us
• We’re so numb to feeling that there’s nothing to discuss
• Uncertainty is too uncomfortable
• Engaging and asking questions invites trouble. I’ll learn something I don’t want to or shouldn’t know

01. Think through each one of these to determine if they ring true for you, and if so, how? 

02. Given what you're exploring in this exercise, are their permission slips that you'd like to add?

Exercise: Offloading Hurt Strategies

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.

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: 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?

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.
Sometimes my niceness is inauthentic and I can feel like a ticking bomb.

For each offloading hurt strategy answer the following questions:

01. When do I offload hurt this way? With whom?

02. What I feel when I'm on the receiving end of someone offloading hurt this way:

Exercise: 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. 

Your fall or "face down" moment:

01. How did you know that you were emotionally hooked?

02. What emotions/experiences were you or are you willing to get curious about?

03. How have I been offloading hurt? 

04. What permission did you or do you need to give yourself?