As you begin the new year, how does “deep, tumultuous, groundbreaking, no-turning-back transformation” sound for you and your loved ones? That’s exactly what a Rising Strong group promises … and there’s only one spot left in the next intensive (January 10-12, 2020)!
Rising Strong is a highly experiential methodology based on the research of Dr. Brené Brown. The goal of the Rising Strong Intensive is to learn how to rise from our falls, overcome our mistakes, and face hurt in a way that brings more wisdom and wholeheartedness to our lives.
If there were ever a way to start 2020 off with your best foot forward, this is it.
“What I’ve learned about surviving hurt has saved me again and again. It saved me and, in the process, it changed me.”
– Brené Brown
How could one curriculum achieve that feat? What exactly is Rising Strong?
Below are the details of what a Rising Strong group consists of:
Session 1: Introduction
In order to dig deep, we first need to focus on connection. Together, we will
- articulate your needs & understand the needs of others
- set boundaries
- talk about how and when to reach out for support
We will also become familiar with the physics of vulnerability and the ten rules of engagement for rising strong by uncovering what vulnerability is (and what it isn’t), what it means to dare greatly, what it means to fail, and how to rise strong after a fall.
Session 2: Clarity of Values & Owning our Stories
In this session we will:
- Identify the values that are most important in our lives
- learn why values clarification is essential to the development of resiliency
- Learn how to integrate values into our daily lives
- Embrace the idea that if we deny our story, it defines us.
“When we own our story, we get to write our own ending. We don’t want to be a character in our story—not a villain or even a hero. We want to be the author.” – Brené Brown
- Integrate all of the parts of ourselves:
“The successes, but also the hard stories, the orphaned stories, the stories that we don’t want to claim, and the stories that get in the way of who we want to be. We can’t write the end of our story if we don’t own it. Integration is the soul of rising strong and the engine that moves us through the process.” – Brené Brown
Session 3: ACT 1: THE RECKONING – WALKING INTO OUR STORY
Together, we will recognize what emotion is, get curious about our feelings, and investigate how our feelings connect with the way we think and behave.
- First, we learn how to notice when we’re feeling something—a skill many of us have failed to embrace as we’ve grown into adults. This might mean you begin to notice thoughts such as:
- I don’t know what’s happening, but I just want to hide.
- I just want to punch a wall.
- My stomach is in knots.
- I want Oreos. All of them.
- Second, rising strong requires getting curious about our experience. This might sound like:
- Why am I being so hard on everyone around me today?
- What’s setting me off?
- How did I get to the point where I want to punch a wall?
- I can’t stop thinking about that conversation at work. Why not?
SESSION 4: OFFLOADING HURT
Many of us weren’t raised in families where getting curious about emotion was the norm. Without the skills to really dig into emotion, we do whatever we can to avoid feeling the emotion, in short, we offload the hurt. The problem is that when we offload hurt instead of processing through the hurt, the hurt actually grows and takes a stronger hold on our lives than we may realize.
This is my favorite piece of the Rising Strong process. Realizing the ways we offload hurt leads to the possibility of true healing, real resolution, and growth.
SESSION 5: STRATEGIES FOR RECKONING WITH EMOTION
Together, we will practice and build skills to engage with and experience emotion, including mindfulness and breathing. Research has shown that this processing emotions leads to an adaptive response—meaning that while feeling and processing emotions can be difficult, there’s always an adaptive response that follows (read: helpful, relieving, and calming). This is the response that at our core, we know we need and crave. And this piece of the Rising Strong process will teach us how to get there.
SESSION 6: ACT 2 THE RUMBLE
We will explore how we have meaning-making in our biology: our brains are compelled to make up stories about things that happen to us—even if they are based on incomplete information.
Our brains dislike uncertainty and like certainty. This means when something happens, our brain would rather draw an immediate and certain conclusion (that may not be true) rather than sitting in uncertainty about what really happened.
For example, if we think our neighbor gives us a dirty look, our brain may immediately make up a story that the neighbor has never liked us… when in reality, the neighbor may have just received bad news and the look had nothing to do with us. However, in that moment, our brain would rather draw a (faulty) conclusion that the neighbor dislikes us (because that is certain, there’s no gray area in that story), rather than sitting in the uncertainty of that moment.
“When unconscious storytelling becomes our default, we often keep tripping over the same issue, staying down when we fall, and having different versions of the same problem in our relationships—we’ve got the story on repeat.” – Brené Brown
There are a lot of lessons in these first stories we tell ourselves. To learn from these stories, we must first identify them (what Anne Lamott would call your “shitty first draft”), before we can challenge them and learn from them.
In this part of the Rising Strong process, we learn how to challenge these stories our brains tell.
SESSIONS 7-14: COMMON RUMBLING THEMES
In her research, Brene discovered some generally consistent themes for the stories we tell ourselves. These themes include:
- Vulnerability
- Shame
- Living BIG (with Boundaries, Integrity, and Generous Assumptions)
- Trust
- Grief
- Forgiveness
- Anxiety
- Criticism
In sessions 7-14, we will deepen your emotional vocabulary and your self-awareness while exploring these common themes showing up in the stories you’re telling yourself. We will take a deep dive into each theme, learning more about these stuck points, and learning how to overcome them.
SESSION 15: THE DELTA
The Delta is a mathematical symbol for difference. For us, the delta is where meaning and wisdom of this experience live. The delta holds our key learnings—the difference between what we make up about our experiences and the truth we discover through the process of rumbling.
Our goal is to take our key learnings from this process and be able to apply them to future problems going forward.
“When we stand in the middle of an issue and identify the problem and the root cause, we can typically extract a key learning that helps us navigate similar problems or issues going forward.” – Brené Brown
SESSION 16: ACT III – THE REVOLUTION
In this last section, we will explore how to make the Rising Strong process a regular practice in our life. While the Rising Strong Intensive is just 3 powerful days, the goal is to make the Rising Strong process a consistent, automatic, everyday, practice, thereby creating a revolution in your life.
“What’s become clear in the research is that the Rising Strong process can lead to deep, tumultuous, groundbreaking, no-turning-back transformation. The process may be a series of incremental changes, but when the process becomes a practice—a way of engaging with the world—there’s no doubt that it ignites revolutionary change. It changes us and it changes the people around us.
All revolutions start with a new vision of what’s possible. Our vision is that we can rise from our experiences of hurt and struggle in a way that allows us to live more wholehearted lives. However, transforming the way we live, love, parent, and work requires us to act on our vision: the Rising Strong process is nowhere near as powerful as the Rising Strong practice. The revolution starts when we own and embody what lives at the heart of rising strong—the story rumble—in our everyday lives. ” – Brené Brown
There’s just 1 spot left in the next Rising Strong Intensive January 10-12 … email me at hello@kindred-counseling.com to secure your spot!
