INTRODUCING “RISING STRONG™” A NEW CURRICULUM AND BOOK BY BRENE´ BROWN, LMSW

RisingStrong_LogoBasedOnLast week I began publicizing my upcoming Rising Strong™ group for women (see attached flyer at end of post). I want to say a few words about this new curriculum since many people do not yet know what it is. Brene´Brown released the book Rising Strong™ in August 2015. It is the latest in her series about creating a courage practice for your life based on development of shame resilience and increased willingness to be vulnerable in one’s life. As a Certified Daring Way™ Facilitator-Candidate I received an advance copy of the book with the expectation that I would ultimately be trained in the material and integrate it into my work with individuals and groups. After having enthusiastically read Brene´’s previous three books I admit to having been a bit wary of this one. After all, how much new material can she have on shame resilience? I thought to myself that this was going to be the one where she starts repackaging and rehashing everything we already know about vulnerability and shame, and I was going to be disappointed and bored.

I am here today to say how wrong I was. I am super enthusiastic about the book and about my upcoming group in January. Rising Strong™ really does take off where The Daring Way™ left off. Both books use the analogy of Teddy Roosevelt’s “arena” to describe how we show up and be seen in our lives. In the case of The Daring Way™ we learn the tools we need to enter the arena, knowing that we’re at risk of getting hurt. In a nutshell The Daring Way™ teaches us the importance of having trusted friends we can count on, and how important empathy and self-compassion are when we’re going into a situation with no guarantees. The curriculum teaches us to remove our armor and let ourselves be seen, and helps us understand how to recognized shame and what our shame triggers are.

Rising Strong™ specifically addresses what we can do when we’ve already gone into the arena and have fallen. How do we get curious about our emotions when we’re feeling hurt? How do we understand and question the stories we tell ourselves about what happened so that we can really rumble with the underlying hurts? And how do we write a new ending to our stories that allows us to move past the hurt and try again? As you can tell by my choice of words, Rising Strong™ is all about story. It’s about the stories we tell ourselves when we fall, the ways we act out those stories by offloading hurt, and is about finding a more accurate ending that keeps us aligned with our authenticity. Using the idea of story to address hard issues such as grief and forgiveness, anxiety, criticism, and trust allows us to really dig in and access hard material that would be a lot harder using a different format.

I hope this answers a few of the questions that have come up about the curriculum. My flyer for the upcoming group is attached to this post, along with contact information if you’d like to know more. I look forward to Rising Strong with many of you in the coming months.

Rising Strong Flyer

 

 

 

Comments are closed.