Brene Brown

I had the opportunity to see Brene Brown speak recently in the beautiful State Theatre here in Sydney. Brene has devoted a lot of her career to research, particularly in the areas of vulnerability, courage, worthiness and shame. One of the topics I was really interested in was what do the people that she has researched do differently with their lives to be courageous and rise when they fall or fail.  Resilient people recognise and work with their emotions, rather than suppress them, rationalise them or allow them to overtake us. 

She asked us a great question around how many of us grew up in homes where we were asked to identify our emotions, talk about what was happening for us, and workshop strategies to help manage our emotions. Three hands went up in the auditorium, yes that's right, three! So that lead me to thinking how so many of my clients are so hard on themselves for not dealing with their emotions better. The truth is we weren't taught this growing up; we were more likely taught to suck it up!  I am delighted to see schools teaching children meditation, tools for managing anxiety and mindfulness which will serve them well in life. 

Brene spoke about strategies to help with emotion - the reckoning, the rumbling and the revolution. So the reckoning: is about identifying the emotion and getting curious about it (the most resilient people practise this). The rumbling: is working with the emotion (what am I paying attention to?) being mindful and breathing through the emotion and grounding yourself to bring yourself back into your body and not let the emotion overtake you. When we react to the stories we make up - the brain needs data and in the absence of data, we will make something up - the problem with this is that we tend to believe the story 'as if' it were true, rather than getting on the balcony and thinking of three alternative possibilities to the story we've created in our head. Then write down the story that we're making up, significant research has been undertaken about how writing this down takes the power out of the emotion by externalising the event and again helping us get perspective. It also helps us identify the plot lines in our lives that need to be retired!! To do this in your own life, what are the themes that consistently arise for you? The revolution: is if you own the story, you get to write the ending! You deny the story, the story owns you......

This is an area that I have had to work on a lot in my own life; I have always been very effective at managing other people's emotions but not so hot at managing my own. My focus was 'other oriented' if the other felt good/safe/well, then I derived my safety from that. What I've had to reckon and rumble with is 'how do I feel safe and calm regardless of what's going on around me?' which has been a much more empowering way to live my life, but has required me to cultivate curiosity and kindness towards myself. They say 'we teach what we need to learn' and this has certainly been true for me. 

I work with all my clients on breathing techniques as the breath is the biggest regulator of stress in the body, 90% of people don't breath correctly which inhibits our ability to think and feel clearly, or gain a different perspective on the situation we're currently in.  Another tool I find really useful is the MSCEIT (Mayer Salovey Emotional Intelligence Test) which is designed to measure and develop people’s ability to recognise, use, understand and manage emotions in themselves and others so they choose how to use their emotions in a more effective way.