Episode 68: “RAISE” (Part 1 of 2)

Episode 68: “RAISE” (Part 1 of 2)

Good morning, and welcome to our latest podcast here at ConneXions Classroom. I am Jodi Hildebrandt, and I am excited this morning to share with you a process that you can use in any kind of relationship conflict, situation conflict, any kind of issue that presents itself in your life where you feel confused, or sad, or conflicted, or you have fear around, or you feel alone.

I mean, basically, any kind of situation in life that you would like to gather more clarity, there is a five-step process that we at ConneXions Classroom have created called the RAISE process.

Now, that’s an acronym for five different steps that you can learn. They’re pretty simple, they’ll be really logical to you. And as you perfect these steps, you will be able to feel a sense of connection to yourself—specifically to yourself—and to your maker, and to anyone that you engage this process with that knows how to connect with you.

Because connection is not just something that anyone can just go out and do. Connection is not something that’s for sale. You have to know how to create it in yourself so that you’re available to connect, and you also need to engage with other people who know the skills and understand the principles that connection is based upon. Because it is an outcome of living particular principles of Truth.

So, I want to share that with you this morning. My hope is that you’ll learn these principles, and that you’ll practice those in your life, and that you’ll use this process of RAISE.

I use it every single day. I think okay, where am i? What part of the process am I in, and what am I still lacking? And then, I will go to the particular people that I know in my life to help me satisfy those particular areas of this process, so that I can feel some sense of connection.

[00:03:00] Spiritual and Emotional States: Pain or Peace

So, let’s start off this morning by talking about us as human beings. All of us are in the same situation as far as we’re in this experience called life together, and inside life, as we’re experiencing life, we are in any one of two spiritual and emotional states.

We are in a state where there are discomforts, pain, anxiety, depression, sadness—those kinds of things. At any given time, we can be in that state. And that would be the state that I would call pain. When you’re in pain, for many of us, if not for all of us, we have a desperate desire to get out of pain because it’s really uncomfortable.

And so, what many of us do is we react to pain. We exit pain from a place of a lot of unsophistication, where we’ll knee jerk; we’ll really do some impulsive things trying to get away from something that hurts, which makes a lot of sense. You know, something hurts, react and get away from it.

So, if I’m feeling resentment, or hopelessness, or loneliness, or dread, or I feel like I want to avoid or isolate myself, those are really uncomfortable emotions. And so, I feel those intense emotions, and a lot of times, without doing a whole lot of thinking, I will go towards something or someone that in the past has proved itself or themselves as a real thorough distraction for me.

Distraction from what? Distraction from that pain. Distraction from the fear, the sadness, the chaos, the loneliness, the resentment. All of that. And so, many of us just kind of do that, and I’d say primitively we do that, we’ve been doing that probably for most of our lives.

So, at any point we’re in that state of spiritual and emotional experience, or we’re in a state that I would like to call peace. When I’m in peace, I’m feeling emotions that are pleasant. They are calm. They have serenity or clarity in them. I feel ordered, or I feel confident. I feel open. I understand that I’m responsible. I have no problem with being honest. And I experience a sense of intimacy or optimism that is very relaxing.

Even though things around me could be in complete chaos and upheaval, I, inside my own system and inside my own world, I know that I am in a state of peace. I’m at one with myself. I feel relaxed inside my own person because the choices that I’m making are congruent, or are indicative of the state or the experience that I want to create for myself, which is one of integrity, or one of honesty, or connection with God, and therefore, with other people.

So, there are these two states. One, that we will call pain, and the other that we’ll label peace. Now, again, when I talk about peace, I’m not talking about the state of nirvana and there’s nothing that’s uncomfortable around me. It’s just that I as the being am able to find a center point inside my experiences even though they may be swirling around me, and there might be outcomes that I would choose otherwise that are happening, I am able to find a sense of calm inside me because I am choosing to live with principles that create serenity, and create relaxation as far as inside my own integrity and character. That’s called peace.

When we are unaware, and many times we are unaware, we usually will go to some form of discomfort or pain. We’ll be spending our time, our earthly time, in this state of pain. For a lot of that, we’re not even aware that we’re there because we spend so much time, in discomfort, and angst, and anxiety, and sadness, and just disconnect. That’s a familiar place for many of us to go, which is super sad.

The feelings of fear, and anger, loneliness, confusion, boredom, all of those kind of emotions would be underneath the pain category. And all of those emotions invite me to disconnect from myself, and God, and others. And so, when I experience those emotions, and I stay in those emotions, and I kind of stroke them and massage them, and really get into them, kind of be a victim of them, I will disconnect from the principles of connection.

We here at Connection Classroom, and also the academy, our whole goal is for not only ourselves, but also for anyone who is interested in living these principles, is to teach and to live, and to be an example of connecting, and connecting doesn’t mean that you’re void of these uncomfortable feelings of confusion, and sadness, and boredom, and those kinds of things. It just means that when they come, you have principles now in your brain that will help you, teach you, guide you on how to validate those emotions, recognize those emotions, get some feedback about what those emotions are actually telling you, and spot the distortion that possibly could be inside those emotions.

Not all the time, those feelings aren’t just distorted feelings. There might be a really appropriate time to feel confused, or to feel angry, or to feel lonely. It’s just that they can become contaminated with distorted thoughts and your false beliefs.

It’s when it goes into that realm that it starts creating pain. And so, we need support in order to be invited out of those places, and be able to recognize those distortions, and spot those false beliefs, so that we once again come back to Truth, come back to honesty, come back to being responsible, being willing to acknowledge and live in a space of vulnerability, and accept the experiences, the outcomes of choices, whether they’re your own choices or someone else’s, and be able to recognize that those experiences and outcomes are not here as big bad things to harm you. They’re here to teach you, and one of their teachers is through these emotions of pain. And, it can be a teacher, but it also can be something that is very destructive if you stay inside those emotions in distortion.

Those emotions, if they become distorted by you—you are responsible for that—you will stay in a place of pain. And this process called RAISE is an invitation for anyone who is interested in learning, and in living its principles to walk you across a bridge from the place of pain, and distraction, and control, and addiction, and all those type of things that cause so much heartache and disconnect, back over to a place of peace where you can reunite once again with Truth, with yourself, with others who are in that space of connection, come back to a place of emotional honesty, being accountable for one’s self, reunite with being open, and being willing to look at one’s self and stay in a place of humility where you can be taught how to more often stay in that space of peace.

[00:12:53] Experiencing Emotions

So, anyone who is listening to this podcast, you have already experienced life in such a way where you have had conflicts, and traumas, and fears, and insecurities. You’ve felt alone and confused. Basically, any type of experience in life that triggers awareness of uncomfortable or unpleasant emotions can be addressed by using this five-step process called RAISE.

When something happens in your life, and you are feeling sad and disappointed, angry, confused, lost, dejected, lonely, bored, resentful, anxious, shamed, disgusted, embarrassed, fearful, jealous, guilty, remorseful, judgmental, if you feel right, like “I’m right” (which means you’re wrong), which is a separation between you and another person, that’s a disconnect.

If you feel hostile, hurt, miserable, paranoid, just down and depressed, regretful, stubborn, you feel superior to others, tense, or unsure, or drawn, better than or entitled. What an exhaustive list. Those are just some emotions or states of being that pop to my mind. That’s a lot of pain inside those words.

When you feel triggered to experience any of those, and you start feeling the outcomes of what those emotions bring, I invite you to come back to this process called RAISE, and instead of disconnecting inside all of that, I invite you to call someone up, or go over to someone who knows this process as well, and invite them to help you move out of those emotions, and glean wisdom from those experiences that those emotions are bringing.

Like I said before, the emotions are not bad. They just hurt. And if you stay inside those kind of emotions of pain, you have a higher likelihood and propensity to start distorting the experience, to start telling yourself things that don’t have Truth in them.

So, for example, I might say to myself, I get a bill back from my auto mechanic, and I thought that it was going to cost $150, and he hands me a bill for $1,300. And all of a sudden, I feel panic, and I feel confused, and I feel mistrust, and I feel angry, and I start feeling things like, “How dare he do this to me?” and “He’s trying to trick me, and deceive me, and use me.” And I start going into this place of anger towards him. It just starts “happening” to me.

And what’s going on is, I’m having all of these thoughts inside my head that went from hey, Johnny’s my good friend, and he’s my neighbor, and he’s my pal, and he’s super honest, and I’m so grateful that he can fix my car. And then, the second I see those numbers on a page, Johnny goes from being my friend and my pal to being my enemy, to being someone who is trying to hurt me. He goes from my neighbor, and someone I can trust, to someone who is trying to exploit me and harm me somehow, because my thoughts start distorting that experience called getting a bill where I was not expecting it to say $1,300. I was expecting it to say $100 or $150.

And so, here I am having this experience, and I’m now experiencing a conflict. It’s my internal conflict, and so if I don’t get some help for that, then I start going off in my head, and oftentimes I’m not even conscious I’m doing it—I start reacting to those automatic thoughts in my brain that are telling me something that is not the Truth about Johnny. Or maybe it is the Truth about him, but from the time that I’ve known him till the time I got the bill, I have not thought of Johnny in that manner.

And so, it’s my thoughts that are telling me that he is all of these things, and I need some help in checking out the veracity of the thoughts that I’m having to make sure that they actually are in Truth. That’s how quickly this thing can “happen to us,” and how we can just go off and be triggered by something.

So, that bill, when I saw it, triggered me to react. And like I said, I don’t even know if I’m conscious about my reaction. All I know is that I was smiling at Johnny one minute, and then the next minute smile was gone and I was angry, and I was scared, and I was panicked, like where am I going to come up with $1,300? I don’t even have a credit card that has that kind of credit on it.

So, I become really worried about how am I going to take care of myself? Which is a reasonable fear. It’s a reasonable place to go as far as my thoughts, it’s just that I’ve got to make sure that I hold them in Truth, and don’t let them just react, and implode, and impulse all over the place.

[00:19:01] Triggers

So, let’s talk about what a trigger is because you’re going to hear me use that word a lot. A trigger is when I engage in an experience (which is what I just did—taking my car in, that was all an experience). When I engage in experiences or events that elicit, or I could say trigger, emotions and feelings. That’s what a trigger is. I’m inside an experience which is constant, I’m never not having experience because my senses are constantly awake and alive, and experiencing what I smell, what I hear, and what I taste, and what I perceive. So, I’m very much alive and paying attention, so I’m experiencing events constantly.

Inside those events and experiences, they are triggering emotions/feelings. So, feeling is as constant as you breathing, that’s how often you are feeling things. You’re breathing all the time, you never stop breathing, and that is the Truth about emotions:ou are always feeling emotions. It’s just a matter of being aware of what you’re feeling.

So, when we feel emotions, we feel it with every thought, every experience, every event, there’s a corresponding emotion that will follow. So, what that means is, is that thoughts come first, and then emotions follow. And then, your behaviors follow those other two experiences of emotion and thoughts.

So, you have these experiences, and the experience is very neutral. It’s not personal to you, it just shows up. Like me taking the car in was an experience, and then him handing me the bill was an experience. It was not personal to me. However, according to how I perceive, how I think about that bill, I will have a corresponding emotion.

These corresponding emotions, whether pleasant or unpleasant, are called triggers. So, triggers, emotions, are not good, or bad or right or wrong, or any of that. They’re just there, and some are pleasant and some are not as pleasant, according to each and every person.

So, I could be experiencing happiness around someone getting married, let’s say, and my friend could be experiencing around that exact same event, sadness around someone being married. Same person, same experience, but because of our perceptions, let’s say this person had a history of being unfaithful to their spouse, and I didn’t know that, and so I just think this is a happy occasion for this person. And my friend is like yeah, this isn’t happy because I know the person that they cheated on, and I’m really upset at them. It’s like, “oh.”

So, my experience, my perception is very different, and so therefore, I have a different emotional response to them. You’ve got to understand that feelings that are responding or corresponding with our thoughts are just pleasant or unpleasant, or we could go back to the paradigm I used which is they’re in peace or they’re in pain.

When we have experience, those emotions get triggered. So, when you feel an emotion, and classify it as uncomfortable or unpleasant, it is termed a trigger.

For this particular podcast, we’re going to use “trigger” to define the unpleasant, the painful, the uncomfortable emotions. But I want you to know that trigger can mean pleasant as well. But for the sake of this, we’re just going to focus on the unpleasant. When an emotion gets triggered, it’s causing you to become aware and conscious of what you’re feeling, and then that invites you to become curious about what you’re thinking.

So, from this position of awareness, you get to choose—there’s that lovely word of choice—you get to choose to make conscious changes to what you think, and therefore what you feel.

So, that is awesome because it invites you, into this place of empowerment that says listen, anything that goes on in your life like anything, and I’m not being Pollyanna here, my life has not been easy, and I get painful, and traumatic, and uncomfortable experiences. I really do.

This is one of the reasons why I feel like I can speak really boldly to you, is that I’ve been in life right along with you, and I’ve gotten knocked around as well as you have. It is my responsibility, and my charge, as it is yours, as you have these experiences, to be willing to say, “Okay, this is what’s been presented, this is what I’ve either chosen, these are the outcomes of my own choices, and/or these are the outcomes of someone else’s choices that I’m now having to manage, and accept, and be responsible for.” I’m not responsible for the choices, I’m just responsible for the fallout of the choices, the outcomes, the consequences.

Because this is sitting on my front doorstep, I am responsible to hold these experiences in Truth, and be very mature about how I manage the emotions that come with it, and shift, and walk across that bridge from pain to peace. I’m very aware that some people have had experiences that have not have had anything to do with their choices, they’ve been choices that others have done to them, such as abuses, and childhood issues that when you were a child you had no power to change the outcomes, so I understand that.

And, probably most people who are listening to this podcast are adults at this point. And so, the things that have gone on in your life that have caused pain to you and are still causing pain to you by the hands of others or another, I am deeply sorrowful for those experiences, I truly am. I understand that.

AND, you do not have to stay in a spot where you are trapped inside those experiences. You have the ability, and the permission, and the responsibility to learn principles of Truth that can help you walk out of those experiences, so that you honor the experience, you know that it happened, you hold accountable the people and the things that are culpable for the pain that was caused to you. And, you say to yourself, and to them, and you may not literally say it to them, but you say to them in your own head, “You will not have any more of my time. I will not allow you to live in my mind any longer, and haunt me, and traumatize me, and lie to me, and tell me that I am unworthy or it was my fault, or I caused this, or because I was such and such, it was bound to happen. I will not allow those lies, those distortions to exist any longer because this is my life, and I was given a life to live in a place of peace, and not in a place of pain.”

So, my invitation to you is that you are not stuck and trapped there, though it may feel that you are, you are not. And I would encourage you to work very diligently with an individual or individuals that you find that can help you move through that process, and not enable you to feel that you are a victim for the rest of your life to circumstances that you had no power to control or change.

[00:27:58] More About Triggers

Let’s go back to triggers. When you feel this emotion that gets triggered by the experience you’re in, you’re going to say to yourself, “Okay, I am now inside of a trigger, and so, I need to start being responsible for that trigger.”

Be willing to say, “Okay, because I’m being triggered, because I’m feeling this particular emotion, I am now responsible for the emotion I’m feeling, and I therefore, am responsible to change the experience that I’m having, and shift out of it by getting into Truth.”

So, I may not know where the Truth is, and so, this is where the RAISE process comes in, is that I need to work with an individual that actually knows how to do this and knows where Truth is. You might say where are those people? Well, you may not know anybody that knows how to do that yet, but someone that you love, someone that is open, someone that is willing to be emotionally honest, and you can tell that they’re humble individuals—get them on this podcast, and have them learn how to find Truth. Have them learn how to walk through the RAISE process, so that you and them, as you are moving through life together as friends, can help each other.

I have a son that’s halfway across the world right now, and he was telling me about this guy he’s living with, and he said he doesn’t know how to validate. I said, “Addison, why don’t you teach him how to do that? Teach him what validation is. Teach him about vulnerability. It’s a skill that people have to learn, and so you need validation, he needs validation. So, why don’t you validate him, and then say, ‘Hey, how’s that feel?’ He’ll say, ‘Good, I like that.’ And say, ‘Well that is something that I need as well.’ And so, teach other. Give to each other, and then teach other how to validate, because it is such a loving thing to do for another person, to say, ‘I see you’.”

And if you don’t know what validation is, there’s a couple of podcasts, 12 and 13, that talk about empathy, and vulnerability, and validating, so I would encourage you to listen to those, and see how important it is to validate— to be validated, and then to validate another.

So, the Truth is, we need one another. We cannot get through this life on our own. We just can’t. We’re not meant to, and it’s no fun to do things on your own. It’s not. People, other people, are awesome. I know there’s some grumpy people among us, and sometimes I’m one of those grumpy people, and I don’t want to be that way. I want to be someone that, my normal state, is in a place of peace. And again, peace does not mean perfection, peace just means that I know how to get centered even though I’m in situations that are really tumultuous, and have lots of pain around them.

So, going through and practicing the RAISE process will teach you a skill to experience and make peace your normal condition. Experiencing peace requires learning this skill. It’s not about changing your circumstances, though many of us believe that. That if I can just get out of this, and this will go away. The Truth is, is that this thing that you’re trying to get out of is actually inside your body, it’s inside your mind. It’s the distortions that you’re holding around the experience. And so, it’s not about changing your circumstance, it’s about learning a skillset that can move you even though you’re inside the experience and the circumstance, into a place that feels more peaceful. So, you can immediately, at any time you choose, shift from pain to peace.

[00:32:17] The RAISE Process

Step 1: Recognize Your Feelings / Emotions

Let’s introduce this RAISE process. The first letter which is R, stands for RECOGNIZE. Recognize emotions, feelings, triggers. All of those are synonymous: emotions, feelings, triggers. When I feel an emotion, I’m being triggered. Again, for the sake of this podcast, we’re going to talk about the emotions that are unpleasant.

[00:32:50] Truths About Feelings

I want to talk to you about Truths about feelings. So, Truths about feelings.

Truth #1: We spend so much of our life perfecting—or you could say controlling—ways to avoid pain. I’m chuckling because I’m right in the same boat with you. We spend so much of our life perfecting strategies, trying to control and avoid pain and anything uncomfortable.

The way we do that is we create addictions and distractions, and we blame, and we have all sorts of compulsive behaviors, and we avoid, and we isolate. We do all sorts of things to avoid uncomfortable feelings, and we perfect these strategies of control. That’s one of the Truths.

Truth #2: We disconnect from emotions by either suppressing them or letting them control me. So, the way that I suppress emotions is I deny them. I tell myself that they’re not there, that it’s not real. That that isn’t happening. I just push them down, even though I’m having an experience, I won’t say that it’s real.

It’s kind of like going into emotional shock where somebody might look at me and go, “Oh my goodness.” And I say to them, “What?”

Here’s an example. This is a physiological example of suppressing feelings. A couple of years ago, I had a motorcycle accident, and it was quite significant and serious. I had come home from the hospital, and I was on quite a bit of pain medication. I had shattered my whole right shoulder, my scapula, and my collar bone, and my ribs were broken. My whole right side was in bad shape.

I was on pain medication, and I’m not used to taking medication, so I was pretty out of it. I’m just remembering back, of how loopy I was, and really didn’t recognize how disconnected I was. I remember something came in the mail for me, and I took the box cutter knife and I put the box cutter knife inside the top of the box, and I started pulling it towards me, and my daughter was like, “ahh!,” and she jumped, and she’s like, “Mom, don’t pull that thing towards you.” I looked at her in this very arrogant manner and said, “I will be fine.”

She was aware that I was on medication, I was on pain pills, and obviously I wasn’t thinking very clearly, and this was not something that I normally would have done, to turn that knife towards my body. She was reacting to an experience because she was feeling emotions that I was suppressing. And I was suppressing them because I was physiologically being altered by pain medication. But I could have had that experience even without medication if I had a lot of arrogance, or lack of humility, or lack of consciousness, or felt entitled to do things the way I want to do them.

And so, as I was pulling that knife towards me, she reacted with appropriate emotions and fear because she could see that thing slipping and slamming right into my leg. And so, as I was pulling that knife towards me, sure enough, it skipped over a piece of tape and went slamming into my leg.

And then, she was like, “Oh my gosh!” She started having all sorts of emotions and because I was numb, I was like, “Oh, that doesn’t look good.” My emotions were really suppressed. Her emotions were very much awake, and aware, and present, and she was the one that was responding appropriately.

That’s an example of suppressing emotions or letting them control you. The same example of her experiencing these emotions, she could have just let them control her, so she could have been hysterical and not been consolable, and saying it’s my fault, I should not have let her do that, if I just would have been more aggressive about my position then my mom wouldn’t have cut her leg.

And so, she starts really exaggerating, and being really emotional. What’s she’s doing is she’s just letting her emotions run amok, and she won’t be responsible for them. That’s the different between suppressing them or letting them control you.

Truth #3: You have been falsely taught that some feelings are bad, or wrong, or inappropriate to have. That’s a Truth about feelings. And so, for many of us, that is a very real experience, that you have been taught that your feelings, some of them—and maybe all of them—are inappropriate, or wrong, or bad. So, you might have lived or grown up in a family that told you that feeling anger was not loving, or was mean, or was not of God. You might have been told that fear was weak. Or that feelings of vulnerability were signs of weakness for you. Or not enoughness.

So, there’s all sorts of messages that you might have been told around emotions that said this particular emotion is bad, or wrong, or inappropriate to have. So, look at your upbringing or even maybe now, maybe you’re in an environment now that won’t allow certain emotions to be expressed.

I know some people that aren’t allowed to cry. These are grownups. They learn that as a child, and so any of feelings of sadness, or remorse, or loss, or grief they won’t cry about. They won’t let themselves feel it because at some level, they feel like it’s wrong, or bad, or inappropriate to have those.

Truth #4: Avoiding emotions will only perpetuate and intensify them. That is the Truth. If you push emotions down, you are just setting yourself up to intensify those emotions, and to have them perpetuated.

Truth #5: Acknowledging emotion is an act of emotional honesty. So, being willing to say, “I feel. I feel grief. I feel sad. I feel vulnerable. I feel loss. I feel lonely.” That is really emotionally honest to be able to do that. And it’s necessary.

Truth #6: Verbalizing your feelings to another, and being responsible for your feelings is very validating to you. It says, “I matter.” So, talking about how you feel, and saying, “This is how I feel, AND I’m responsible for my feelings.” That is very acknowledging of you. It says I’m important, I’m here, I’m present, please see me. And I see me.

Truth #7: Sharing emotions, and emotional honesty, and being accountable, being personally responsible creates connection in yourself, and invites connection with others. And so, when I say invites connection, it means if someone else is available to connect, when you share your emotions and you’re being honest about your emotions, and you’re being responsible for them, like your saying, “I feel this and it’s mine to feel. I’m not blaming you because I feel this. I’m not saying fix it. I am responsible for this.” Then, I am in connection with myself, and if the other person is doing the same thing, then we will connect together. That’s called empathy. That’s called both of you being vulnerable. It’s a very powerful, bonding, emotional experience when you have that kind of synergism between another person.

Truth #8: As you stay connected to your emotions in every experience, and have empathy for others’ emotions, you will create peace within yourself. You’ll have a connection with God, and with other people. And when I say every experience, I mean that’s the ideal. I don’t even know that that’s possible in every experience, but as you stay connected to your emotions in those experiences, and it doesn’t mean not have the uncomfortable ones. It means feel the uncomfortable ones. And then, make sure that you don’t start distorting them. That’s what the goal is. It doesn’t mean get out of them, because you need them, they’re present. They’re telling you information about you. You will have empathy for yourself, and just quite naturally have empathy for others.

Truth #9: The last Truth about feelings is notice when you feel more energy about telling your story rather than sharing your feelings about the story. This can be a cue that you’re avoiding responsibilitye for those emotions. So, if I want to say the guy who fixed my car, he didn’t tell me that it was going to be $1,300 and he just went in there and just started doing all this stuff, and didn’t keep me informed, and then came out and expects me just to slap down another $1,200, well, I’m not able to do that. He ripped me off, and he was dishonest. And I know he’s my neighbor, and my friend, but I just can’t trust him anymore.

That’s a lot of story that I’m telling without a whole lot of being responsible for speaking my emotions. Now, definitely there’s emotion in there—you can hear it through my tone, and my inflection, and my word choice. And if you could see me, you could see my body language.

However, I need to be more responsible for sharing the emotions, like I feel scared, and I feel worried, and I am concerned that he was not being honest with me, and that really scares me because I thought I could trust him, and thinking that I could trust somebody, and then finding out that maybe I can’t is a really frightening experience. That’s talking more about the feelings, and so that can be a cue that you are trying to be responsible for your own emotions.

So, I am going to stop right there, and start another podcast, and finish how to go through the RAISE process on another podcast just so we can keep these right at about 40 minutes, so I will speak with you in a few minutes on the next podcast.

Take care, and stay connected.