"I'm really talking about that kind of warm wash that we experience of not good enough. You know, I always say that shame drives two primary tapes: not good enough, and who do you think you are? So to me, it's a very formidable emotion. Its survival is based on us not talking about it, so it's done everything it can do to make it unspeakable.
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"Creativity was on the other side and I think, before this, you know, I was one of those people who, if someone said, you know, "Hey, do you want to take this painting class with me, or do you want to scrapbook or do you want to …" you know, I was like, aw, that's really cute. You know, "You do your A-R-T, I've got a J-O-B." You know, it's so funny because as a shame researcher, my lens on this was very different. My lens was not just like, oh, OK, so we should be more creative and we should incorporate more rest and play into our lives."My question was like, OK, so I get rest, it's important, and play and creativity and all these things that make me super uncomfortable. But what are the shame triggers that get in the way of us doing these things? Like I wasn't satisfied with just knowing what we were supposed to do. I wanted to know what is it that the wholehearted, if they were just like us, what did they have to overcome in order to soften into some of these things? So like with creativity, the primary shame trigger around that is comparison.
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"To me, vulnerability is courage. It's about the willingness to show up and be seen in our lives. And in those moments when we show up, I think those are the most powerful meaning-making moments of our lives even if they don't go well. ...
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"And so I think we buy into some mythology about vulnerability being weakness and being gullibility and being frailty because it gives us permission not to do it."
-- Brené Brown, interviewed for PRI's "On Being with Krista Tippett"
Brené Brown is a professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work. Her research focuses on vulnerability, shame, courage, and empathy, which she conceptually fuses together as Wholeheartedness. Brown's TEDxHouston talk went viral a few years ago, bringing her work a swift and deep amount of public attention. She also blogs and podcasts at Ordinary Courage. Brown is the author of Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead (2012), The Gifts of Imperfection (2010), and I Thought It Was Just Me (2007). She is a sixth-generation Texan, and she lives in Houston.
Related:
- "Brené Brown on Vulnerability" (On Being)
- Melissa Harris-Perry (then Harris-Lacewell) speaks brilliantly on historical shame and present-day justice
- "Book Review: Melissa Harris-Perry's Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America" (Isak)
- "Speaking of Shame" (Isak)
- "Out Loud Anna" (Isak)
Image Credit: The PRIME Book
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