I Thought It Was Just Me: Women Reclaiming Power and Courage in a Culture of Shame

by Brené Brown

Compassion is not a virtue—it is a commitment. It’s not something we have or don’t have—it’s something we choose to practice.

“You cannot shame or belittle people into changing their behaviors.”

Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing we are flawed and therefore unworthy of acceptance and belonging.

Shame is about who we are and guilt is about our behaviors.

Guilt is holding an action or behavior up against our ethics, values and beliefs.

Shame is focusing on who we are rather than what we’ve done.

Shame is about the fear of disconnection.

Real power is basically the ability to change something if you want to change it.

empathy as the skill or ability to tap into our own experiences in order to connect with an experience someone is relating to us.

four defining attributes of empathy. They are: (1) to be able to see the world as others see it; (2) to be nonjudgmental; (3) to understand another person’s feelings; and (4) to communicate your understanding of that person’s feelings.

Connection serves two purposes: the development of social support networks and the creation of power through interaction.

Dr. Lerner concludes the section in her book by writing, “We cannot survive when our identity is defined by or limited to our worst behavior.

How can we apologize for something we are, rather than something we did?”

I physically feel shame in/on my It feels like I know I’m in shame when I feel

the critical issue is not about our level of vulnerability, but the level at which we acknowledge our vulnerabilities.

shame is about perception. Shame is how we see ourselves through other people’s eyes.

We start with these fill-in-the-blank statements, which should be answered separately for each of the shame categories:

I want to be perceived as ______________, _________________, _____________________________, _______________________ and ______________________. I do NOT want to be perceived as __________________,

The next step is to try to uncover the source of these triggers.

1. What do these perceptions mean to us? 2. Why are they so unwanted? 3. Where did the messages that fuel these identities come from?

2. Why are they so unwanted?

3. Where did the messages that fuel these ident...

we move toward resilience by learning how to: • Contextualize (I see the big picture); • Normalize (I’m not the only one); and • Demystify (I’ll share what I know with others).

The word context is derived from the Latin word contexere, meaning “to weave or twine together.”

some pop psychologists preach that “There is no such thing as reality, just perception.” Not only is this inaccurate, it’s dangerous. Racism is real, domestic violence is real, homophobia is real.

When you tell people their situation is only “perception” and they can change it, you shame them, belittle them and, in the case of domestic violence, you put them in extreme physical danger.

Rather than dismissing someone’s experience as perception, we might want to ask, “How can I help?” or “Is the...

It might be accurate to say that we all see things differently, but the world trades in b...

the social-community pressure to appear learned has become more important than actually learning.

women’s shame experiences fall broadly into the twelve shame categories—appearance and body image, motherhood, family, parenting, money and work, mental and physical health, sex, aging, religion, being stereotyped and labeled, speaking out and surviving trauma.

There may be no more powerful relationship than the one that exists between fear and shame.

shame leads to fear and fear leads to shame.

When we believe that success should be effortless, we simultaneously set ourselves up for shame and diminish the efforts of people who are working on their issues around perfectionism; we become part of our own shame web and other women’s shame webs.

When we choose growth over perfection, we immediately increase our shame resilience. Improvement is a far more realistic goal than perfection.

We are a culture obsessed with finding fault and assigning blame. Holding ourselves or others accountable is a good thing, but blame and accountability are very different.

accountability is most often motivated by the desire to repair and renew—it is holding someone responsible for his actions and the consequences of his actions.

we often use blame to discharge overwhelming feelings of fear and shame:

1. Who am I? 2. Who says? 3. Who benefits from these labels? 4. If these labels don’t benefit me, what must change and how?

we can start to see how difficult authenticity can be if we try to filter our actions and thoughts through these narrow expectations.

Don’t make people feel uncomfortable, but be honest.

Don’t sound self-righteous, but sou...

Don’t upset anyone or hurt anyone’s feelings, but say wh...

Don’t be offensive, but be stra...

Sound informed and educated, but not like...

Who gets to define offensive or emotional? What is too passionate and what is too dispassionate?

These “rules” are built around rigid gender roles that leave women with very little room to navigate expectations while maintaining authenticity.

To overcome these feelings of shame about being strange and abnormal, we seek normalcy. Being real, genuine or sincere can feel secondary to fitting in.

sometimes the quest for normalcy comes down to numbers.

“being normal” affords us a greater opportunity for acceptance and belonging.

It is the relationship that women have with God, their higher power or their spiritual world that often serves as a source of resilience.