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

by Brené Brown

In contrast, women who spoke of ongoing shame struggles in these same areas perceived past mistakes and failed attempts at perfection as enduring and permanently altering their levels of connection and power. Like the women who demonstrated high levels of shame resilience, they were equally influenced by outside forces; however, in these cases, those forces were mostly members of their shame webs rather than their connection networks. When women spoke about the permanency of mistakes and the inability to move away from perfection and toward growth, at least eighty percent of them described this attribute as something they learned from their parents and/or families.