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

by Brené Brown

The major propositions that explain how shame works are: • Shame is best defined as the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing we are flawed and therefore unworthy of acceptance and belonging. Women often experience shame when they are entangled in a web of layered, conflicting and competing social-community expectations. Shame creates fear, blame and disconnection. • The opposite of experiencing shame is experiencing empathy. • Empathy requires that we practice ordinary courage, compassion and connection. • We cannot become resistant to shame; however, we can develop shame resilience. Shame resilience is best conceptualized as a continuum, with shame anchoring one end and empathy anchoring the other end. • Our level of shame resilience is determined by our combined ability to recognize shame and our specific triggers, our level of critical awareness, our willingness to reach out to others and our ability to speak shame. In other words, our position on the shame resilience continuum is actually the sum of our positions on these other four continuums. • We must assess our shame resilience independently for each shame category. A high level of shame resilience in one area does not guarantee high shame resilience for all areas. • Women with higher levels of shame resilience recognize shame when they are experiencing it and recognize their shame triggers. Understanding our triggers allows us to better recognize shame and reach out for support. When we don’t know ...