Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience

by Brené Brown

Guilt—

Guilt is not shame. Shame is not guilt. Often times in church we get told that our shame is guilt, and thus praised as a tool to bring us closer to God. Guilt while being a tool for change can also if held for long enough transform into the monster of shame

With shame, we believe that we deserve our sense of unworthiness. With humiliation, we don’t feel we deserve it.

Shame is universal and one of the most primitive emotions that we experience. The only people who don’t experience it are those who lack the capacity for empathy and human connection.

The less we talk about it, the more control it has over us.

Shame is the fear of disconnection—it’s the fear that something we’ve done or failed to do, an ideal that we’ve not lived up to, or a goal that we’ve not accomplished makes us unworthy of connection.

Shame is fueled by our fear of others surrounding a course of action that we believe not to be morally right. Normailization does not change the actions moral correctness, but removes the fear of others that stems from the action.

Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love, belonging, and connection.

The antidote to shame is empathy.

If we reach out and share our shame experience with someone who responds with empathy, shame dissipates.

Shame needs you to believe that y...

When we are truly practicing empathy, our attention is fully focused on the other person and trying to understand their experience. We only have thoughts of self in order to draw on how our experience can help us understand what the other person is going through.

Our only concern with others when we are feeling shame is to wonder how others are judging us.

Shame is the birthplace of perfectionism. Perfectionism is not striving to be our best or working toward excellence. Healthy striving is internally driven. Perfectionism is externally driven by a simple but potentially all-consuming question: What will people think?

Perfectionism tells us that our mistakes and failures are personal defects, so we either avoid trying new things or we barely recover every time we inevitably fall short.

Perfectionism is a disease that stems from our relationship with others. If we can center ourselves maybr perfectionsim will go away? The Perfectionist composer may think he is in control, but in reality he is controlled by the audience he must perform for. He worries bout their rection to his art, and cares more about what other people think then what he thinks. The perfectionist composer wants to be in control instead of accepting what is.

The definition that best fit the data is that perfectionism is a self-destructive and addictive belief system that fuels this primary thought: If I look perfect, live perfectly, work perfectly, and do everything perfectly, I can avoid or minimize the painful feelings of shame, judgment, and blame.

It’s terrifying to risk when you’re a perfectionist; your self-worth is on the line.

It is a twenty-ton shield that we lug around thinking it will protect us when in fact it’s the thing that’s really preventing us from taking flight.

Humiliation

Humiliation - 13 reasons why. Makes you realize you need to stand up for poeple. ward council when josh was sharing something personal about some dating experience and a bishop who got involved when a few people laughed .... We need more self awareness and we need to stand up for people. we have a few people who have left our ward and are now going to the vally not because of same, but because of humilliation.

decreased self-regulation,

Humiliation leads sometimes to addiction.

“Never allow anyone to be humiliated in your presence.”