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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Brené Brown
My parents were and are good people who did the very best they could with the tools they had. Sometimes those tools weren’t enough.
I understood that people would do almost anything to not feel pain, including causing pain and abusing power, and I understood that there were very few people who could handle being held accountable for causing hurt without rationalizing, blaming, or shutting down.
As it turns out, being able to see what’s coming doesn’t make it any less painful when it arrives. In fact, knowing probably just upped my anticipatory anxiety and my intolerance for vulnerability.
We see the pain caused by the misuse of power, so we numb our pain and lose track of our own power. We become terrified of feeling pain, so we engage in behaviors that become a magnet for more pain. We run from anger and grief straight into the arms of fear, perfectionism, and the desperate need for control.
When we stop numbing and start feeling and learning again, we have to reevaluate everything,
When people are hateful or cruel or just being assholes, they’re showing us exactly what they’re afraid of. Understanding their motivation doesn’t make their behavior less difficult to bear, but it does give us choices. And subjecting ourselves to that behavior by choice doesn’t make us tough—it’s a sign of our own lack of self-worth.
also learned that when you hold someone accountable for hurtful behaviors and they feel shame, that’s not the same as shaming someone. I am responsible for holding you accountable in a respectful and productive way. I’m not responsible for your emotional reaction to that accountability. Sadly, I’ve also learned that sometimes, even when the pain takes your breath away, you have to let the people you love experience the consequences of their own behavior. That one really hurts.
“The center will hold.”
“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” What
Language shows us that naming an experience doesn’t give the experience more power, it gives us the power of understanding and meaning.
when we feel lost, adrift in our lives, our first instinct is to look out into the distance to find the nearest shore. But that shore, that solid ground, is within us. The anchor we are searching for is connection, and it is internal. To form meaningful connections with others, we must first connect with ourselves,
We feel stressed when we evaluate environmental demand as beyond our ability to cope successfully. This includes elements of unpredictability, uncontrollability, and feeling overloaded.
Overwhelmed means an extreme level of stress, an emotional and/or cognitive intensity to the point of feeling unable to function.
On a scale of 1 to 10, I’m feeling my emotions at about 10, I’m paying attention to them at about 5, and I understand them at about 2.
“It is not fear that stops you from doing the brave and true thing in your daily life. Rather, the problem is avoidance. You want to feel comfortable, so you avoid doing or saying the thing that will evoke fear and other difficult emotions. Avoidance will make you feel less vulnerable in the short run, but it will never make you less afraid.”
Fear arises when we need to respond quickly to physical or psychological danger that is present and imminent. Because fear is a rapid-fire emotion, the physiological reaction can sometimes occur before we even realize that we are afraid. The typical responses are fight, flight, or freeze.
we experience social pain and physical pain in the same part of our brains,
our anxiety and our fear need to be understood and respected, perhaps even befriended. We need to pull up a chair and sit with them, understand why they’re showing up, and ask ourselves what there is to learn.
most of us were raised to believe that being vulnerable is being weak. This sets up an unresolvable tension for most of us, because we were also raised to be brave. There is no courage without vulnerability.
Vulnerability is not oversharing, it’s sharing with people who have earned the right to hear our stories and our experiences.
we use comparison not only to evaluate past and current outcomes, but to predict future prospects. This means significant parts of our lives, including our future, are shaped by comparing ourselves to others.
Comparison is the crush of conformity from one side and competition from the other—it’s trying to simultaneously fit in and stand out.
Envy occurs when we want something that another person has.
Jealousy is when we fear losing a relationship or a valued part of a relationship that we already have.
If I want something that someone else has, do I want to see them lose it, or is it not about that? If I’m scared I’m losing something important to me, what kind of conversation do I need to have with that person?
It’s really important for me not to be perceived as ________________.
mostly felt resentful toward people whom I perceived to be not working or sacrificing or grinding or perfecting or advocating as hard as I was.
I’m not mad because you’re resting. I’m mad because I’m so bone tired and I want to rest.
I’m not furious that you’re okay with something that’s really good and imperfect. I’m furious because I want to be okay with something that’s really good and imperfect.
Resentment is the feeling of frustration, judgment, anger, “better than,” and/or hidden envy related to perceived unfairness or injustice. It’s an emotion that we often experience when we fail to set boundaries or ask for what we need, or when expectations let us down because they were based on things we can’t control, like what other people think, what they feel, or how they’re going to react.
Taking pleasure in someone else’s failings, even if that person is someone we really dislike, can violate our values and lead to feelings of guilt and shame.
Shoy: intentionally sharing the joy of someone relating a success story
When someone shares something great that’s happened to them, we can show interest and ask questions. When someone demonstrates joy when we share ours, we can express gratitude: “Thank you for celebrating this with me. It means so much that you’re happy for me.”
Disappointment is unmet expectations. The more significant the expectations, the more significant the disappointment.
our expectations are often set on outcomes totally beyond our control, like what other people think, what they feel, or how they’re going to react. The movie in our mind is wonderful, but no one else knows their parts, their lines, or what it means to us.
“If I have to ask, it’s not worth it.” She tilted her head and said, “If you’re not asking for what’s important to you, maybe it’s because you don’t think you are worth it.”
When we are intentional and thoughtful about our expectations, and things don’t turn out how we thought they would, disappointment still hurts. Potentially, a lot. One reason it can sting is precisely because we were vulnerable and asked for what we needed or shared what we were excited about.
what we regret most are our failures of courage, whether it’s the courage to be kinder, to show up, to say how we feel, to set boundaries, to be good to ourselves, to say yes to something scary.
“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence.”
nostalgia is more likely to be triggered by negative moods, like loneliness, and by our struggles to find meaning in our current lives.
When we’re faced with information that challenges what we believe, our first instinct is to make the discomfort, irritation, and vulnerability go away by resolving the dissonance. We might do this by rejecting the new information, decreasing its importance, or avoiding it altogether.
engaging with a paradox and accepting the competing elements as both valid can foster creativity, innovation, and productivity. Paradoxes: hard and good.
Are you dressing something up in humor that actually requires clarity and honesty?
Anguish often causes us to physically crumple in on ourselves, literally bringing us to our knees or forcing us all the way to the ground.
what we think is a familiar grief—a grief we’ve come to know and understand and even integrate into our lives—can surprise us again and again, often in the form of anguish.
hope is learned.
We need to learn how to reality-check our goals and the pathways to them, and how to take the shame out of having to start over many, many times when our first plan fails.
Sad people are less prone to judgmental errors, are more resistant to eye-witness distortions, are sometimes more motivated, and are more sensitive to social norms. They can act with more generosity, too.
Grief does not obey your plans, or your wishes. Grief will do whatever it wants to you, whenever it wants to. In that regard, Grief has a lot in common with Love. — ELIZABETH GILBERT
Examples of disenfranchised grief include loss of a partner or parent due to divorce, loss of an unborn child and/or infertility, the multitude of losses experienced by a survivor of sexual assault, and loss of a loved one to suicide.
