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

by Brené Brown

As you review the model, you’ll see that knowing and applying the language of human experience and emotion is a key property of all of the major categories that support meaningful connection. That’s how we ended up here, together, sharing this book. When this emerged from the data, I thought, “Damn. I can’t write a book on meaningful connection without including some kind of glossary or compendium of emotion and experience words.” It was and remains weirdly shocking to me that access to and application of language are central to grounded confidence, walking alongside one another, and story stewardship. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see language emerge as core to one of these, but that it’s central to all three speaks to its power. As you can see in the graphic, the near enemy of knowing and applying language is shaping emotion and experience to fit what we know. We take nuanced experiences like despair or hopelessness and force them into whatever language we have—maybe sadness or anger. But this leaves us far less capable of sharing what we’re experiencing, getting help, or moving through our experiences productively. It’s a near enemy because we may be talking about our feelings or sharing them, but we can’t get to healing because we’re limited by our language. The far enemy is acting out, shutting down, or giving up. No access to language means we’re in pain, we feel alone, and we can’t articulate what’s happening. In the introduction, I gave an example of trying to ...