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

by Brené Brown

intense emotion

nothing, was discussed

We are all good. Any question or attempt to understand the things that were clearly not good was immediately shut down in punitive ways.

For children, it’s easy for everything to become a source of shame when nothing is normalized. You assume that if no one is talking about it, it must be just you.

Second, my parents were ...

As if all of this wasn’t enough to navigate,

What if everyone lives in a laboratory where chemistry is a trial and error? What if...?

changing schools

5th, 6th, 7th, 8th...

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.

What surprised me the most when I was growing up was how little other people seemed to understand or even think about the connection between feelings, thinking, and behavior.

Everyone seemed disembodied from their own inner world and disconnected from other people.

The eggshells weren’t on the ground; they were duct-taped to the soles of my shoes.

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, especially how to choose loving ourselves over making other people comfortable. It was the hardest work I’ve ever done and continue to do.

Understanding and feeling those edges brings grace and clarity.

I’ve learned

This Intro is hard for me to digest...it is written in an emotional language that doesn't work for me...I know i have failed so there is the test review ..i cannot willingly accept the F as enough...i need to know more about how and why i got it... sometimes i come up with the wrong conclusions...so as i am reading this, i jnow i have my own emotional language and tools for disecting and discerning that are quite different than Brene's. BUT what if at the very least, Jesus is a filter, what would Jesus do, that helps me stay more even keeled in my journey across the sea?

I am responsible for holding you accountable

in a respectful and productive way.

Are we ever? Does this even work? Not sure ...

People will do almost anything to not feel pain, including causing pain and abusing power;

Very few people can handle being held accountable without rationalizing, blaming, or shutting down; and

When we don’t understand how our emotions shape our thoughts and decisions, we become disembodied from our own experiences and disconnected from each other.

Ludwig Wittgenstein that I came across in college: “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.”

What does it mean if the vastness of human emotion and experience can only be expressed as mad, sad, or happy?

Language is our portal to meaning-making, connection, healing, learning, and self-awareness.

language does more than just communicate emotion, it can actually shape what we’re feeling.

The process has been messy and imperfect, but it’s been healing and powerful to be a part of a family that now has the language and skill to align the love we feel with the way we actually show up with each other.

“Maps are the most important documents in human history. They give us tools to store and exchange knowledge about space and place.”

Where am I?

How did I get here from there?

How do I get there f...

The anchor we are searching for is connection, and it is internal.

An anchor has two very important connections aside from the strength of each link or strand. It must be attached firmly to the vessel and then be connected to something that prevents movement I see the spiritual discovery and dependency vital to the usefulness of this emotional language making up links and steands.

Stressed We feel stressed when we evaluate environmental demand as beyond our ability to cope successfully. This includes elements of unpredictability, uncontrollability, and feeling overloaded.

my emotions are responding to my “thinking” assessment of how well I can handle something.

Overwhelmed

Overwhelmed means an extreme level of stress, an emotional and/or cognitive intensity to the point of feeling unable to function.

“completely overcome or overpowered by thought or feeling.”

responding with organized thoughts feels impossible.

Approximately one-third of U.S. adults will be affected by an anxiety disorder in their lifetime;

fewer than half of people with diagnosable anxiety disorders seek any type of professional treatment.

Worry is described as a chain of negative thoughts about bad things that might happen in the future.

Avoidance, the second coping strategy for anxiety, is not showing up and often spending

a lot of energy zigzagging around and away from that thing that already feels like it’s consuming us.

“It is not fear that stops you from doing the brave and true thing in your daily life. Rather, the problem is avoidance.

Avoidance will make you feel less vulnerable in the short run, but it will never make you less afraid.”

interpreting the bodily sensations as positive.

Dread occurs frequently in response to high-probability negative events; its magnitude increases as the dreaded event draws nearer.

Fear is a negative, short-lasting, high-alert emotion in response to a perceived threat, and, like anxiety, it can be measured as a state

or trait.

The typical responses are fight, flight, or freeze.

Vulnerability is the emotion that we experience during times of uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure.