Shame is different from guilt; it is not productive or useful, and its ability to isolate us from each other is profoundly degenerative to the human condition. According to the findings of Dr. Brown and her team, the antidote to shame is simultaneously simple and complex: empathy.* “If you put shame in a petri dish, it needs three things to grow exponentially: secrecy, silence and judgment,” Brown says in her most famous
