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Psychology. Self-Improvement. Nonfiction. HTML:Researcher, thought leader, and New York Times bestselling author Brené Brown offers a liberating study on the importance of our imperfections—both to our relationships and to our own sense of selfThe quest for perfection is exhausting and unrelenting. There is a constant barrage of social expectations that teach us that being imperfect is synonymous with being inadequate. Everywhere we turn, there are messages that tell us who, what and how we’re supposed to be. So, we learn to hide our struggles and protect ourselves from shame, judgment, criticism and blame by seeking safety in pretending and perfection. Brené Brown, PhD, LMSW, is the leading authority on the power of vulnerability, and has inspired thousands through her top-selling books Daring Greatly, Rising Strong, and The Gifts of Imperfection, her wildly popular TEDx talks, and a PBS special. Based on seven years of her ground-breaking research and hundreds of interviews, I Thought It Was Just Me shines a long-overdue light on an important truth: Our imperfections are what connect us to each other and to our humanity. Our vulnerabilities are not weaknesses; they are powerful reminders to keep our hearts and minds open to the reality that we’re all in this together. Brown writes, “We need our lives back. It’s time to reclaim the gifts of imperfection—the courage to be real, the compassion we need to love ourselves and others, and the connection that gives true purpose and meaning to life. These are the gifts that bring love, laughter, gratitude, empathy and joy into our lives.”.… (more)
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Why? What fuels this unattainable need to look like we always have it all together? At first glance we might think it’s because we admire perfection, but that’s not the case. We are actually the most attracted to people we consider to be authentic and down-to-earth. We love people who are “real” – we’re drawn to those who both embrace their imperfections and radiate self-acceptance.
There is a constant barrage of social expectations that teach us that being imperfect is synonymous with being inadequate. Everywhere we turn, there are messages that tell us who, what and how we’re supposed to be. So, we learn to hide our struggles and protect ourselves from shame, judgment, criticism and blame by seeking safety in pretending and perfection.
Based on seven years of ground-breaking research and hundreds of interviews, I Thought It Was Just Me shines a long-overdue light on an important truth: Our imperfections are what connect us to each other and to our humanity. Our vulnerabilities are not weaknesses; they are powerful reminders to keep our hearts and minds open to the reality that we’re all in this together.
Dr. Brown writes, “We need our lives back. It’s time to reclaim the gifts of imperfection – the courage to be real, the compassion we need to love ourselves and others, and the connection that gives true purpose and meaning to life. These are the gifts that bring love, laughter, gratitude, empathy and joy into our lives.”
I Thought it Was Just Me is about shame. It's such a big, complex emotion; not easy
The reader is presented with information about the many common shame triggers (twelve are listed) and ways to recognize the triggers and build what is called resilience. It's easy for even the healthiest of us to succumb to shame and fall into the downward spiral shame leads us into.
Since I'm at a particularly vulnerable point in my life right now, I didn't take notes or use book darts, I took what I could gather and didn't worry about what was being left out. Even then, I found information that made it easier to cope with the big emotions I've experienced from the time I got laid off in July 2013 through the darkness of 2014 'til now.
It's far too easy to believe that everything's my fault even when I know it isn't and to feel ashamed for so many things, some of which are pure nonsense. I'm grateful for Brene Brown's work on shame and vulnerability, it's helped me learn so much about who I am and what I'm experiencing.
The quest for perfection is exhausting and unrelenting. There is a constant barrage of social expectations that teach us
Dr. Brené Brown, Ph.D., LMSW, is the leading authority on the power of vulnerability, and has inspired thousands through her top-selling book The Gifts of Imperfection, wildly popular TEDx talk, and a PBS special. Based on seven years of her ground-breaking research and hundreds of interviews, I Thought It Was Just Me shines a long-overdue light on an important truth: Our imperfections are what connect us to each other and to our humanity. Our vulnerabilities are not weaknesses; they are powerful reminders to keep our hearts and minds open to the reality that we’re all in this together.
Dr. Brown writes, “We need our lives back. It’s time to reclaim the gifts of imperfection—the courage to be real, the compassion we need to love ourselves and others, and the connection that gives true purpose and meaning to life. These are the gifts that bring love, laughter, gratitude, empathy and joy into our lives.”
Nevertheless, this book is about women and the specific shame triggers that we have. I love the way motherhood and parenting are separated because our expectations to be or want to be a mother and how many kids we should or should want to have are completely separate from how good we are at parenting them. Those are just two of the twelve shame categories that are explained in this book.
I LOVE the section on critical awareness and how our personal problems contribute to societal problems and so personal changes aren't always enough. We must also not be a part of the problem of perpetuating shame or allowing it to perpetuate. Then there's a great section on stereotyping, how harmful it is, and exercises she does to make it obvious that we need to stop putting people into categories like that.
The author is now world famous for her research and work into vulnerability and shame. In this book she explores the various ways in which women, in
At this point in her work the author had only begun to explore the effects of shame on men and children; they are addressed perfunctorily at the end of the work, although even there is good insight. I imagine in the period since the work she has done more research and effort to this end.
Nevertheless, valuable in considering the shame triggers for women and the development and encouragement of resilience.
I work for one of the largest companies on the planet. I do the best I can every day and it's nothing unusual to get some stinging criticism for my best efforts. I'm judged by numbers and nothing else. That's all I am to my superiors. It's all I can do to keep my composure. So yes, I know very well what it's like to be shamed for my best efforts. It eats away at your self-esteem/self-worth. It makes you cringe at the very idea of coming back the next day and the next day after that and so on.
Aside from that, I can also relate to the person in the book who told Ms. Brown about the shame she received from her mother for her weight. I've been there. It's not fun being judged by numbers. We forget that we are so much more than a number. We are human. We have feelings and we need to be valued. Instead, we are a society that tears each other down in order to boost ourselves up. In doing so, we are only creating another generation of people who will carry on the same behaviors that we can't escape.
While the book was relatable in so many ways, it was also unrelatable when it comes to the "mommy wars." Goodness, there is so much judgment and harsh criticism flying all over the place. We all want the same thing: to be good parents raising children to be good upstanding citizens. I wish that we women were more supportive of each other.
I saw so much of myself in these pages that I honestly don't want to revisit this book. Would I recommend it to others? Yes and no. It is a book worth reading, but I'm not going to force anyone to pick it up. It is insightful. It is helpful. But it's not going to fix everything for you.
This book is written from a female-lens, examining the shame felt by women in terms of appearance, work/family-life balance, relationships and parenting. Brene is really good at capturing how shame seeps in and is almost normalized in day-to-day life, for example, a woman making up stories to cover up the fact that she forgot to bring a food contribution to her son's school event. This woman associated a simple occasion of forgetfulness as meaning "I am a bad mother." Rather than just feeling an impartial guilt towards the action (e.g. "I feel bad for forgetting to make something"), she tied her self-worth to the event. Later, she feels worse, ashamed for both forgetting to bring something, and then lying about it. In these types of cases, Brene looks at how these thought patterns became instilled in the person, and from what influences.
I enjoy how Brene looks at our 'shame web' and has people think from small to grand scales where messages of shame come from. For example, at a large scale, the idea of being a perfect mom who has everything "just so" is often projected in commercials, movies, magazines and anecdotal stories ("My mom would kill me if I messed up the kitchen, it is always spotless for guests."). At a local level, perhaps this woman's surrounding neighbourhood values image over substance -- they would be more impressed to see what other people bring, wear, or do, rather than actually getting to know them as a person. At a more personal level, these shame messages may be repeated by her friends, siblings, and parents to the point that she feels it is normal, and therefore something must be wrong with her if she is not fitting into their definition of perfection. By determining all of these influences in the shame web, a person can more realistically look at their situation and realize that perhaps these ideas only exist in the specific environment or role they're in, but it does not mean that it's a universal truth. For example, would the woman's husband or son feel the same level of shame about forgetting to bring a food item to school? Since their shame webs would be composed of different people and places, this particular event may not invoke the same feelings for them, even though the actual situation is the same for everyone.
Towards the end of this book, much of the message becomes repetitive. I find that Brene's gift is more storytelling, rather than developing tools or frameworks. She includes a few "diagrams" of the shame web, though I personally found the diagrams useless, it looks like a simple spider web that doesn't depict the concept any better than reading about it. Some books do an amazing job of creating tools and tables to help us filter our situation through the framework they've developed, like when using worksheets, and sometimes those tools and definitions can stick with you and give you "aha" moments. With Brene's books, even though she does provide worksheets on her website, I find her exercises lack a sense of continuity and structure. It's better to read or watch her materials for the stories she presents.
Overall, Brene is an entertaining personality who brings to life the people in her case stories. What she has gleaned about the interconnected and subtle network of shame in everyday life is remarkable -- because of how ordinary shame has become. She assigns words to a concept that was previously ambiguous. Before it was hard to draw lines between shame, guilt, pride, criticism, self-improvement, anxiety, the desire to fit in, and fleeting embarrassment. Her work helps us identify the how and why we've come to see ourselves (and others) the way we do.