mozu

“Oversharing? Not vulnerability; I call it floodlighting. ... A lot of times we share too much information as a way to protect us from vulnerability, and here's why.

I'm scared to let you know that I just wrote this article and I'm under total fire for it and people are making fun of me and I'm feeling hurt -- the same thing that I told someone in an intimate conversation. So what I do is I floodlight you with it - I don't know you very well or I'm in front of a big group, or it's a story that I haven't processed enough to be sharing with other people - and you immediately respond "hands up; push me away" and I go, "See? No one cares about me. No one gives a s*** that I'm hurting. I knew it."

It's how we protect ourselves from vulnerability. We just engage in a behavior that confirms our fear.”
― Brené Brown, The Power of Vulnerability: Teachings of Authenticity, Connections and Courage

“Literature was the passport to enter a larger life; that is, the zone of freedom. Literature was freedom. Especially in a time in which the values of reading and inwardness are so strenuously challenged, literature is freedom.”
― Susan Sontag, Literature Is Freedom