Amy Christensen’s Reviews > Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience > Status Update

“Science is not the truth. Science is finding the truth. When science changes its opinion, it didn’t lie to you. It learned more” - attributed to Brene Brown but in Atlas of the Heart she states it is a quote but doesn’t give the source

New research on the connection between humiliation and violence has completely changed the way I think about that emotion and reinforced my belief that shame and humiliation will never be effective social justice tools - quote

Shame - I am bad. The focus is on self, not behavior. The result is feeling flawed and unworthy of love, belonging, and connection. Shame is not a positive driver of positive change
Guilt - I did something bad. Guilt is the discomfort we feel when we evaluate what we’ve done or failed to do against our values. It can drive positive change and behavior
Humiliation - I’ve been belittled and put down by someone. This left me feeling unworthy of connection and disgusted with myself. This was unfair and I didn’t deserve this. With shame, we believe that we deserve our sense of unworthiness. With humiliation, we don’t feel we deserve it
Embarrassment - I did something that made me feel uncomfortable, but I know I’m not alone. Everyone does these kinds of things. Embarrassment is fleeting, sometimes funny

Shame is the fear of disconnection - it’s the fear that something we’ve done or failed to do, an ideal that we’ve not lived up to, or a goal that we’ve not accomplished makes us unworthy of connection

Even if I feel alone, shame is the way I see myself through someone else’s eyes

Personal Note: www dot self-compassion dot org is a website featuring a self-compassion inventory recommended by Brene Brown and is affiliated with the Center for Mindful Self-Compassion

Silence, secrecy, and judgment fuel shame

Shame isn’t the cure, it’s the cause. Don’t let what looks like a bloated ego and narcissism fool you into thinking there’s a lack of shame. Shame and fear are almost always driving that unethical behavior. We’re now seeing that shame often fuels narcissistic behavior. In fact, I define narcissism as the shame-based fear of being ordinary

Shame is not a compass for moral behavior. It’s much more likely to drive destructive, hurtful, immoral, and self-aggrandizing behavior than to heal it. Why? Because where shame exists, empathy is almost always absent. That’s what makes shame dangerous.

Shame is the birthplace of perfectionism. Perfectionism is not striving to be our best or working towards excellence. Healthy striving is internally driven. Perfectionism is externally driven by a simple but potentially all-consuming question: what will people think?

The definition that best fit the data is that perfectionism is a self-destructive and addictive that fuels this primary thought: If I look perfect, live perfectly, work perfectly, and do everything perfectly, I can avoid or minimize the painful feelings of shame, judgment, and blame

Remorse, a subset of guilt, is what we feel when we acknowledge that we have harmed another person, we feel bad about it, and want to atone for our behavior.

We feel guilty when we hold up something we’ve done or failed to do against our values and find they don’t match up

All the cruel and brutal things, even genocide, start with the humiliation of one individual - Kofi Annan, Ghanaian diplomat and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

In 2003, Susan Harter and colleagues issued a report that examined the media profiles of 10 prominent school shooters between 1996 and 1999. “In every case, the shooters described how the had been ridiculed, taunted, teased, harassed, or bullied by peers (because of their inadequate appearance, social or athletic) behavior, spurned by someone in whom they were romantically interested, or put down, in front of other students, by a teacher or school administrator, all events that led to profound humiliation.” Personal note: I say this is patriarchal in nature because it suggests that the victims of the school shooters held some of the responsibility for their own harm. Especially in the context of a romantic rejection, humiliation is not intended at all and yet is PERCEIVED. “I deserve…” or even “I did not deserve…” comes from entitlement when one person places their desires and demands above the very existence of all others

…the secondhand embarrassment feeling is real. We absolutely can feel vicarious embarrassment when we see others in embarrassing situations, even complete strangers