I love Brene’ Brown’s work.  She is absolutely my favorite researcher, author, and speaker on issues of mental health and wellness.  Her work is centered on the experience of shame and development of shame resilience, which is largely achieved through overcoming our fear of being vulnerable and taking emotional risks.

I first learned of Brene’ Brown’s work last September when I was asked to watch her Ted Talk on The Power of Vulnerability.  When the video ended I was left sitting with my mouth hanging open.  That’s it!, I thought.  That’s the center of so many of the things that we and our clients experience.  Since that time I’ve looked for articles I could share of Brene’ Brown’s work, but it seems that her writing is largely confined to books (which are definitely worth reading, but I wouldn’t post them in a blog).

So, yesterday I found this article that was written after its author completed an interview with Brene’ Brown.  The article describes 5 of the most important premises in her work.  If you’d like to get a taste of Brene’ Brown’s work it’s a good place to start.  It essentially asserts that, 1). When you allow yourself to be vulnerable with others you can expect to have amazingly good outcomes, though you’ll have to deal with feelings of horror that you’ve possibly made the worst mistake ever by exposing yourself; 2) Narcissism is really just a strong defense that we create to protect us from our fear that we’re not good enough; 3) Shame is the intense feeling that we are unworthy of belonging or are flawed. It expresses itself in gender specific ways for men and women; 4) The best way to get over shame is to share yourself with a deeply empathic person or people; 5) We must embrace our failures and the prospect of failure if we ever want to truly succeed with greatness.  The effort that goes into great successes always starts with the willingness to fail repeatedly until one gets it right.

I recommend reading through this article, which I attached below, to get a better taste of the central theme of shame and vulnerability.  I also recommend viewing Brene’ Brown’s TED talks, which are posted on You Tube or at Ted.com.  I have posted a link for the TED talk on vulnerability just below the article.  Enjoy. http://www.romankrznaric.com/outrospection/2012/10/16/1729

http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability.html