If we believe we deserve happiness why do we struggle, why do we break? Why are we not constant sources of love and warmth? The Power of vulnerability addresses such disparities.
Brené Brown is a contemporary research professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work, also a conference speaker and author. …show more content…
There is an instrument to measure if one relates to life with shame or guilt (differentiation between shame, guilt, humiliation and embarrassment are presented by the author): the TASCA. This is where the ten guideposts of wholehearted living are useful. After we understand what triggers shame for us, we can be inspired by how others gained their resilience.
The way from shame to wholeheartedness goes through vulnerability. In the words of David Foster Wallace: “What passes for hip cynical transcendence of sentiment is really some kind of fear of being really human, since to be really human [...] is probably to be unavoidably sentimental and naïve and goo-prone and generally pathetic.”
People reject vulnerability by virtue of associating it with dark emotions: grief, uncertainty. But vulnerability is also the place where positive emotions are born: love, joy, empathy. Being courageous and vulnerable or protecting ourselves, this is a choice we arrive at often and if we choose disengagement, we close off