Listening to shame - Brené Brown

[Music] [Applause] I'm going tell you a little bit about my tedex Houston talk I woke up the morning after I gave that talk with the worst vulnerability hangover of my life and I actually didn't leave my house for about 3 days the first time I left was to meet a friend for lunch and when I walked in she was already at the table and I sat down and she said God you look like hell I said thanks um I feel really I I'm I'm not functioning and she said what's going on and I said I

just told 500 people that I became a researcher to avoid vulnerability and that when being vulnerable emerged from my data as absolutely essential to wholehearted living I told these 500 people that I had a breakdown I had a slide that said breakdown it what point did I think that was a good idea and she said I saw your talk live streamed it was it was not really you um it was a little different than what you usually do but it was great and I said this can't happen YouTube they're putting this thing on YouTube and

we're going to be talking about 600 700 people and she said well I think you know it's too late and I said let me ask you something and she said yeah and I said do you remember when we were in college and really wild and kind of dumb she said yeah and I said remember when we leave a really bad message on our ex-boyfriend's answering machine then we'd have to break into his dorm room and then erase the tape and she goes uh no so of course the only thing I could think of to say

at that point was yeah me neither I that that that yeah I yeah me neither and I'm thinking to myself brne what are you doing what are you doing why did you bring this up have you lost your mind your sisters with be perfect for this so I looked back up and she said are you really going to try to break in and steal the video before they put it on YouTube and I said I'm just thinking about it a little bit she said you're like the worst vulnerability role model ever and then I looked

at her and I said something that at the time felt a little dramatic but ended up being more prophetic than dramatic I said if 500 turns into a thousand or 2,000 my life is over I had no contingency plan for 4 million um and my life did end when that happened and maybe the hardest part about my life ending is that I learned something hard about myself and that was that as much as I would be frustrated about not being able to get my work out to the world there was a part of me that

was working very hard to engineer staying small staying right under the radar but I want to talk about what I've learned there's two things that I've learned in the last year um the first is vulnerability is not weakness and that myth is profoundly dangerous let me ask you honestly and I'll give you this this warning I'm trained as a therapist so I can outweight you uncomfortably um so if you could just raise your hand that would be awesome um how many of you honestly when you're thinking about doing something vulnerable or saying something vulnerable think

God vulnerability is weakness this is weakness how many of you think of vulnerability and weakness synonymously the majority of people now let me ask you this question this past week at Ted how many of you when you saw vulnerability up here thought it was pure courage vulnerability is not weakness I Define vulnerability as emotional risk exposure uncertainty it fuels our daily lives and I have come to the belief this is my 12th year doing this research that vulnerability is our most accurate measurement of courage to be vulnerable to let ourselves be seen to be honest

one of the weird things that's happened is after the Ted explosion um I got a lot of offers to speak all over the country um everyone from schools and parent meetings to Fortune 500 companies um and so many of the calls went like this hey Dr Brown we your Ted Talk we'd like you to come in and speak we'd appreciate it if you wouldn't mention vulnerability or shame what would you like for me to talk about there's three big answers this is mostly to be honest with you from the business sector Innovation creativity and change

so let me go on the record and say vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation creativity and [Applause] change to create is to make something that has never existed before there's nothing more vulnerable than that adaptability to change is all about vulnerability the second thing in addition to really find L understanding the relationship between vulnerability and courage the second thing I learned is this we have to talk about shame and I'm going to be really honest with you when I became like a vulnerability researcher um and that became the focus because of the Tad talk and

I'm not kidding that I'll give you an example about three months ago I was in a sporting goods store buying goggles and shinguards and all the things that parents buy at this sping goods store about from a 100 feet away this is what I hear vulnerability Ted vulnerability Ted yeah I'm a fifth generation Texan our family motto is Lock and Load I am not a natural vulnerability researcher um so I'm like just keep walking she's on my six um and then I hear vulnerability t i turn around I go hi she's right here and she

said you're the shame researcher who had the breakdown at this point parents are like pulling their children close look away um and I'm so worn out at this point in my life I look at her and I actually say it was a freaking Spiritual Awakening and she looks back and does this I know and she said we watched your Ted Talk in my book club then we read your book and we renamed ourselves the breakdown babes and she said our tagline is we're falling apart and it feels f fantastic you can only imagine what it's

like for me in a faculty meeting so when I became vulnerability Ted like an action figure like ninja Barbie but I'm vulnerability Ted um I thought I'm going to leave that shame stuff behind because I spent six years studying shame before I really started writing and talking about vulnerability and I thought thank God because shame is this horrible topic no one wants to talk about it it's the best way to shut people down on an airplane what do you do I study shame oh um and I see you you know uh but in surviving this

last year I was reminded of a cardinal rule not a research rule but a moral imperative from my up in you got to dance with the one who BR you and I did not learn about vulnerability and courage and creativity and Innovation from studying vulnerability I learned about these things from studying shame and so I want to walk you in to shame Union analysts call shame the swamping of the soul and we're going to walk in and the purpose is not to walk walk in and you know construct a home and live there it is

to put on some gashes and walk through and find our way around here's why we heard the most compelling call ever to have a conversation in this country and I think globally around race right yes we heard that yes cannot have that conversation without shame because you cannot talk about race without talking about privilege and when people start talking about privilege they get paralyzed by shame we heard a brilliant simple solution to not killing people in surgery which is have a checklist you can't fix that problem without addressing shame because when they teach those folks

how to suture they also teach them how to stitch their selfworth to being all powerful and all powerful folks don't need checklist and I had to write down the name of this Ted fellow so I didn't mess it up here Michigan ingal I hope I did right by you I saw the Ted fellas my first day here and he got up and he explained how he was driven to create some technology to help test for anemia because people were dying unnecessarily and he said I saw this need so you know what I did I made

it and everybody just burn into Applause and they were like yes and he said and it didn't work and then I made it 32 more times and then it worked you know what the big secret about Ted is I can't wait to tell people this I I guess I'm doing it right now um this is like the failure conference no it is you know why this place is amazing because very few people here are afraid to fail and no one that gets on the stage so far that I've seen has not failed I have failed

miserably many times I don't think the world understands that because of Shame there's a great quote that saved me this past year by Theodore Roosevelt um a lot of people refer it to it as the man in the arena quote and it goes like this it is not the critic who counts it is not the man who sits and points out how the of Deeds could have done things better and how he falls and stumbles the credit goes to the man in the arena whose face is marred with dust and blood and sweat but when

he's in the arena at best he wins and at worst he loses but when he fails when he loses he does so daring greatly and that's what this conference to me is about that's what life is about about daring greatly about being in the arena when you walk up to that Arena and you put your hand on the door and you think I'm going in and I'm going to try this shame is the grimlin who says uh-uh you're not good enough you never finished that NBA your wife left you I know your dad really wasn't

in Luxembourg he was in sing Singh I know you those things that happened to you growing up I know you don't think that you're pretty enough or smart enough or talented enough or powerful enough I know your dad never paid attention even when you made CFO shame is that thing and then if we can quiet it down and walk in and say I'm G to do this we look up and the critic that we see pointing and laughing 99% of the time is who us shame drives two big tapes never good enough and if you

can talk it out of that one who Do You Think You Are the thing to understand about shame is it's not guilt shame is a focus on self guilt is a focus on Behavior shame is I am bad guilt is I did something bad how many of you if you did something that was hurtful to me would be willing to say I'm sorry I made a mistake how many of you would be willing to say that guilt I'm sorry I made a mistake shame I'm sorry I am a mistake there is a huge difference between

shame and guilt and here's what you need to know shame is highly highly correlated with addiction depression violence aggression bullying suicide eating disorders and here's what you even need to know more guilt inversely correlated with those things the ability to hold something we've done our fail to do up against who we want to be is incredibly adaptive it's uncomfortable but it's adaptive the other thing you need to know about shame is it's absolutely organized by gender if shame washes over me and washes over Chris it's going to feel the same everyone sitting in here knows

the warm wash of Shame we're pretty sure that the only people who don't experience shame are people who have no capacity for connection or empathy which means yes I have a little shame no I'm a sociopath so I would opt for yes you have a little shame shame feels the same for men and women but it's organized by gender for women the best example I can give you is anali Le the commercial I can put the wash on the line pack the lunches hand out the kisses and be work at 5: to 9: I can

bring home the bacon fry it up in the pan and never let you forget you're a man for women shame is do it all do it perfectly and never let them see you sweat I don't know how much perfume that commercial sold but I guarantee you it moved a lot of anti-depressants and anti-anxiety meds shame for women is this web of unattainable conflicting competing expectations about who we're supposed to be and it's a straight jacket for men shame is not about bunch of competing conflicting expectations shame is one do not be perceived as what weak

I did not interview men for the first four years of my study and it wasn't until a man looked at me one day after a book signing and said I love what you have to say about shame I'm curious why you didn't mention men and I said I don't study men and he said that's convenient and I said why and he said because you say to reach out tell our story be vulnerable but you see those books you just sign for my wife and my three daughters I said yeah they'd rather me die on top

of my white horse than watch me fall down when we reach out and be vulnerable we get the beat out of us and don't tell me it's from are the guys and the coaches and the dads because the women in my life are harder on me than anyone else so I started interviewing men and asking questions and what I learned is this you show me a woman who can actually sit with a man in real vulnerability and fear I'll show you a woman who's done incredible work you show me a man who can sit with

a woman who's just had it she can't do it all anymore and his first response is not I unloaded the dishwasher but he really listens cuz that's all we need I'll show you a guy who's done a lot of work shame is an epidemic in our culture and to get out from underneath it to find our way back to each other we have to understand how it affects us and how it affects the way our parenting the way we're working the way we're looking at each other very quickly some research by mahalik at Boston College

he asked what do women need to do to conform to female Norms the top answers in this country nice thin modest and use all available resources for appearance when he asked about men what do men in this country need to do to conform with male Norms the answers were always show emotional control work is first pursue status and violence if we're going to find our way back to each other we have to understand and know empathy because empathy is the antidote to shame if you put shame in a Petri dish it needs three things to

grow exponentially secrecy silence and judgment if you put the same amount of shame in a Petri dish and doubts it with empathy it can't survive the two most powerful words when we're in struggle me too and so I'll leave you with this thought if we're going to find our way back to to each other vulnerability is going to be that path and I know it's seductive to stand outside the arena because I think I did it my whole life and think to myself I'm going to go in there and kick some ass when I'm bulletproof

and when I'm perfect and that is seductive but the truth is that never happens and even if you got as perfect as you could and as bulletproof as you could possibly muster when you got in there that's not what we want to see we want you to go in we want to be with you and across from you and we just want for ourselves and the people we care about and the people we work with to dare greatly so thank you'all very much I really appreciate it w