I’ll be sharing excerpt from the book I’ve been reading for some time, “The gift of imperfection” by Brené Brown.

Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love, belonging, and connection.

Shame keeps worthiness away by convincing us that owning our stories will lead to people thinking less of us. Shame is all about fear. We’re afraid that people won’t like us if they know the truth about who we are, where we come from, what we believe, how much we’re struggling, or, believe it or not, how wonderful we are when soaring (sometimes it’s just as hard to own our strengths as our struggles).

…

The stories of our struggles are difficult for everyone to own, and if we’ve worked hard to make sure everything looks “just right” on the outside, the stakes are high when it comes to truth-telling. This is why shame loves perfectionists- it’s so easy to keep us quiet.

In addition to the fear of disappointing people or pushing them away with our stories, we’re also afraid that if we tell our stories, the weight of a single experience will collapse upon us. There is a real fear that we can be buried or defined by an experience that, in reality, is only a sliver of who we are.

Here are images from the book. The highlights are what I shared.

That’s it for today.

As usual, be a light in your space💫