I’ve run into a per­son who has changed my out­look on life, but I’ve never met her per­son­ally. Her book has deeply influ­enced how I view life.

Brené Brown is a psychologist/​researcher who wrote the book The Gifts of Imper­fec­tion (Hazelden: 2010) and also has an sprawl­ing web­site and her blog Ordi­nary Courage. She first came to my atten­tion when I saw her TEDx­Hous­ton talk, which was recently picked by Huff­in­g­ton Post as one of the top 18 TED videos of 2011:

Her 20 minute talk hit some deep per­sonal scars and led me to her site and then the book. While read­ing the book, I was under­go­ing all the prob­lems with my periph­eral neu­ropa­thy, and there was an amaz­ing inter­play between my myofas­cial release ther­apy and the cen­tral con­cepts of Brown’s book. On the masseuse’s table, I had to strip down to my box­ers and bare myself to the ther­a­pist, com­mu­ni­cate my pain and numb­ness, con­vey how one type of stroke was mak­ing me feel, and trust that he would be able address some of the con­stric­tions of my tis­sues. I had to expose my phys­i­cal vul­ner­a­bil­ity to be able to start healing.

Shame and numbness

On another level, I dis­cov­ered from my read­ing of Brown’s book that I felt deep cur­rents of shame and, indeed, shame may actu­ally have been one of the strongest moti­vat­ing forces in my life. Shame is a “fear of dis­con­nec­tion” that peo­ple might find out what I am really like. Shame is such a blunt instru­ment that I couldn’t use it all the time, but once it’s out, it’s hard to lock it away. One way of deal­ing with this sense of shame is to block it out by numb­ing it. Brown says you can­not numb just one emo­tion (in my case, shame), you end up block­ing the whole emo­tional spectrum.

Although doc­tors might argue oth­er­wise, my numb­ness was both emo­tional and phys­i­cal, and the deaths of my par­ents and the dis­rup­tion that those events brought to my life this year had wors­ened my periph­eral neu­ropa­thy to the point that it was threat­en­ing my well-​​being. I was grasp­ing so hard to to my per­sonal facade that I was chok­ing off parts of my body and soul. Tak­ing pain med­ica­tion was just another way of block­ing out parts of my body, when I needed to get back in touch with them.

Brown’s book, which has the sub­ti­tle of “Let Go of Who You Think You’re Sup­posed to Be and Embrace Who You Are,” does a great job of break­ing down her approach to deal­ing with life and accept­ing the vul­ner­a­bil­ity of being imper­fect, and then lays out 10 guide­posts that can help any­one fol­low her map.

Brown has a man­i­festo that I keep posted near my desk and stashed in my shoul­der bag, and it’s avail­able as a col­or­ful post­card. I am going to cite it in full because it con­veys her mes­sage bet­ter than I can:

Authen­tic­ity is a daily practice.

Choos­ing authen­tic­ity means cul­ti­vat­ing the courage to be emo­tion­ally hon­est, to set bound­aries, and to allow our­selves to be vul­ner­a­ble; exer­cis­ing the com­pas­sion that comes from know­ing that we are all made of strength and strug­gle and con­nected to each other through a lov­ing and resilient human spirit; nurturing the con­nec­tion and sense of belong­ing that can only hap­pen when we let go of what we are sup­posed to be and embrace who we are.

Authen­tic­ity demands whole­hearted liv­ing and lov­ing — even when it’s hard, even when we’re wrestling with the shame and fear of not being good enough, and espe­cially when the job is so intense that we’re afraid to let our­selves feel it.

Mind­fully prac­tic­ing authen­tic­ity dur­ing our most soul-​​searchng strug­gles is how we invite grace, joy and grat­i­tude into our lives.