I had the ability to take a series on online classes by Brene Brown. It was completely life inspiring and I learned SO many valuable insights. Each week there was a new topic discussed. I will briefly mention a few of the things that I took with me after watching them. 

One week she discussed THE ARMORY. Basically, that is just talking about as humans what shields or weapons we turn to when we feel shame or embarrassment. The key takeaway for me was something Brene said, “If we know what our shields or weapons we use are, then we can change them”.

3 topics were discussed and they are:

• Perfectionism
• Numbing
• Foreboding Joy

With perfectionism, we care what people think. We are motivated by the fear of judgement. We’re worried that if they find out who is really behind the mask, they will no longer be worthy of love, belonging, and connection. There is a line between perfectionism and striving for excellence. Healthy Striving for Excellence. An attitude of “I’m not doing this for what other people will think, I am doing this for me”. 

Numbing– We use this when we feel uncertain, emotionally exposed, or feel risk. It can be manifested through food, alcohol, work, the internet, etc. Here is where the problem lies…..YOU CANNOT PICK WHAT YOU WANT TO NUMB.  If you numb the dark, then you also numb the light. The challenge becomes how to fully lean into both the difficult emotion and the wonderful emotion. 

Foreboding Joy

Now this is one that I struggle immensely with. It’s the sense of when things are going REALLY well, and then all of a sudden you feel a bit of panic, and then you begin to wonder what bad thing is going to happen, when the other show will drop, etc. Does anyone else ever do that?

Brene talks about how Joy is the most vulnerable emotion we can experience. It goes down to us not wanting to be taken off guard. That we don’t want vulnerability to beat us to the punch. So instead, we dress rehearse tragedy. 

What we need to do is to begin by celebrating the small successes in our lives. That is a wonderful way to begin to practice joy. 

“Foreboding joy steals away the moments from us that are probably the most important in our lives.”

We need the reservoir of goodness for when bad things happen!

Shame Shields– There are 3 shame shields:

• Moving Away- when we feel shame, we do secret keeping, staying silent, not showing up, we just disappear into our own lives. 
• Moving Toward- that is basically just people pleasing
• Moving Against- we use shame + aggression to fight shame + aggression. 

What it all boils down to, is that we armor up to not feel hurt. No one wants to have those feelings, those emotions, of feeling hurt. It is a terrible feeling, but we need to remember all these things and learn to live our best life, striving for what we need, do not numb ourselves out when we get overwhelmed, and to celebrate the small successes!  

 

Yum