Brené Brown: How Research Made Shame Something We Can Talk About

This is the second article in a series about how our understanding of toxic shame has grown. In the first, John Bradshaw gave shame a name. Twenty years later, a social work researcher in Houston gave it something just as important: evidence, and a way to talk about it that millions of people could finally use.

A researcher who listened to thousands of stories

Brené Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston, trained as a social worker. She did not start out studying shame. She was studying connection, and kept finding that what got in the way of connection was shame.

So she listened. For her first book on the subject, I Thought It Was Just Me, published in 2007, she spent six years interviewing around four hundred women about their most personal experiences of shame. Over the years her research grew to thousands of stories, from women and men.

In 2010 she gave a talk called The Power of Vulnerability at a TEDx event in Houston. It became one of the most watched talks in the world. Two years later came Listening to Shame on the main TED stage, and the book Daring Greatly. Since then her work has reached schools, families, therapists and companies everywhere.

Shame, guilt, and the need to belong

Brown defines shame as the painful feeling of believing that we are flawed, and so not worthy of love and belonging. That last part is the key. Shame is about the fear of disconnection, of being found out and pushed away.

She gave us the clearest language we have for the difference between shame and guilt. Guilt says "I did something bad." Shame says "I am bad." Guilt can be useful: it helps us repair and change. Shame tends to make us hide, attack or give up.

She also showed what shame needs to grow: secrecy, silence and judgment. And what it cannot survive. When we speak our shame to someone who meets it with empathy, it starts to lose its power.

And she showed that shame is universal. Everyone has it. The only people without it, she says, are people who cannot feel empathy or connection. Shame is a human experience, not a personal defect.

Shame resilience: four ways back to connection

Brown's research led to what she calls shame resilience: the ability to recognize shame when it happens and move through it without losing ourselves. She described four parts.

Recognizing shame and what triggers it. Knowing how it feels in you, and which situations set it off.

Looking at the messages behind it. Asking where the expectations come from, and whether they are even ours.

Reaching out. Sharing our story with people who have earned the right to hear it.

Speaking shame. Naming it out loud, saying what we feel and asking for what we need.

Six gifts that changed the conversation

She brought research to shame. Bradshaw spoke from experience and counseling. Brown brought years of data. That gave shame a place in universities, clinics and boardrooms where it had never been taken seriously.

She gave us words a child can understand. "I did something bad" versus "I am bad" has become one of the most useful sentences in modern psychology. Parents and teachers use it every day.

She showed that empathy heals shame. Not advice, not fixing, not cheering someone up. Being with them. That one idea changed how many people listen to each other.

She turned vulnerability into strength. Before her, being vulnerable sounded like being weak. She showed that it is where courage, creativity and real connection begin.

She showed how shame shapes men and women differently. For women, she described a web of impossible and conflicting expectations. For men, one rule above all: never be seen as weak. As someone who works with men, I see this every week. Her research gave many men permission to admit they feel shame at all.

She took shame out of the therapy room. Through talks, books, podcasts and her Netflix special, she brought the conversation into homes, schools and workplaces. Shame stopped being something only therapists talked about.

What her work opened for the body

Brown showed that shame heals in connection, when another person meets us with empathy. That is exactly what the body work that followed explains from the inside.

When shame hits, the body freezes and collapses. The eyes go down, the head drops, or we go still. In my work I see that this is a physical pattern stored in the autonomic nervous system, the part of us that runs the body below thought. Empathy works because another calm, present person helps that system settle. Brown described the medicine. The body shows us how it works.

So in sessions we build on her insight. Slowly, with someone present, a person learns to feel the shame and the disgust underneath it and stay. As capacity grows, they can reach out, speak and be seen, which is exactly what shame resilience asks of us. And the shame fades, in the body and in their relationships.

Coming next: Peter Levine and the wisdom of the body

The next article looks at Peter Levine, the founder of Somatic Experiencing, and what happened when the conversation about shame turned to the body.

If you want to understand toxic shame from the body's side, my free book Healing Toxic Shame is at healtoxicshame.com/#book. The path I use with clients is on The Method page: healtoxicshame.com/how-to-heal-toxic-shame.