Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience

“In a world where perfectionism, pleasing, and proving are used as armor to protect our egos and our feelings, it takes a lot of courage to show up and be all in when we can’t control the outcome. […] Vulnerability is not weakness; it’s our greatest measure of courage.”

While we might intuitively think perfectionism is a way of becoming better and better at something, Brown believes perfectionism hinders us. She ties this to her theme of vulnerability and curiosity and explains that when we are so afraid to fail, we will never take risks and advance. By risking failure, shame, etc., through vulnerability we are actually demonstrating more strength than when we cling to perfectionism.

Comparison is the crush of conformity from one side and competition from the other—it’s trying to simultaneously fit in and stand out. Comparison says, ‘Be like everyone else, but better.”

Throughout Atlas of the Heart, Brown shows the importance of self-compassion to connect with ourselves and others. When we are preoccupied with being better than others yet afraid to stand out too much, we create unnecessary anxiety and belonging uncertainty. Only by resisting negative comparison can we celebrate others’ successes without feeling like we are less for doing so.

“Now when I start to feel resentful, instead of thinking, What is that person doing wrong? Or What should they be doing? I think, What do I need but am afraid to ask for? While resentment is definitely an emotion, I normally recognize it by a familiar thought pattern: What mean and critical thing am I rehearsing saying to this person?”

Brown believes knowledge and practice go hand in hand. With our knowledge about emotional granularity, we are better able to reality check with ourselves and determine what is really going on beneath the surface. When we are aware of emotions, we can act intentionally rather than reactively.

“Every day, sometimes every hour, we are consciously and unconsciously setting expectations of ourselves and the people in our lives—especially those closest to us. The unconscious, unexamined, and unexpressed expectations are the most dangerous and often turn into disappointment.”

Building healthy and meaningful relationships is one of the reasons Brown believes we should all practice awareness and learn more about emotions. Better self-awareness is key to healthy relationships because it helps us communicate our needs and desires to others. This is not selfish but a way to prevent miscommunication, resentment, and other hurts.

“There are too many people in the world today who decide to live disappointed rather than risk feeling disappointment.”

Brown discusses the way that trying to shield ourselves from disappointment is a form of resisting vulnerability. We don’t like the way it feels when things don’t work out the way we wanted, so we might not try new things, or we pretend not to want things as much as we really do. This lifestyle might seem to resist pain, but Brown believes it leaves us just as frustrated in the long run.

“And we don’t need to stand on a cliff and see the Northern Lights to feel awe or wonder—although this is absolutely on my bucket list. Sometimes I feel like my dog, Lucy, is staring into my soul and I feel a huge sense of wonder. How did I end up with an actual Ewok living in my house? It’s unreal. And as a parent, simple moments with my children have rendered me speechless with awe.”

The idea of emotions can seem inaccessible for people who are not as expressive as others. It can also seem like only dramatic moments count as “emotional experiences.” By including examples like this one, Brown shows that experiences like awe might be dramatic, but they can also hit us in life’s most simple moments.

“Choosing to be curious is choosing to be vulnerable because it requires us to surrender to uncertainty. We have to ask questions, admit to not knowing, risk being told that we shouldn’t be asking, and sometimes, make discoveries that lead to discomfort.”

Vulnerability is one of the key themes throughout Brown’s work. In Atlas of the Heart, she shows that vulnerability is not just sharing things that are deeply important to us but risking other types of exposure, shame, or disappointment. For many, “being right” is crucial, and we avoid vulnerably risking listening to others and keeping an open mind.

“There’s nothing more limiting than tapping out of tension and oversimplifying the thoughts and feelings that have the power to help us understand who we are and what we need.”

Brown reiterates her argument that emotions are not weakness and pretending they don’t exist isn’t strength. By being honest and authentic about our experiences, we are able to live life more fully and actually be more restrained and less reactive in our relationships.

“In these challenging moments of dissonance, we need to stay curious and resist choosing comfort over courage. It’s brave to invite new information to the table, to sit with it and hear it out. It’s also rare these days.”

While most of Brown’s research is about individuals, she also talks about the ways that culture shapes our experiences. She believes that our intolerance for vulnerability is played out on a societal level by our refusal to hear differing points of view. She believes that for our culture to flourish and find connection, we need to be brave and listen to the stories and perspectives of others. 

“There is another alternative to not addressing the trauma of anguish—we can convince ourselves that we’re okay and keep ourselves upright by hanging our crumpling anguish on rigidity and perfectionism and silence, like a wet towel hanging on a rod.”

This vivid imagery helps prove Brown’s point about avoiding confronting our emotions. While we can go on for a while with coping mechanisms and numbing behaviors, there are things about the human experience we cannot escape.

“Hope is a function of struggle—we develop hope not during the easy or comfortable times, but through adversity and discomfort. Hope is forged when our goals, pathways, and agency are tested and when change is actually possible.”

Brown encourages her reader about certain experiences that do not just happen to us, they require practice and effort. She believes gratitude and hope are not just emotions or feelings but things forged intentionally during our lives.

“Compassion is fueled by understanding and accepting that we’re all made of strength and struggle—no one is immune to pain or suffering. Compassion is not a practice of ‘better than’ or ‘I can fix you’—it’s a practice based in the beauty and pain of shared humanity.”

Brown believes that “near enemies” are emotions that look similar but function differently. She reminds the reader that compassion is not pity or feeling that we are better than someone suffering. Only by understanding this difference in practice can we engage with others effectively.

“We need to dispel the myth that empathy is ‘walking in someone else’s shoes.’ Rather than walking in your shoes, I need to learn how to listen to the story you tell about what it’s like in your shoes and believe you even when it doesn’t match my experiences.”

Brown is honest that her beliefs about empathy have changed. While she previously believed that understanding emotions helps us know how others are feeling, she now adds the caveat that we cannot guess how others are feeling. We need to ask questions and listen to and believe their answers.

“It may seem counterintuitive, but one of the biggest barriers to working toward mastery is perfectionism. In our leadership research, we’ve learned that achieving mastery requires curiosity and viewing mistakes and failures as opportunities for learning. Perfectionism kills curiosity by telling us that we have to know everything, or we risk looking ‘less than.’ Perfectionism tells us that our mistakes and failures are personal defects, so we either avoid trying new things or we barely recover every time we inevitably fall short.”

In this quote, Brown again ties the idea of perfectionism and vulnerability together. She believes that perfectionism, narcissism, and other problems come from a desire to be better than others and from being terrified of failure. By separating our identity from our failures, we are more likely to embrace new experiences and successes.

“I know we all have deeply passionate political and cultural beliefs, but shame and humiliation will never be effective social justice tools. They are tools of oppression.” 

In Chapter 8, Brown discusses embarrassment and humiliation. While being embarrassed is short and usually mild, humiliation is tied to violence and not toward true reformation. She urges the reader never to participate in humiliating others, no matter how much we disagree with them or even find them reprehensible.

“We have to belong to ourselves as much as we need to belong to others. Any belonging that asks us to betray ourselves is not true belonging”

Although much of Atlas of the Heart discusses relationships, Brown believes we need to start with ourselves to be able to engage with others fully. Only when we practice self-compassion and self-acceptance can we engage in a relationship where both parties are fully accepted for who they are.

“I’ll confess that I don’t think we’ll ever be able to fully unravel the mysteries of love, or, to be honest, many of the other emotions we experience. At least I hope not. I think attempting to understand ourselves and each other is essential. But so is mystery.” 

While Atlas of the Heart seeks to define emotions and experiences to make them more accessible, Brown is honest that emotions are not a precise science. The human experience is a blend of mystery, spirituality, art, science, etc. While trying to better understand each other is essential, we should also cherish the fact that being human is complex, and emotions like love are complex too.

“When I get defensive, I often get tunnel vision and start planning what I’m going to say instead of listening. But I have found some ways to disarm my defensiveness. My strategy is to subtly open my palms, even if my hands are just hanging by my side or on my lap, and actually say, ‘I’m sorry. Can you say that again? I really want to understand.’” 

In this quote, Brown gives a practical, physical action that can help reinforce an intangible idea. Because humans are not just floating heads, physical practices like opening our hands can be a helpful reminder of the person we want to be.

“While gratitude is an emotion, if we want to experience its full power, we must also make it a practice. Over the past two decades, the research has taught me that, despite the catchy phrase “an attitude of gratitude,” gratitude is a practice. It’s tangible.”

This quote shows another emotion Brown believes must be practiced regularly. She relies on extensive research that has shown that regular practices of gratitude can change our emotions. This reinforces her claim that knowing about emotions and experiences can impact our experience of them.

“We are terrified of being blindsided by pain, so we practice tragedy and trauma. But there’s a huge cost. When we push away joy, we squander the goodness that we need to build resilience, strength, and courage.”

Brown does not hide the fact that negative emotions will happen when we open ourselves up to the world. Only love can turn into lovelessness, and only trust can turn into betrayal. In this quote, she shows how we can negatively rehearse what will happen in our heads instead of embracing the future with hope. 

“Language matters. It’s the raw material of story, it changes how we feel about ourselves and others, and it’s a portal to connection. With the same amount of power, language can also be used to strip people of their dignity and humanity. With awareness about how dehumanization works, comes the responsibility to call out dangerous language when we recognize it.”

In Chapter 12, Brown shows some of the severe ramifications of the language that we use to express ourselves. Language can help us understand and connect with each other, but it can also enable us to dehumanize and see others as repulsive.

“Our armoring behaviors keep us from showing up in ways that are aligned with our values. As we learn to recognize and remove our armor, we replace it with grounded confidence.” 

When reacting out of fear, shame, or a lack of vulnerability, we often retaliate against others and react in ways we don’t want to. By being vulnerable, we can act more deliberately. When we are aware of how we are feeling, we are actually less likely to be controlled by those feelings in ways we don’t want to be.

“Doing this research and writing this book has taught me that emotions and experiences are layers of biology, biography, behavior, and backstory. Every single day, our feelings and experiences show up in our bodies, they’re shaped by where we come from and how we were raised, they drive how we show up, and each feeling has its own unique backstory. Understanding these emotions and experiences is our life’s work. The more we learn, the deeper we can continue to explore.” 

Brown’s work is known for providing qualitative research on a quantitative level. Atlas of the Heart is meant to make thousands of survey results and research about emotions accessible to the average person so it can be used to better understand ourselves and others.