Wednesday Words – Brené Brown

“We are the most in-debt, obese, addicted, and medicated adult cohort in US history. The problem is, and I learned this from the research, that you cannot selectively numb emotion. You can’t say, ‘here’s the bad stuff, here’s vulnerability, here’s grief, here’s shame, here’s fear, here’s disappointment, I don’t want to feel these. I’m gonna have a couple of beers and a banana nut muffin.’ You can’t numb those hard feelings without numbing the other affects or emotions. You can not selectively numb. So when we numb those, we numb joy, we numb gratitude, we numb happiness. And then we are miserable and we are looking for purpose and meaning. And then we feel vulnerable, so then we have a couple of beers and a banana nut muffin, and it becomes this dangerous cycle.”

-Brené Brown, The Power of Vulnerability