The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are

The Paradox of Shame is a key component of this section. Brown gives shame a concrete definition so that readers can identify how it manifests in their lives. Brown makes an important thematic distinction between guilt and shame. Guilt can be a helpful emotion in the quest to live wholeheartedly, as it relates to a concrete action that detaches us from our values. Shame, however, is the feeling that we ourselves are wrong and unworthy of love because of our imperfections. As the fear of exposure for who one “really” is, shame has direct ramifications for The Challenge of Being Oneself in a Conformist World. Brown shows how shame is aligned with many paradoxes, the first being that the less we allow ourselves to talk about shame, the more we have it. In order to combat shame, we must behave counterintuitively and share our stories of the incidents that embody this emotion rather than burying them. Brown shows how she consciously put this method into action with her sister Ashley, sharing the shame that followed an ill-received talk. Brown not only had to face the discomfort of airing what she would have preferred to conceal but also had to leave her helpful older-sibling position and enter a more vulnerable place, where she was the one in need of comfort and help. This moment is important to show to the reader because it highlights and serves as evidence for Brown’s major ideas about how shame, vulnerability, and connection interact with each other.

In relating this story, Brown also highlights the relevance of shame’s paradoxical nature to those listening to expressions of shame, as they must be open and vulnerable enough to enter into the teller’s emotion and feel their own shame through it. Again, this is a counterintuitive approach, as the path of least resistance is to use a number of different strategies to shield ourselves from the sharer’s pain. By employing these distraction techniques, we distance ourselves from the sharer and spin the comforting myth that such shame-triggering incidents happen to people like them instead of us. Brown uses the incident with her sister to show that there are rewards for revisiting our own discomfort as a listener—namely, healing residual past shame and feeling a greater sense of connection to the sharer.

As she analyzes the qualities of compassion, courage, and connection that make up wholehearted living, Brown delivers more surprise conclusions. One of these is that we maximize compassion when we maintain boundaries and hold people accountable for their actions, thereby giving them the opportunity to improve and grow. The idea that boundaries and restrictions could be a component of wholehearted living seems radical in a culture that is used to viewing compassion as a soft, indulgent quality. By evoking such paradoxes, Brown suggests that most of us have an overly simplistic understanding of human emotions. This feeds into her argument that living wholeheartedly means embracing the opportunities for comfort in the thorniest feelings and the opportunities for self-improvement in the tenderest ones.