Atlas Of The Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection And The Language Of Human Experience Quotes
"Heart is sea, language is shore. Whatever sea includes, will hit the shore." — RUMI
"My people die with a look of defiance on their face and shit in every drawer."
"There is nothing sweet about packing up. It’s hard physical work and an emotional minefield."
"As far as my own stuff goes, I was Marie Kondo before Marie Kondo was cool."
"I can feel my house sighing with relief when I take five bags of stuff to the local shelter."
"I am the oldest of four, so I often felt the brunt of the madness."
"By the time I was in middle school, I had used a combination of my mom’s magazines and after-school specials to diagnose myself as 'crazy.'"
"For children, it’s easy for everything to become a source of shame when nothing is normalized."
"I knew every inch of the supposedly 'socially acceptable' place for processing anger."
"When I see that parent at my kids’ events, I have to put myself in a trance or leave."
"Understanding and feeling those edges brings grace and clarity."
"When we don’t have the language to talk about what we’re experiencing, our ability to make sense of what’s happening and share it with others is severely limited."
"Learning to label emotions with a more nuanced vocabulary can be absolutely transformative."
"Envy occurs when we want something that another person has."
"Jealousy is when we fear losing a relationship or a valued part of a relationship that we already have."
"No one was looking in the right places. No one was thinking about how it all works together."
"People will do almost anything to not feel pain, including causing pain and abusing power."
"Disappointment is unmet expectations. The more significant the expectations, the more significant the disappointment."
"We don’t compare our house to the mansions across town; we compare our yard to the yards on our block."
"When we compare, we want to be the best or have the best of our group."
"We are meaning makers, and a sense of place is central to meaning-making."
"I remember often thinking, Oh, God. Do you not see this coming?"
"I can convince myself that an experience is going to be disastrous and work myself into a dread-frenzy."
"What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness."
"Regret is one of our most powerful emotional reminders that reflection, change, and growth are necessary."
"To live without regret is to believe we have nothing to learn, no amends to make, and no opportunity to be braver with our lives."
"The idea that regret is a fair but tough teacher can really piss people off."
"Sometimes the most uncomfortable learning is the most powerful."
"The greater the magnitude of the dissonance, the greater is the pressure to reduce dissonance."
"Grief does not obey your plans, or your wishes."
"Grief will do whatever it wants to you, whenever it wants to."
"Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love, belonging, and connection."
"Empathy is an emotional skill set that allows us to understand what someone is experiencing and to reflect back that understanding."
"Can you physically recognize when you’re in the grip of shame, name it, feel your way through it, and figure out what messages and expectations triggered it?"
"The last thing people like that need is more shame."
"Shame is an egocentric, self-involved emotion."
"Perfectionism is externally driven by a simple but potentially all-consuming question: What will people think?"
"Understanding the difference between healthy striving and perfectionism is critical."
"Research shows that perfectionism hampers success."
"We can’t experience empathy if we’re not connecting."
"Perfectionism tells us that our mistakes and failures are personal defects."
"Perfectionism is addictive, because when we invariably do experience shame, judgment, and blame, we often believe it’s because we weren’t perfect enough."
"Guilt is negatively correlated with these outcomes."
"Empathy and guilt work together to create a force that is adaptive and powerful."
"We feel guilty when we hold up something we’ve done or failed to do against our values and find they don’t match up."
"Shame, however, corrodes the very part of us that believes we can change and do better."
"Based on the research, we can define humiliation as the intensely painful feeling that we’ve been unjustly degraded, ridiculed, or put down."
"Belonging is a practice that requires us to be vulnerable, get uncomfortable, and learn how to be present with people without sacrificing who we are."
"Self-righteousness is the conviction that one’s beliefs and behaviors are the most correct."
"Pride is a feeling of pleasure or celebration related to our accomplishments or efforts."
"Hubris is an inflated sense of one’s own innate abilities that is tied more to the need for dominance than to actual accomplishments."
"Humility is openness to new learning combined with a balanced and accurate assessment of our contributions."
"Moral outrage in response to injustice can be classified as righteous anger when motivated by a 'true' concern about injustice."
"I define narcissism as the shame-based fear of being ordinary."
"Theory is: 'A set of interrelated constructs, definitions, and propositions that present a systematic view of phenomena specifying relations among variables, with the purpose of explaining and predicting the phenomena.'"
"The near enemy of equanimity is indifference or callousness."
"Embodiment is 'the awareness of our body’s sensations, habits, and the beliefs that inform them.'"
"The belief that tomorrow will be just like today."
"Sadness and depression are not the same thing."
"Though much has been made of the benefits of sadness, it is not an emotion that one can willfully summon."
"Grief does not obey your plans, or your wishes. Grief will do whatever it wants to you, whenever it wants."
"A central process in grieving is finding a way to continue the relationship with the deceased in a way that soothes rather than torments."
"Each person's grief is as unique as their fingerprint."
"Virtuous response involves perceiving and understanding the suffering of others in a deeply personal way."
"Self-compassion involves recognizing that suffering and personal inadequacy is part of the shared human experience."
"Mindfulness is a non-judgmental, receptive mind state in which individuals observe their thoughts and feelings as they are."
"The heart of compassion is really acceptance."
"Science is not the truth. It is, at best, a painstaking journey toward the truth."
"Self-compassion entails being warm and understanding toward ourselves when we suffer."
"All the cruel and brutal things, even genocide, start from the humiliation of one individual."
"Never allow anyone to be humiliated in your presence."
"When a person adapts to a loss, they re-establish a meaningful life without the deceased."
"Disenfranchised grief is when your heart is grieving but you can't talk about or share your pain."
"Embarrassment is a fleeting feeling, often less intense than shame."
"We absolutely can feel vicarious embarrassment for others."
"The need for connection is universal, experienced by all people regardless of culture or background."
"In every case of mass violence, humiliation is a central theme in the perpetrator's life."