Brene Brown is 90-95% helpful, perhaps?

Brene Brown is 90-95% helpful. I think that's higher than me! She is well studied, well-researched. But she is not 100% helpful. Barely anyone is 100%. Even God and the Bible or <insert your favorite holy text> is fallable, even if only because your interpretation of the text is fallable.  So this idea of wise-judgment or discernment is pretty essential, regardless of if you are Buddhist or not. Taking something in whole-hog can be dangerous. See my post on NVC.


Let's take a specific example:

https://brenebrown.com/resources/atlas-of-the-heart-list-of-emotions/
A list of 87 emotions and about 8 anti-patterns for empathy (e.g., fake empathy)

As I read through her list, I'm struck by how much the emotions are about emotional narratives. They aren't (all) raw emotions. They are emotions with context and reactions and justifications or avoidance. So they are complex emotions; they are the emotions then mixed with contact with stories/ego, and then secondary emotions, and then maybe social context.

It seems, to me, like she is missing some basic things from the list of 87. And overemphasizing the secondary emotions.

She doesn't have unsafe (and safe). Some might not call these emotions, but in trauma work, that sense of safety is beyond words, possibly before emotions, and hard wired into the Amygdala, the Limbic system, and various midbrain structures. Most people don't experience "unsafe" by itself because they are primed to then go to the reaction. Often fear. Or frustration. Or blame. These, Brown lists. But a big part of Buddhism (IMHO) is to be able to experience safe and unsafe in it's raw form. And then to watch the chain of the brain.

In Buddhism we have Vedana, translated as feeling tone or emotions. A buddhist innovation seems to be to separate into 3 categories:  Pleasure and Pain and Neutral (or neither). Pleasure and pain are not directly listed in Brown's list, but there are synonyms or subcategories included. Again, the subcategories may be elaborations, and hence in Buddhism, they are seen as possible unhelpful elaborations: me-making and my-making, the chain of clinging or papanca.

The overemphasizing is the small space she gives to neutral. She has "calm" and "contented" and a few others. In my Buddhism, I've noticed how much of life is inherently neutral and impersonal. And how much my own story making is what turns it into something positive or negative, and personal. This distinction is lost in Brown's roadmap.

To praise Brown's work, it is excellent at helping people feel more. In the investigation phase of meditation, it's very good to ask whether one is feeling any of those 87 emotions. It's a tremendous vocabulary, and I think it's eye opening to read. One might spend a day or even a week on each one. So, in explore mode, these 87 are great.

In a normative sense, it can be problematic. Brown's arc is one of progress and change and healing. And so it is asking us to privilege and reinforce some emotions while trying to move away from others. Buddhism has some similar prescriptions. We are encouraged to give up anger (or a specific type of anger, to be precise), for example.  But, in both Brown's map and Buddhism's map, we really ought to look at and deeply understand that anger. We are looking toward transformation and resilience. Not avoidance or "smash".  That subtle distinction can easily get lost.

Her take on "more empathy"... again, probably 90-95% helpful. But some cautions.

There are people where more empathy is 100% helpful for right now. And there are people where more empathy is not helpful. A prime example is people in trauma; getting more into empathy and in touch with their emotions is not exactly the optimal trauma treatment. It starts with getting people safe in their bodies. It then goes toward something about "reintegration" and a "window of tolerance". For some people, it can be very story-based. And for those people, Freudian approaches can be very helpful. But for some people, Freudian approaches are "too much, too fast" and they can shut down. Because shut down can be a sever setback, we want to be extra, extra careful.

It is skillful to have empathy for people's lack of empathy. And there are ways of reading Brown's work that allows for those grey areas; and there are ways to read it that tend to exorcise those grey areas, which creates it's own clinging, judgment, hiding of our own judgments, etc etc etc.

A Pascal-ian Wager, 95%

So, I think approaching Brown as 90-95% helpful is very beneficial, because one is asked to look and judge for themselves. In the first pass of learning, you just copy and try to get bearings. But the 95% tells you that you can't memorize everything and that's the end. You gotta "be the scientist" and test it out to see if you get the effects. Sometimes you won't get the expected effect, and the 95% rule says, "that's good, keep looking".

If it turns out Brown was 100% correct, you haven't really lost anything. Looking with a careful, discerning eye gives you more knowledge. Knowledge form doing the work and checking, not just ingesting the work.

ON SHAME

Buddhism's take on shame is helpful to sharpen some of Brown's research on shame. Brown sees shame (in my reading) as universally negative, and some may say she has been a powerful force to bring light to the issue of shame. Shame leads people to hide and feel stuck. These are not fun experiences/emotions, so people (in a humanistic and human-centered way) might look to get rid of shame. One might say she is the leader of the war on shame.

To the extent that this "war on shame" is accurate (I think she probably has more nuance, and I am glossing it over and focusing on her main message, not her careful, technical work, which I appreciate), I think it overreaches. Buddhism talks about healthy shame, where we hurt someone or did something we ourselves consider unskillful. In those cases, we are "ashamed" of our actions. The thought of doing it again gives us a sick feeling in the stomach. And that shame protects us; it keeps us from doing the thing again. In that case, shame doesn't beat ourselves up.

One might say that this "shame" stuff is just an issue of using different definitions. Yes and no. Brene Brown's early books on shame talk about what should be defined as shame? Does embarassment count? Is regret shame? I think she settles on some element of hiding. And, yes, if we make a mistake and can openly admit it, then this is a best case scenario. We share with friends and don't feel hiding-shame. This may be optimal, but is it necessary or even common place. I don't think so. If we told a big lie and hurt other people, and we feel shame, we might have some desire to hide it and put it behind us. Angulimala, the Buddhist era serial killer (999 thumbs), probably felt shame about his past as a serial killer once he became a monk, and an accomplished monk at that. As the story goes, people he had hurt would shun him and throw things at him, even when he was highly attained. As he was an arahant, he probably could see that his serial killing had ripple affects, that it chained these people he had hurt to cling to anger and thoughts of revenge. So he might be double ashamed, ashamed at his actions and ashamed at the impacts of fermenting anger in those he hurt.

To be ungenerous to Brene's work to make a point, Brene acolytes (just like NVC acolytes) might say that Angulimala has to get rid of that shame. What would that even mean? To their credit, they don't mean that Angulimala should stop feeling ashamed by bypassing the pain he caused. But it's be easy for an inpatient follower to use Brene's work as a sort of bypass: "Brene says don't be ashamed. You can't tell me I hurt you because that causes me shame". A more patient follower might acknowledge mistakes but then encourage Angulimala to embrace the story or to find a way not to hide. This is probably useful in general, but has a couple of backfires and gotchas. Angulimala, having become an arahant, has gone beyond that tactic; he is beyond the stories and identification. His shame is only to the extent that it makes him careful and heedful in his actions. On the other side, there are apologists or even PTSD people who can get stuck in their stories. So even a transformative story of healing from shame can backfire. Cognitively, it may work. But in the limbic system and the emotions, it can have no effect.