Brené, Ashley, and Barrett on Atlas of the Heart, Audience Q&A, Part 2 of 2
Episode
34 min
Read time
2 min
Topics
Productivity, Health & Wellness, Relationships
AI-Generated Summary
Key Takeaways
- ✓Reverence redefined: Reverence means moving closer to something powerful and inspiring, not blind obedience to authority. Brown experiences reverence primarily through nature and moments rather than people, rejecting traditional hierarchical interpretations that discourage questioning or challenging systems.
- ✓Nostalgia versus missing: Nostalgia represents a feeling about a concept or time period, while missing something involves specific grief. Dangerous nostalgia involves rumination that romanticizes problematic pasts. Healthy processing requires separating genuine positive memories from unresolved grief work before reconciling complex feelings about difficult relationships.
- ✓Spirituality for wholeheartedness: Spirituality as a prerequisite for wholeheartedness means believing humans are inextricably connected by something greater than themselves, whether God, nature, love, or human spirit. This definition applies across belief systems including atheism, focusing on interconnection rather than religious doctrine or church attendance.
- ✓Teaching emotions through fiction: Children learn emotional literacy best through fictional stories rather than direct instruction. Parents and educators should ask questions about characters' biology, biography, behavior, and backstory. Films like Turning Red and Inside Out provide structured entry points for meaningful conversations about complex feelings.
What It Covers
Brené Brown, Ashley, and Barrett answer audience questions about Atlas of the Heart, covering reverence without religion, nostalgia versus missing something, neurodiversity considerations, teaching emotions to children, and processing multiple simultaneous emotions.
Key Questions Answered
- •Reverence redefined: Reverence means moving closer to something powerful and inspiring, not blind obedience to authority. Brown experiences reverence primarily through nature and moments rather than people, rejecting traditional hierarchical interpretations that discourage questioning or challenging systems.
- •Nostalgia versus missing: Nostalgia represents a feeling about a concept or time period, while missing something involves specific grief. Dangerous nostalgia involves rumination that romanticizes problematic pasts. Healthy processing requires separating genuine positive memories from unresolved grief work before reconciling complex feelings about difficult relationships.
- •Spirituality for wholeheartedness: Spirituality as a prerequisite for wholeheartedness means believing humans are inextricably connected by something greater than themselves, whether God, nature, love, or human spirit. This definition applies across belief systems including atheism, focusing on interconnection rather than religious doctrine or church attendance.
- •Teaching emotions through fiction: Children learn emotional literacy best through fictional stories rather than direct instruction. Parents and educators should ask questions about characters' biology, biography, behavior, and backstory. Films like Turning Red and Inside Out provide structured entry points for meaningful conversations about complex feelings.
Notable Moment
Brown reveals her personal emotional pattern starts with anger and blame, then moves to fear, and ultimately traces back to core feelings of grief or not belonging. Her sisters share similar layered emotional responses, demonstrating how surface emotions often mask deeper drivers.
Episode Transcript
Hi, everyone. I'm Brene Brown, and this is unlocking us. We are back for part two of a reader and audience q and a on Atlas of the Heart on the book and the HBO HBO show. If you listen to part one, hard AF questions. I mean, oh my god. These questions are hard, and I don't have all the answers, which I love because that means I get to learn more, which is fun. I'm with my sisters, Ashley and Barrett. Y'all know Ashley and Barrett. Ashley runs the internship program here. She's a clinician, and she oversees the Daring Way community. And Barrett is the newly newly titled co CEO of Brene Brown Education and Research Group. And we're gonna jump into these questions. Before we jump, I wanna remind you that I'm going on sabbatical, and this is the last podcast till September. Do you remember? I can't sing that. Probably can't sing more than that. Otherwise, I'm gonna owe somebody a lot of money. Yeah. We're doing a collective rest and restoration. Everybody, me, the team, we're gonna take some deep breaths. We're going to At Criminal, we've made it a tradition every December to dedicate an episode entirely to animals who are really going for it. And Tony, what happened when you pulled over? Nothing out of the ordinary until I saw the cat on the back of the roof behind the luggage carrier. Listen to our fifth annual Animals episode on Criminal wherever you get your podcasts. Find that space between stimulus and response that gets collapsed on so easy. And we'll miss you. We'll be back in September. Let's jump into the conversation. I'm Brene Brown. Welcome back to Unlocking Us. I'm Barrett Gihn. I'm Ashley Brown Ruiz. Alright. Part two, Atlas of the Heart questions. People have written in around the book and the HBO Max series. Mhmm. Should we just jump in? Let's do it. Okay. Question number one is from Angie. Let's listen. I binge watched the series and counted down the days. I was not disappointed. And resonated the most with the part about sarcasm with our children. Ouch. And thank you. My question when watching this segment about reverence was, I do not believe in church and God. I'm an atheist. How does reverence apply to me? Immediately shut it down or have negative associations because of my religious upbringing. I heard this is an incredibly important piece of connection and know you've spoken on it too for wholeheartedness. But the story I tell myself is this isn't applicable to me. I need to fix it, and I can't live a wholehearted life and full life without this reverence or spiritual peace. Thank you, Bernay. Angie from Park City, Utah. Wow. This is this is a big question. It is. Mhmm. The story I tell myself is this isn't applicable to me. I need to fix it. I can't live a wholehearted and full life without the …
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Books

by Brené Brown
“Brené Brown, Ashley, and Barrett answer audience questions about Atlas of the Heart, covering reverence without religion, nostalgia versus missing something, neurodiversity considerations, teaching emotions to children, and processing multiple simultaneous emotions.”
Products
- Inside OutRecommended
“Films like Turning Red and Inside Out provide structured entry points for meaningful conversations about complex feelings.”
- Turning RedRecommended
“Films like Turning Red and Inside Out provide structured entry points for meaningful conversations about complex feelings.”
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