Karamo Brown Gets Vulnerable on Battling Homophobia, Trauma, & Online Hate

We’ve all experienced situations that produce intense feelings of fear, blame, and disconnection and cause us to lash out at ourselves or others. Author and researcher Brené Brown explains that this intense feeling is called shame, and it’s a natural part of being human. However, allowing shame to control our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors wreaks major havoc on our health, happiness, and relationships. In I Thought It Was Just Me (but it isn’t), Brown contends that to live a happy, empowered life—and help others to do the same—you must combat shame by practicing empathy toward yourself and others.

This guide will explain what shame is, why it happens, how it impacts our lives, and the techniques and skills we can use to build empathy and combat shame. Throughout the guide, we’ll explore other expert opinions on the causes and impact of shame. We’ll also compare Brown’s ideas to similar concepts in books like The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle and Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach.

Brené Brown believes that the key to fulfillment is pursuing wholeheartedness—a way of life that fosters self-worth and emphasizes being brave, caring for yourself and others, and cultivating meaningful relationships. Living wholeheartedly requires you to embrace and express your authentic self. However, doing so makes you vulnerable—you may face painful experiences like rejection, loss, and heartbreak. If left unaddressed, these experiences cause emotional setbacks that can keep you from living wholeheartedly. In Rising Strong, Brown explains that to rebuild wholeheartedness after setbacks, you must recover emotionally.

In this guide, we’ll start by explaining why it’s important to take control of your recovery. Then, we’ll explore the three stages of Brown’s recovery process—confronting your strong feelings, exploring why they occurred, and identifying how you can change your thoughts and behaviors to cultivate resilience and rebuild wholeheartedness. In our commentary, we’ll add context to Brown’s research and advice, referencing books like Hans Rosling’s Factfulness and Emily and Amelia Nagoski’s Burnout.

In Atlas of the Heart, Brené Brown—a popular public speaker, bestselling author, and professional social worker—provides a guide to the many emotions and mental states that people feel. Brown says many people can only recognize and name three emotions: happiness, sadness, and anger. This lack of vocabulary blocks us from being able to fully experience and share our feelings with others.

Atlas of the Heart provides descriptions and explanations of 87 emotions, along with the situations where you’re likely to encounter them. With a deeper understanding of emotions, you’ll be able to talk about them more openly and accurately, and thus form deeper connections with the people around you.

This guide provides actionable advice for handling negative emotions and embracing positive ones. It will also provide some biological and psychological background for why we have certain feelings and why those feelings are so powerful.

What would happen if you faced your fears and said “yes” to everything outside your comfort zone for a whole year? In Year of Yes, Shonda Rhimes, the celebrated television screenwriter and producer of the hit series “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Scandal,” answers that very question. Rhimes recounts her journey of personal growth and transformation as she embarks on a year-long experiment to say "yes" to everything that scares her. From giving public speeches to prioritizing playtime with her daughters, Rhimes pushes herself out of her comfort zone and learns to embrace new experiences.

In this guide, we’ll explore Rhimes’s journey from a life of merely surviving to full-hearted thriving and outline the meaningful lessons she wishes to pass on to her readers so they, too, can reclaim their lives from fear. Along the way, we’ll compare the author's ideas to those of other similar self-help writers and provide additional context from sociology and psychology experts to help you better understand and apply Rhimes’s insights to your life.

The desire to feel accepted by others is one of the most powerful human motivators—it often dictates how we speak and act to feel like we belong to a group. But according to researcher Brené Brown, striving for social acceptance instead of being true to ourselves breeds isolation and division by fueling the fear that we’re one misstep away from exclusion.

True belonging, she says, is the ability to express ourselves honestly. True belonging doesn’t mean finding people who accept you; rather, it means embracing the idea that being true to yourself supersedes what anyone else thinks. In this guide to Braving the Wilderness, we’ll dive deeper into what true belonging means, explain why simply being yourself can feel like venturing into uncharted wilderness, and describe Brown’s advice for achieving true belonging. We’ll also include advice from other experts on key actions related to true belonging: connecting with others and resolving conflicts productively.

In The Light We Carry, former US First Lady Michelle Obama explains that everyone has the potential to improve the world in a way others can’t since everyone has unique abilities, strengths, and perspectives. Since our potentials are unique, Obama believes we have a responsibility to fulfill them: No one else can fulfill your unique potential to create positive change, so you must do so.

In this guide, we’ll explore the benefits of nurturing and sharing one’s unique abilities, strengths, and perspectives. We’ll also discuss the major obstacles to doing so and the tools Obama recommends for overcoming those obstacles. In our commentary, we’ll compare Obama’s ideas to those of self-help authors such as Stephen R. Covey and Maxwell Maltz, and we’ll examine how her suggestions intersect with psychological principles.

Released in 2010, The Gifts of Imperfection is a New York Times bestseller by researcher, speaker, and author Brené Brown. The book explores the theory and practices behind “Wholehearted living”: a concept Brown devised after years of research into shame, vulnerability, and self-worth. According to Brown, living Wholeheartedly will help you to cultivate worthiness: the conviction that you are good enough as you are and that you deserve to be loved.

In this guide, we’ll explore how Brown conceives worthiness and shame and how her approach to these topics compares to her contemporaries' work. Furthermore, we’ll discuss Brown’s 10 strategies for living Wholeheartedly and the research that underpins (and occasionally challenges) them.

What would happen if you faced your fears and said “yes” to everything outside your comfort zone for a whole year? In Year of Yes, Shonda Rhimes, the celebrated television screenwriter and producer of the hit series “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Scandal,” answers that very question. Rhimes recounts her journey of personal growth and transformation as she embarks on a year-long experiment to say "yes" to everything that scares her. From giving public speeches to prioritizing playtime with her daughters, Rhimes pushes herself out of her comfort zone and learns to embrace new experiences.

In this guide, we’ll explore Rhimes’s journey from a life of merely surviving to full-hearted thriving and outline the meaningful lessons she wishes to pass on to her readers so they, too, can reclaim their lives from fear. Along the way, we’ll compare the author's ideas to those of other similar self-help writers and provide additional context from sociology and psychology experts to help you better understand and apply Rhimes’s insights to your life.