Brené Brown: What to Say to Get What You Need
March 31, 2022
Glennon Doyle:
Hi, everybody. Welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things. Sister and Abby and I are welcoming back to the pod today one of our favorite people to talk to in the whole world. And I think she might be one of the whole world’s favorite people to listen to because, well, let’s just see. Her name, you may have heard of her, is Dr. Brené Brown. Dr. Brené Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston where she holds the Huffington Foundation Endowed Chair at the Graduate College of Social Work. She has spent the past two decades studying courage, vulnerability, shame, and empathy. Is the author of six number one New York Times bestsellers and is the host of the weekly podcasts Unlocking Us and Dare To Lead.
Glennon Doyle:
Brené’s books have been translated into more than 30 languages and titles, including Dare To Lead, Braving The Wilderness, Rising Strong, Daring Greatly, and The Gifts Of Imperfection. Most recently Brené collaborated with the Tarana Burke to co-edit You Are Your Best Thing, Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience. In her latest number one New York Times best seller, Atlas Of the Heart, which has been adapted for television and is now streaming on HBO Max, so good, she takes us on a journey through 87 of the emotions and experiences that define what it means to be human.
Glennon Doyle:
Brené lives in Houston, Texas, with her husband, Steve. They have two children, Ellen and Charlie. Today, her new series Atlas Of the Heart launches on HBO Max. We have already seen it. So we now are smarter than you. But soon you will catch up. It’s so freaking good, Brené. Thank you for being here. Thank you for the gift of this series. You’ve done it again.
Brené Brown:
Oh man. Thank you. This is so scary for me.
Glennon Doyle:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). What is?
Brené Brown:
Yeah. And I like to do hard things as you know, and to a fault. If it’s not hard, I’m like, should I even be doing it? But this feels scary. Because I’m out of my medium, like this is weird.
Glennon Doyle:
You don’t seem out of your medium when you do it. I’m just telling you. It feels so natural. It feels so good. It feels like being in a room with you. It feels like talking to you like a friend. I’ve been thinking about something I think that you said either in the first or second episode, which feels to me like really one of the many beautiful things about the Atlas Of the Heart project, whether it’s the book or the series, which is this idea that we all want to connect with each other, that’s one of our deepest needs, but that we can only connect to other people in direct proportion to how connected we are with ourselves.
Brené Brown:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
That is a thesis of all of this work that you’re doing, which is that the more we can identify and communicate our emotions, the more grounded in ourselves we are and the stickier we can be with other people. Right?
Amanda Doyle:
So good.
Brené Brown:
Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
And I think I’ve been thinking about it in terms of why are my relationships getting so much better as I get older? Why is my second marriage so much freaking better than my first marriage?
Brené Brown:
Well…
Glennon Doyle:
Well, it’s because of people. Okay?
Abby Wambach:
It might have something to do with me.
Glennon Doyle:
For sure.
Abby Wambach:
A little bit.
Glennon Doyle:
For sure. But listening to Brené when I watched Atlas Of the Heart, I think I just have been thinking lately, it’s also because I am more grounded in who I am.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
So I can communicate. It’s not just like insert better person and relationships are going to be better. So can you talk to us about what the hell does that mean? Because we do talk about, people say, do you have to love yourself before you love someone else? What do you mean when you say we must be connected to ourselves before we can even begin to connect with other people?
Brené Brown:
God, you just went straight for the heart of the whole thing. And I had to tell you that Atlas, I really did not think I was going to survive writing this book. I did not think this book was going to happen almost to the very end. And I always think about Elizabeth Gilbert who writes about how great the creative process is for her. I am not that person. I’m more, is it the Emily Dickinson quote? It’s like, writing’s easy. You just cut yourself and bleed out on the page or something like that. That’s how this felt.
Brené Brown:
I think one of the hardest parts of this for me, first of all, the data set was huge. So just wrestling that. But I think coming to grips with so many things that I got wrong over the years and thinking about not just wow, as a social scientist, wow. I didn’t get this right, which to me that’s fine. That’s what science is. There’s a great quote that I include in the book, it’s when science changes its mind, it never lied to you. It just kept finding more and more data. And so, but it was also how I raised my kids, how I reparented myself, how I engaged with Steve.
Brené Brown:
And so I think one of the big things was there were two big things and related. One is what you’re talking about that the depth of connection we have with ourselves is the best predictor variable of how deeply we’ll be able to connect with other people.
Glennon Doyle:
Wow.
Brené Brown:
Yeah. And I think the second part is, shit, for years, for 20 years, I’ve said, let’s try to understand emotion. Let’s try to recognize emotion in ourselves and others. And I am fully convinced now that we cannot recognize emotion in other people.
Glennon Doyle:
Wow. Wait. Say more.
Brené Brown:
Well, yeah. And let me tell you, and it’s not just me, it’s almost every… It’s almost a sentence that everyone who studies emotion just says like reflexively. Let’s understand emotion so we can in ourselves and others. And in doing this research, what I learned is it’s such an attempt to hot wire connection. Like when you steal a car, it’s like a way to steal and hot wire connection is to pretend like I see Abby and she’s visually emotional, and her head is in her hands. She may be crying a little bit. And to be able to think that I can read emotion in her and say, “Man, I know you look really sad.”
Brené Brown:
Is a get out of jail free card for the actual work of saying, “Hey, what’s going on?” And Abby says back to me, I read this comment online and it just pierced my heart directly. It was so hurtful. Normally I can blow that shit off, but this was just really hurtful. And then this is the hardest part of empathy that I did not see anyone talking about in any of the literature until I wrote it in Atlas Of the Heart is then the choice we have to make to believe people when what they’re saying does not resonate with our lived experiences or what we need from that person.
Brené Brown:
So I look at Abby and I think… And y’all know this, anyone that’s ever met me knows that I totally love you and respect you and have to tamper down the fan girl in me. Anytime I talk to anybody, I’m like, “Seriously, Wolf Pack changed my life.” Have you read it? You need to point, why are you not leaving from the bench? This is just literally as someone who studies research, you’re 15. I’ve never in my life read a better, more impactful leadership book than Wolf Pack
Glennon Doyle:
Oh my gosh.
Brené Brown:
Geez. No, so I have a lot of expectations of you. So maybe when you say this heart piercing thing hurt you without even thinking, I think to myself, fuck that Abby Wambach cannot disabled her head together. She cannot be affected by this stuff because that means I have to… I’m like now you’re probably just having an off day or fuck that stuff it’s not real. And then I choose to walk away from connection and care with you, to control the image I need to have of you, to feel safer in my life.
Brené Brown:
Or Amanda says, you know what? I put together this event, took me a year and a half. We’re in this room. I’m with all these big producer people and they’re shooting every question over to this guy who knows nothing about this event. And I’m crying, because I’m so enraged right now because I’m trying to pull my shit together before I go back in there. And I go, could you maybe be taking it too personally? Like, are you sure that’s what’s really happening in there? So if we back up from those examples with Amanda and Abby, I don’t know myself well enough to take a breath and say yeah, you think she’s a badass and she’s tough. And she’s an athletic hero, but she’s hurting right now. And you need to keep other focus not self focused right now what does Abby need from you right now? And to say, God, those hurts sometimes, don’t they? And when you least expect it, you read something and it’s like, I’m really sorry. What does love look like right now for you?
Glennon Doyle:
What does love look like right now? I’m thinking about the kids Brené, every time the kids say to me, something about how having two houses or the results of divorce are hard. Like, I will be like, Well, just this morning, they have to go back and forth. It’s like a really hard part of divorce.
Brené Brown:
It is hard.
Glennon Doyle:
Kids don’t feel like they’re ever settled. And I’m like, but I mean, you have two houses and we’re only a block apart and it’s just like, I cannot, my need for you to think you have a good childhood.
Brené Brown:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
Instead of saying, what does love look like right now? Yeah. This must be really hard.
Brené Brown:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). And this gets to what’s overlooked, because I think the shiny part of Atlas Of the Heart is the 87 emotions. But the real to me, the really hardest part was the framework. And probably because it’s complex. But the framework in the back of the book I started working on with my dissertation so that was 20 years ago, 21 years ago. And I couldn’t figure out like, come on, fuck Brené. It’s a framework, a theory on meaningful connection. You study connection. You have a fricking three degrees in social work, all you study connection bullshit, like come on and I couldn’t get it for my dissertation. I couldn’t make it happen. And then when I wrote Daring Greatly, I told my editor, this back chapter’s going to be this framework I’m working on. I couldn’t do it.
Brené Brown:
When I wrote Rising Strong, Braving The Wilderness, Dare to Lead I told them every time, save this back thing, it’s going to be at least 24 pages because you’re have to do the four count and I couldn’t do it. Then when I was doing Atlas Of the Heart, I came across this concept of near enemy. And I had heard this concept before, I think from maybe Kristin Neff or one of the Buddhist thinkers that writes about this, that I study. And I was like, this is what’s missing.
Brené Brown:
Because if I see Amanda and she’s rage crying about how people are treating her as the only woman in this room. And I’m like, are you sure you’re not being too sensitive. The far enemy of connection is disconnection. That’s easy. We know that when I go yeah, suck it up. Or really that sounds tough and walk away. We know that we’re like, oh wow, that’s your shit that felt bad. But I recognize that right there, that’s disconnection, but it’s not the far enemy that unravels everything we’re so desperate for in our relationships. It’s the near enemy. It’s that fucker that masquerades as connection.
Brené Brown:
But silently, as we’re trying to figure out why do I feel bloody and bruised? She said something nice or she tried to be helpful. That’s the thing, the near enemy. And the fact that what emerged from the data is it’s a weird concept. But let me give you an example of near enemy from someone who writes about it. So this is Chris Germer writing. This is his quote. “Near enemies are state that appear similar to the desired quality, but actually undermine it. Far enemies are the opposite of what we’re trying to achieve.” For example, a near enemy of loving kindness, a near enemy is sentimentality. It’s similar, but it’s different. A far enemy of loving kindness is ill will, the opposite.
Brené Brown:
So one of the examples that they use and I think this one would really resonate. This is from Jack Kornfield, who I love his work on near enemy. Talking about love. The near enemy of love is attachment. Attachment masquerades his love. It says, I will love this person because I need something from them. Or I will love you if you love me back. I’ll love you, but only if you will be the way I want you to be. This isn’t the fullness of love, instead there’s attachment, there clinging and fear. True love allows honors and appreciates attachment grasps demands, needs, and aims to possess.
Brené Brown:
Yeah. And so what was so powerful about this Buddhist concept is, the virtues that we’re looking for drive connection where near enemy fuel separation. So Glennon to use your example with your kids and the two houses, oh my God, I just do not want to be the subject of my kid’s therapy. I want my kids to go into therapy and say, well, obviously my mom Brené Brown caused none of my issues, but that will not be the case. They’ll be like, my mom is Brené Brown, the therapist will be like Oh, fuck. How much time do we have? That’s how that’s going to work.
Abby Wambach:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). It’s good.
Brené Brown:
So when you say what you want to say is, but you have two homes, and it’s so great. We’re a block part. The near enemy of connection is control.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes, that’s it.
Brené Brown:
Yes is control. And this works. This is what it means to be a ground of theory researcher and a social worker. So as a social worker, you want to say a theory is really only good if you can apply it to a relationship between me and my child and the relationship between Trump and his followers. It has to be have both micro and macro relevance. You have to be able to use it to solve all family systems, but also community systems.
Glennon Doyle:
Cool.
Brené Brown:
So if you look at politicians, and you look at Trump and you’re like, Wow, he seems very connected to this group of people. These groups of people have all the stickers and all the stuff and all the paraphernalia and the artifacts of group cohesion. It is that connection, but then you think, oh wait, the near enemy of connection is control.
Brené Brown:
It’s not about meeting vulnerability with vulnerability. It’s about leveraging vulnerability with power and control. It’s not about feeling emotion with people. It’s about exploiting emotion, exploiting fear. Let me tell you life does suck and you should be afraid. And let me give you who you need to blame for that. The black folks, the immigrants, the women, the poor people. And so this whole idea of control it’s just like if my kid comes home, one of my kids comes home and says, Hey, I got in trouble today because I was talking while the teacher was talking, they said I was being disrespectful. And immediately I go, you need to march your ass upstairs. And you need to send an email to this teacher. Apologize for being disrespectful.
Brené Brown:
As opposed to connection, which is God, that must have been really hard. Yeah, I was just asking if they had an extra pencil, I’m really sorry. What does support look like for you right now? What can I do? I can listen. I can help. What does no, just knowing that it’s like, mom, I’m not disrespectful in class and I know you’re not and I know it means a lot to you so that had to have been really tough and maybe embarrassing. Yes, it was embarrassing, but it was just mostly, I just felt like I love this teacher like control.
Amanda Doyle:
And what are you controlling in that situation Brené? Because what I would be controlling in that situation is my own embarrassment that I had a kid who-
Brené Brown:
That’s it. So how you’re perceived by a parent.
Amanda Doyle:
Yes.
Brené Brown:
As a parent by a teacher.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah.
Brené Brown:
I want to be the parent who has the kid that’s not disrespectful, that apologizes via email. It’s just how I’m seen everything around control really comes back to some level of fragility around our own worth.
Glennon Doyle:
This is our the biggest issue in our relationship until I’m fixed now. I’m fix star I think. I’m a very controlling person Brené, which I just always saw as good leadership skills in my other relationships. But at one point we figured out that Abby said it hurts my feelings when you try to control me because I respect you so much and I trust you. And when you do this, It makes me know that you don’t trust or respect me. And I had never thought of control as a lack of respect and trust, but it is because love and control we only control the things we don’t trust.
Brené Brown:
Hold on just a second. I want to think about that for a second. Say that again.
Glennon Doyle:
So when I think about everything that I control, I made a list actually it’s in my journal about the things that I just trust and the things that I control and everything in my life was on the control side. The reason I try to control my body through over exercising, through restriction, through all of that is because I actually on some level don’t trust that my body’s just going to do what it needs to do and be what it needs to be if I feed it.
Glennon Doyle:
So Abby, why I’m saying like, do you think you really should be laying on the couch? I just feel like there’s a lot to do. Or do you think that you should say that in front of those people or do you think that it’s because I’m not trusting that she knows what she should say and that she knows what she should do and she knows what she needs. If I’m saying to my children, but you have two houses and your parents get along so well. And like isn’t your life great. It’s because I don’t trust that they can form their own opinions about their life. So what do we love instead of control is my question.
Brené Brown:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
What does it look like?
Brené Brown:
Yeah. And I think it’s interesting because I’m really thinking about this, it’s hard. Yeah. And I especially came out of COVID hardest season in my marriage. Just so grateful we’re still standing.
Amanda Doyle:
Congratulations. It’s a big deal. I feel like everyone needs to really acknowledge what big ass deal it is to be standing after this. It’s been a lot.
Brené Brown:
It’s so much. And then I had parents and kids stuff and it’s like, oh I want to think about this for a minute because sometimes I wonder if the laying on the couch is because we’ve got a lot to do, does that resonate so painfully? So one of the things that was really helpful during COVID is we were trying to figure out, develop new skills for managing what felt like an unmanageable communication in our marriage was the Gottman’s work. I think about when I say something like that to Steve, he takes it as a real criticism and this is the Gottman’s 90% accuracy predicting divorce, observing a couple for minutes.
Amanda Doyle:
Wild.
Brené Brown:
Right. And so-
Abby Wambach:
Looking for signs of contempt.
Brené Brown:
Contempt. Right. So what they’re looking for instead of criticism is I feel instead of saying to Steve, “Hey, how much longer are you going to be napping?”
Abby Wambach:
Oh, this is so good.
Brené Brown:
Yeah. To say how I feel and ask for what something I need. Like not, I need you to get off your ass and stop napping. But like, so to say, I feel anxious about Charlie coming over with his friends after school. And I need to know that we’ll carve out some time to get the kitchen ready and to clean out the garage. And so I’m trying to think to myself, is it about trust for me or is it about fear and anxiety that I’m not managing and that I’m using control and criticism to manage my own fear and anxiety?
Abby Wambach:
It’s interesting.
Brené Brown:
I’m so invested in not being crazy or flighty or out of control. That it’s hard for me to say I’m feeling anxious, can we talk about what time we’re going to use to get something ready?
Amanda Doyle:
So it’s easier-
Brené Brown:
It easier for me say, “Fuck, are you still napping?”
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, because claiming I’m feeling anxious is claiming this is my thing. This is my responsibility as opposed to saying you are lazy.
Brené Brown:
Right.
Amanda Doyle:
And it’s a double responsibility. To be fair, if you already feel like you are the one who’s thinking about Charlie coming after school, you’re the one who knows that at least according to your standards, X, Y, and Z need to be done by the time to Charlie comes in so that you can be the type of family that welcomes Charlie’s friends in this type of environment. So you’re already holding that up.
Brené Brown:
For sure.
Amanda Doyle:
And then you have to remind the other person that is the things that needs to be done, but you have to present it in a vulnerable way that talks about your fears surrounding what’s going to happen instead of part of you wants to say, why aren’t you worried about this? Why I’m the only one carrying this worry right now?
Brené Brown:
Yeah. And so now it has to turn out to is like, let’s say we are partners man. And I say, Hey, I’m feeling anxious about the house being ready for Charlie and his friends. And what would be helpful for me is to just get level set expectations about what we think the house needs to look like and how much time we think we’re going to spend doing that.
Abby Wambach:
Totally. I think a lot of this has for sure a lot to do with communication and early on in our marriage we’ve talked about this on the podcast before. This idea of tickering, thinking about all of the things, the whole ecosystem of the family. And this is when I actually used to sit on the couch a lot more because I didn’t really have a job. I just retired. And so it was concerning for her also concerning for me at the time I don’t sit on the couch nearly as much, but the truth is I wasn’t a partner. I wasn’t a co-parent.
Glennon Doyle:
A mental partner.
Abby Wambach:
A mental co-parent at the time. So now Glennon will walk into the room and she’ll say, what are you doing? And I’m like, I’m tickering. And so I’m just thinking about the day. And I’m thinking through every person in our family, their little small ecosystem, how it affects the bigger ecosystem. And especially because Glennon is oftentimes the one who’s working the most in this family. It’s now my responsibility to make sure that I’m the one its different seasons of our lives that goes up and down if I’m on the road or whatever. But at the end of the day, I think that there has to be this understanding of communication in a marriage. Because I do think that we were struggling, we were nitpicking on each other and it was about control and power. And I think at some point that shifted. And I think the shift really did come when I started to take on-
Glennon Doyle:
Emotional labor.
Abby Wambach:
The emotional labor of our family.
Glennon Doyle:
Mental, emotional labor.
Abby Wambach:
And I think that is so possible for everybody involved.
Amanda Doyle:
So the truth things you just said about Atlas, the huge things are, if we’re only able to connect with others to the capacity, we connect with ourselves. And also we have to avoid near enemy in our connection with others. What is the near enemy in terms of our connection with ourselves?
Brené Brown:
Oh.
Amanda Doyle:
Because If I am saying, I need to know myself and love myself, what is my near enemy in those things?
Brené Brown:
Yeah. Wildly still control
Amanda Doyle:
Makes sense to me.
Brené Brown:
But what we do is we try to control the environment rather than understand our response to the environment and what’s happening within. And so we try to control just speaking from an addiction’s lens. Like I, instead of feeling my feelings, processing and working through them, I try to numb them. I try to control what I’m feeling through for many years alcohol, food, work. I have the poo poo platter of all addictions. So just pick one I’ll swirl around to it. Yeah. But so I think it is still control, but what we’re trying to do. And I think one of the things that is so hard for me is what keeps me the most from being deeply connected with myself is trying to control the environment around me.
Abby Wambach:
Oh.
Glennon Doyle:
What does that look like?
Brené Brown:
I’m trying to control perception. So I’m trying to control perception when I don’t tell Steve, if this is how a conversation between Steve and I will go trying to control, this is me trying to control. “Hey, are you going to keep on napping much longer or what’s the plan?” So he’s pissed already. He, this is it. No, it’s just like, one of us needs to care about what else is like when Charlie and his friends get here. So now what will happen, which is really hard for me is I’ll say, Hey, it looks like you’re getting ready to take a nap, which is great. I want to just say that I’m anxious. I have some anxiety about Charlie’s friends coming over and I want to do some level setting of expect about getting the house ready. So like pie in the sky, we would repaint the downstairs and landscape before four o’clock.
Abby Wambach:
That’s why he wants to sit on the freaking couch.
Brené Brown:
You are right. Exactly. And I said, I just like, I really want him to have friends over more, so I want it to like be perfect. I want to be the cool house. So I know that I’m a little bit, I’m high strung about it right now. So I just want to talk to you and he is like, well, we’re not going to landscape in paint. And I said, no, but I’m just telling you that’s where I am right now. So anything down from that already feels like I’m giving in. And he’s like, okay, so they’re going to come over and play Pickle ball and then they’re going to play video games. So why don’t I blow the court and do that? You get the media room ready and do we have groceries and snacks and stuff? And I said, no, I haven’t picked this up. And he was like, okay, I’m a nap for 30 minutes. I’ll go pick those up and blow the court and you take upstairs. And how does that feel for you? I said that feels good. Okay. That’s helpful. Thanks.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s good.
Brené Brown:
That requires a level of self exploration and interrogation before I engage with him. And it’s really thinking about what’s going on with me before I jump all over his shit. And so again, why, what am I trying to control? And what am I really after?
Glennon Doyle:
It’s interesting when you said the way you’d present it to Steve is you also said, I really want him to have more friends over here. The self exploration before you go in is why do I care so much about that?
Brené Brown:
Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. I care so much because it’s not just because I’m a crazy mom who wants the house clean. The most vulnerable spot of that is I just really want him to have more friends over at our house.
Brené Brown:
Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
It’s so sweet.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. And that’s don’t we want to be the fun house? And we want to do all that. And so yeah. And when he’s dating a girl I’m like let’s talk about it? No, I don’t think so. But you know I’m here. Yeah. I’m super clear that you’re right here. And I’m like, and then I’m really good at this. I’m super clear on all that.
Abby Wambach:
Oh, what a treat, what a gift he’s giving you to work on some of this stuff internally before you burst.
Brené Brown:
All over it.
Brené Brown:
That’s really funny. I going to burst. I need to shine people. Yeah, it’s so good. I get it.
Amanda Doyle:
Lightning in the bottle.
Abby Wambach:
I played sport for 30 years because I needed to shine. I get it.
Glennon Doyle:
Brené Atlas Of the Heart is absolutely beautiful.
Brené Brown:
It’s wonderful.
Glennon Doyle:
And I know you’re feeling vulnerable, but you should know that the world is going to love it. It’s going to help.
Abby Wambach:
They do already
Glennon Doyle:
Hope people we’re all trapped inside of our skin. And we have all of these emotions that we don’t know how to label and understand. And if we can’t label them and understand, we can’t put them into language. And if we can’t put them into language, we can’t connect with other human beings in this series is going to help people do that. So thank you for you and your work and your being brave.
Amanda Doyle:
Oh, so you are really shinning it?
Glennon Doyle:
You shine.
Brené Brown:
Really shine.
Abby Wambach:
Ain’t you just crazy?
Brené Brown:
Oh then I just want to be under the bushel.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Brené Brown:
Yeah. Thank y’all very much. And thank you for this podcast.
Glennon Doyle:
You make him watch you shine on that show.
Brené Brown:
Oh no. Oh no, no, no, no. He’s like on HBO publicly. I’m like, I think that’s hard. I have to ask just minute. Do I think that’s hard?
Glennon Doyle:
Oh we have one child who is so private that won’t we go to an event he’ll every once in a while come to an event, but he’ll go around the bat. He doesn’t want anything to do with anything.
Abby Wambach:
No postings, no pictures.
Glennon Doyle:
Nothing public. Yeah. And then Brené, we have another child who, when she went to a national team game without Abby, once we saw her on the F***ing television holding up a poster that said, I am Abby Wambach’s daughter on the TV, we saw it for the first time so that she could get air time, which she did. So different philosophy.
Abby Wambach:
Different levels, different people. It’s amazing how they’re different people.
Brené Brown:
They are just different people that need different things.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. And you’ve done a beautiful job of honoring your children’s versus disrespecting their lives, their little lives. And you do you’re a good example of that.
Brené Brown:
It is hard.
Abby Wambach:
It is hard.
Brené Brown:
I just had this question because I think it’s an interesting question that I haven’t started to figure out yet. But do you think underneath all of the addiction stuff that we can also find this near enemy of connection and control?
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. When you said controlling and numbing and controlling our environment, that’s the one thing that one of our wise children said that they would change about me. We were playing this damn game where they tell the truth.
Brené Brown:
Oh geez.
Glennon Doyle:
And one of the kids said, I think you’d be happier if you didn’t have to control every single environment you step into to not bump up against your anxiety. And if I just felt okay with who I was, if more of what is about being human was normalized for me younger, I feel like maybe I wouldn’t have always felt like I had to control my humanness through booze, food, whatever, or because I control my own internal experience through substances.
Abby Wambach:
Or experience, yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
And I control my outward experience through hyper vigilance.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Brené Brown:
Yeah. Oh, okay.
Glennon Doyle:
So yes. I think how the hell do I ever know who I am? If all I’m trying to do is escape it constantly, every time it comes up. So control in my life would be absolutely the enemy of self connection.
Abby Wambach:
It’s really interesting though with addiction structure is something that we talk about as something that liberates us and how so it’s like a fine line between control, structure and control and structure. It’s like, actually it’s this thing, this vehicle that allows me to maintain my sobriety, my peace. But it’s also the very thing that sometimes compromises it. If you get too structured or too controlled.
Brené Brown:
Yes.
Abby Wambach:
It’s frustrating.
Brené Brown:
Yes. I do think ritual and structure and discipline will set you free.
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Brené Brown:
I think that’s 100% and then that’s a slippery slope that’s for me.
Abby Wambach:
That’s right.
Brené Brown:
Yeah. I had an early sponsor tell me one time the opposite of addiction is not sobriety. The opposite of addiction is connection. Yeah. And so I started thinking about, wow, the application of this far enemy thing around control is yeah. I have to think about it more.
Glennon Doyle:
But I also think a near enemy of self connection is productivity. I think that living in the culture we are in, we have to constantly disconnect from our needs, from our emotion so that we can produce the next thing we’re supposed to produce so that we can be part of a cog so that we can keep going. I think if I were to honor who I am on a more regular basis, I would get a lot less done in terms of work.
Brené Brown:
Oh God. Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
Right?
Brené Brown:
Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
Productivity in some way. I don’t know if that’s the right word, but this constant need to do the next thing.
Amanda Doyle:
But isn’t that a byproduct, isn’t it all control and productivity is one of the inevitable byproducts of control in a culture where you think that your worthiness and lovability is connected to that outcome. So you’re trying to control.
Glennon Doyle:
Perception.
Amanda Doyle:
The perception of you. Yes. Yeah. And your worthiness of love and place in the world by being productive the same way you’re controlling.
Abby Wambach:
It’s good.
Amanda Doyle:
Eating disorders or thinness or whatever is just step byproduct of trying to control your understanding of yourself as worthy of love. And therefore you look like this. Like it’s all just stemming from the same tree, isn’t it?
Brené Brown:
I think it’s just one more substance productivity. Exhaustion is self worth productivity as yeah. I think it’s yes. I think that’s right.
Abby Wambach:
Its good.
Glennon Doyle:
So in order to self connect I have this be still thing on me, which I always just feel like for me, self connection comes most consistently when I force myself. And it’s weird because stillness for me sometimes requires movement. Like I go for walks. Walks is my self connection time. For sure. But for you, what is your practice or what are you doing when you feel the most self connected?
Brené Brown:
Walking probably. I still use from early work of yours I still use stay on the mat. And I don’t mean that as like, at first I was like yeah, stay on the mat wrestle this fucker down until they’re dead. That’s what I thought. But then I was like, I don’t think that’s what she means. I think it means like even just stay on the mat, stay with the emotion. I think in the end it all comes down to, I think this is where our work intersects. Like inextricably connected in some ways is the need to tap out of discomfort and pain as opposed to feel our way through it is probably at the root of everything.
Glennon Doyle:
And that’s addiction.
Brené Brown:
Yeah. And so that’s when I say stay on the mat to myself, it’s almost like preparing for that. Talk about the nap and Charlie’s friends coming over. I’ll just be like, okay, why the fuck he’s napping and haven’t even probably thought about this and like, I don’t need a helper. I need someone to help me put the list together. Not work off the list. Like that whole thing Amanda’s doing though. Yeah. Like that whole thing. And then I’m just like stay on the mat. Okay. So this okay. I want this to be a comfortable, fun place for Charlie to bring his friends, which means A, less time cleaning and B, probably less time me trying to manage his friends once they get here. Oh, but that’s sad because I’m like, Hey Johnny, join forces for doubles?
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Abby Wambach:
For pickle ball.
Brené Brown:
Yeah. Charlie’s like, yeah. I just want to be right in the middle of it all and-
Abby Wambach:
That’s so cute.
Brené Brown:
The opposite. Yeah. Stay on the mat.
Amanda Doyle:
I just had a thought because we recorded sister’s podcast. It’s coming out soon. And you were talking about your digging deep as just like a core religiosity value of yours. So I wonder if the final frontier of all of this work. The very final step is distinguishing between what is staying on the mat and staying with your pain versus what is digging deep or you should stop digging because all the pains are not equal. The pain of staying on your mat is valuable to you because it helps you connect to who you are. Digging deep through the pain-
Glennon Doyle:
Abandons yourself.
Amanda Doyle:
Disconnects you from who you are.
Brené Brown:
I think you hit on one of the biggest things that’s come up in all the research we’ve done over the last 10 years is Carl Young said the paradox is the closest thing to being able to define what it means to be human. It’s the greatest spiritual gift to humanity as the paradox. So I do think exactly what you’re saying is true. To be able to straddle the tension of staying on the mat and not digging deep beyond human scale, to understanding structural and structure and discipline and straddling that with the dangers of control. So I think these paradoxes are what it means to be human and being able to straddle those tensions of those and know just to hold the tension of those things. I think is what it means to be in union in terms a fully integrated human being. And I think that’s what we’re integration is what our life work is about.
Glennon Doyle:
Will you help us and the whole world with their life’s work?
Abby Wambach:
100%
Glennon Doyle:
And we’re very grateful for you.
Brené Brown:
Well, I feel the same way. I feel exactly the same way. Have y’all read Wolf Pack?
Glennon Doyle:
I have not, but we have a few copies around the house. So I’ll pick on up finally.
Brené Brown:
You need to yeah. Yes. You need to. Point and run baby point and run.
Glennon Doyle:
Thanks.
Brené Brown:
And I do, I will say that every now and then we get questions that come in that say, I’m very surprised how you and Glennon or when Liz has a book come out or Yaba Blay, Tarana, like there’s a group of y’all that even if you have like similar launch dates, you’re like go. Yeah. And I think that’s another part of about pointing in leading. Pointing and-
Glennon Doyle:
Running.
Brené Brown:
Pointing and running.
Abby Wambach:
Pointing and running.
Brené Brown:
How to do it.
Abby Wambach:
And here’s what’s beautiful about it. You know how much time we spend stressing about somebody else’s success or somebody else’s situation. It’s like, actually let’s just do it. Let’s just do it all.
Amanda Doyle:
All together.
Abby Wambach:
And like that’s abundance. That’s something that people can wrap their minds around and they’re around and dive deep into it where like when you’re full of rage or jealousy or envy, that’s a stop sign. It’s like, no, don’t do that point and run. God, let’s go.
Brené Brown:
Let’s go. Lets fucking go.
Abby Wambach:
Brené, I love you.
Glennon Doyle:
We love you. Go do all the things. We’re going to be yelling about Atlas Of the Heart from the rooftops, because we believe in it and we believe in you and we are grateful for you.
Brené Brown:
Thank you.
Glennon Doyle:
And the rest of you, we will see you next time on We Can Do Hard Things. We Can Do Hard Things is produced in partnership with Cadence13 studios, be sure to rate, review and follow the show on apple podcasts, Odyssey, or wherever you get your podcasts, especially be sure to rate and review the podcast if you really liked it. If you didn’t, don’t worry about it. It’s fine.