A review by kenbooky
Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience by Brené Brown

5.0

I’m probably not the first person to suggest Brené Brown’s specialty brand of self help and growth literature; I definitely won’t be the last either. I’ve heard this name thrown around quite a bit, and I’ll be frank, sometimes the introspection-y reads aren’t really my thing… mainly as a person who went to therapy a lot from a young age, I thought I knew my self and the lingo pretty well. This is exactly what Brown aims to disrupt in her Atlas of the Heart. How there is often a disconnect between language and meaning— especially in emotions. It was such an Ah-ha moment discovering how important clear concise communication with others often breaks down because we don’t even know how to label the emotions we are feeling by name. This often occurs because there is a cultural shift around the word, which to Brown’s credit, the meaning we all THINK a word has can then become even more important than what a word ACTUALLY means. I loved this linguistics approach to emotions. Very cool. Never read anything quite like it.