Reflecting on "Atlas Of The Heart"

Emotions are important to understand more deeply and can help us understand why we act, behave, think, and feel the way we do in a situation. I read Atlas of the Heart and felt someway about it. Here is my Goodreads Review where I point out what was useful and what was challenging for me.

Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience

by Brené Brown 

I have to say this was more challenging to work through than I thought it would be. In someway it felt too academic even though the language used was really easy to understand. Over all it felt like reading a interesting dictionary vs. a book you would normally sit down and read cover to cover.

Personally as someone who struggles with Interoception I think I thought this would be more useful to me than it was. I think I would have appreciated more stories/examples (Like how I loved how she used her experience working at a restaurant to clearly show the difference between stressed and overwhelmed) vs. the book being so definition heavy.

I do think the authors framework might be useful to me in the sense that when I am feeling something I can go bigger picture such as if I am avoiding knowing that is a "Place we go when things are uncertain or too much" and then thinking about what is uncertain or too much that might be leading to the avoidance etc.

But I am not sure if this book has given me a better frame work to be able to identify the emotions I am feeling at any given time. Yes there are 87 emotions via this book but really identifying them (knowing how they feel in my body or in my thoughts) and knowing what to do/feel/process when feeling them was unclear.