Pushkin. Hey, Slight Changers, I've got a special guest for you this week, Brenee Brown. You may have heard Brene's ted talk, The Power of Vulnerability. It's been viewed more than sixty four million times. She's a social science professor at the University of Houston and is best known for her research on complex emotions like shame and vulnerability. She's also the best selling author of books like Braving the
Wilderness and Atlas of the Heart. A few years ago, I was a guest on her podcast, Dare to Lead. We talked about cultivating courage and the face of change and how change can affect our identities. And so today I wanted to continue that conversation and talk a bit more about identity, how we can find ourselves picking up and holding on to different ones over the course of our lives. Brenee and I discussed a few identities that
she holds particularly close. Recovering, perfectionist, reluctant public figure, partner to her husband, and parent to two kids. We began our conversation talking about one of her earliest identities, big sister. She says her role as big sister really started to take shape when she was around eight years old.
In my family, there was a very fine line between older sister and co parent.
I think those.
Identities grew together in an inextricably connected way, for better and worse. My parents, like many of our parents, really had no idea what they were doing, and they were doing the best they could. They both came from a ton of trauma, and so very early on, my job was to maintain as much stability as possible in a very tumultuous household.
In the context of young Brune, did that look like emotional support?
It's a tough question. I think that identity of.
Older sister, co parent protector grew in harmony with another identity that's really profoundly still who I am, which is patternfinder. I could understand very quickly what comment between my parents or someone else that was maybe at the house.
Would unwind in a way that.
Would make things tenuous and possibly dangerous. I think I was always kind of of running around sorting things, calming things down, intervening, making sure everything was as okay as it could be, to prevent some kind of blow up.
I love this idea of patternfinder. I think in so many ways we're kindred spirits in that way. I mean, oh, I don't know. Yeah, Like, even though I was the youngest of four, I was so emotionally attuned to dynamics and was trying to like implicitly or explicitly negotiate things, and it was almost impossible for me to ever turn that switch.
Off one hundred percent. I actually.
Have spent probably twenty years of my life trying to do work to turn that off. I am I am always assessing, and I very quickly can see how behavior, emotion, and cognition are connected in people. I mean my family growing up, if someone made a joke, everyone would laugh and I would just kind of like uh. And I could see if the exact same joke was made but the context was different, there is potentially going to be a screaming match or potential violence just based on the
context of it happening. And it explains a lot about me, which is I was not fun. I was the protector or the protector in waiting. It's kind of like that movie where the where the kids like I see dead people.
Yeah, yeah, sixth sense yeah yeah, y yeah.
It's kind of like I see when shit's getting ready to go down. Yeah, absolutely, And I don't intervene anymore. But I also, you know, want to high tail it out of there and take the people I love with me.
How do you see your relationship as protector patterns secret big sister having evolved over time? So, now that you're in adulthood and you're outside of the immediately threatening environment, let's say, a family life, how has that role changed for you, if at all. I mean, it still might have those same tones. I'm just curious.
I think when you come from kind of an eggshell environment, there's a hyper vigilance around what's going to cause the response that's dangerous, either verbally, emotionally, or maybe even physically. I have done and am doing a lot of personal work around it, and continue to do it. I think my sisters and I call each other out on it.
One of my sisters will say, hey, hey, hey, we know how to handle we're grown up too now, and we also think we can do some of this way better than you can do it, So back off, call your therapist, sit down, you know.
And so I'm like, Okay, yeah, that's great because I can't.
Yeah yeah, yeah, what a wonderful evolution. I'd love to hop to the next identity lily pad if you will, and talk about perfectionism. So yet another one that we share in common, Vernee, where do you think the roots of your perfectionism emerged? So let's take genes off the table. So let's say you know, we both have a genetic predisposition towards this, but environmentally, what do you think might have led to that?
I from an early age, as the oldest, as the protector, I saw and experienced a link between my loveability and how good I was, and I needed to be morally ethically performatively, you know, like in every dimension good equated to love ability.
And was this love from your parents or just in general from all the adults in your life?
I think it was from all the adults. I think there was this collection of moments that just continue to provide data piece after data piece after data piece, you know, like dependability, sacrifice, manners, grades, a million pieces of data that reinforce this idea that good is lovable and not good is not lovable.
Is there a time you remember where you actively wished you were not a perfectionist, where you felt it's sabotaging some aspect of your life.
I guess one of the things that's dawning on me as we're having this conversation right now, is the idea of perfectionism being what will other people think? I am not as vulnerable to that as I used to be. Where I am still vulnerable is when people say you're not a good person. That I have to work on
that to not be crippling. So when I do something that people disagree with, or I have a position that people disagree with and they attribute that to what they think they know about me, that can be really, really painful for me.
And how do you engage with that pain? What's your response? Because surely it's not just changing your position, right, you have a set of values, and so I wonder when you run up against that tension, but appeasing that audience by changing your point of view isn't on the table. What do you do?
I try to always keep curiosity in learning on the table. I try to extend the same generosity to other people that I'd want extended to me. I try to take in what's learnable and then what's mean spirited or hateful.
But I think.
I don't know how to do it really well. To be honest with you, I don't have a solution there.
No, and I'm with you girl. So yeah, there was an experience that I had at work where because of a misunderstanding, I felt like a colleague of mine thought I wasn't a good person and she wouldn't engage with me on the topic. So I never had the opportunity to conflict resolve. And this was one of the most maddening experiences for me because I am not prideful. I will come to every table admit where I went wrong
or what my weaknesses are. But the fact she wasn't willing to engage brene put me into this frantic state of panic, like I will never get resolution here. I will never be able to prove to this person that I'm actually good and I didn't mean any harm. And I don't know what it is she even is upset with me about. And the only thing I had in that moment to work with was my own brain, because
I had no ability to communicate with her. So I had to find a way to change my own perception, and so I visualized what it meant for her to maybe think that I was a bad person, And in my head, the visual was there are these electrical signals in her brain that occasionally occur where these neurons fire and say I don't like Maya, okay, and it's fleeting, and like, I'm not a narcisst I know it's having very infrequently, but all it is is just this transient
electrical signal, and we pump so much air into this feeling of what other people think of us as this massive concept, and for some reason, that visual took the air out of it. It like deflated that balloon. It took the power away from her. I was like, Okay, so I'm going to walk around this world and there's going to be humans who have that neural activity that I don't agree with Maya. I don't like Maya. I
think Maya's XYZ. And maybe that's a world that I can comfortably live in and be happy in and find peace in anyway. I don't know if that's helpful, but it's just it's taken some of the emotional punch out of this feeling of someone not liking you or not approving of you.
God, I'm like mesmerized, I'm hanging on every word. I just think it's so right sizing that it's a fleeting thought in the mind of a single person that we have no control over.
I mean, it makes so much sense to me.
And the disproportionate amount of energy we spend compared to the fleeting littles exactly mine.
You would have thought I was getting my PhD in this woman during that period of time, I was like ninety percent of my brain power was like how do I get her to not be mad at me? And I don't even know why she's mad? You know, I put so much mental labor into trying to solve this problem that was unsolvable. Yeah, I meanside though, by the way it just takes on this point, as you might think, well, then every positive thought people have about me is transient too.
But I actually think it's good to think of the positive stuff as transient as well. I mean, because otherwise you can over index on that, you can attach so much value and self worth to that and then suddenly collapses and you don't know what to do.
I absolutely and the positive vilance is much more scary for me than the negative personally. To be honest with you, I don't like that party there very much.
Yeah, SayMore. I'm so curious, especially as because you're such a public figure and so I'm so curious to know how that intersects.
Yeah, I'll go back to Braving the Wilderness. When I wrote that book, i shared my support for Black Lives Matter and why I thought it was a really important
movement that we should be paying attention to. And it was the first time I experienced people walking out of event centers and places during my book tour talks specifically around that issue, like getting up in the middle of like what I'm talking, people said they felt personally betrayed by me and disappointed in me because my work had meant so much to them and overcoming hard things the death of a child or you know, their own eating disorder,
their divorce, or you know, just like really hard things, And then how could I betray them by having an opinion a political belief that was so far from their own. And what I realized in that moment is that's a result of people projecting on me who they need me to be. Does that make sense to you at all?
Yeah, that's that is so interesting because basically, they they found your work meaningful, therapy, resonant. It's helped them during a hard time, and obviously they have some fraction of an understanding of who you are. Right, they're consuming a book you've written, and what you're saying is they're essentially filling in all the gaps in their knowledge of who you are with an idealized version of you that meets their criteria.
I remember the first time I became aware of it.
Oh, I was telling a story and I was like, oh, I was so mad. I was flipping this driver off underneath that, you know, underneath the steering wall where they couldn't see me. And someone said, you really actually don't sound very wholehearted at all.
And I was like what.
And they're like, I thought you were all about wholeheartedness, and I was like, I think I'm about deep, flawed, messy, lovable, amazing humanity like I, you know, And so I'm not going to be a good avatar for you.
Looking for a messy, complicated, deeply flawed person.
Right.
More of my conversation with Brene after the break. We'll be back in a moment with a slight change of plans. One identity Brene Brown has had for a long time is partner to her husband Steve. They've been together for decades. I wanted to know more about how this identity has evolved over time because I'm a hopeless romantic and I also watch crappy TV like The Bachelor. Just indulge me for indulgent for a moment.
This I love about you.
I mean, there's so many things to love about you, but this is one of my favorites.
Okay.
I may or may not have attended the live taping of After the Final Rows in LA for The Bachelor, So maybe I don't know. Did I miss a work dated that. I don't know?
Okay, I don't know either. We will never know, actually.
Like who would do that? I mean, wow, what a wait of time? Right? Yeah? Okay, so just indulge me for a second. And I would love to hear about falling in love with Steve, Like when did you know that you wanted to marry him? And what was what were the traits that he exhibited that made you think, Okay, I think this guy. I could make it work with this guy.
I mean I the first time I met him, I went home and told my roommate, I think I'm going to marry this guy.
And we were young.
We were lifeguards in love at a pool over the summer.
And how old were you?
God?
We were.
Eighteen and twenty one, and so we made mixtapes and.
We we like it was like.
Yeah, and you know, and he comes from a lot of hard family stuff too, and he was the first person that we talked about that. And then we dated off and on for seven years and got married and we've been married now.
It'll be thirty years in June.
Wow, COVID the last couple of years has been the hardest season of our marriage, for sure. I think we both believe it's supposed to be hard as hell.
Can you tell me about why COVID in particular was so hard.
I'm surprised our marriage survived it. I think we both are. I think, you know, he's a pediatrician. I'm trying to keep a business afloat. My mom had just been diagnosed with rapid onset dementia, and then we tried to get snink my mom out of her assisted living facility, like in the hour before it shut down, where we couldn't
get in everybody's living together. It was just like it was what everybody was going through in the world, you know, And we had resources and access to things that the vast majority of people didn't have, and we were still just barely holding on and we did not have any bandwidth for each other or anything but what was in front of us to accomplish that day. And that's the conditions under which things, you know, fall apart. So it was a rebuild. And we're also in a weird season
of our lives. Our youngest is going to college. There's a real like, hi, and Brene, nice to meet you. I'm Steve, nice to meet you. It's a season on it in its own.
Yeah. You know, you had mentioned that you and Steve both believe that marriage is supposed to be hard as hell, and I'm wondering if you can unpack that for me.
So I think expecting it to be hard, expecting it to be work, it's just not two people hanging out being themselves. There's like that third entity that is your relationship that very few of us saw modeled how to build it in a way that we want to be in it. My parents are divorced, Steve's parents are divorced.
See's parents are divorced, remarried, were married, divorced. My parents divorce, We married divorced, you know, like, and so we knew what we didn't want it to be and we also just knew it was going to be a ton of work.
I've done a lot of hard.
Shit in my life, nothing compares to how hard this is. And so I think that having kids shocked to the system, Balancing careers shock to the system, navigating different career trajectories and ambitions, death, illness shocks to the system. I mean, I think I heard Paul Newman saying the reason why his marriage lasted so long is neither one of them wanted to get a divorce at.
The same time. And I think that's so funny and true. But I think very few of us know how to.
Fight well, talk about our feelings a way where we can stay curious with each other and not defensive.
I mean, I'm still learning that stuff, Like we're still trying to.
Get better, and I mean, hey, the jury still out, I would you know, like, yeah, yeah, yeah, a lot of shit can go bad really fast. But to this point, we were able to coordinate our individual growth inside of our partnership.
Yeah, it is. So I'm just reflecting this moment. It's hearkening back to twenty sixteen when my husband Jimmy and I got married, and I remember writing our vows, and at the end it was something like, you know, with all these people surrounding us who love us so dearly, you know, I feel that we can beat anything. And then I like took my pen and I was like, I don't believe that there are so many things that could break us, Like, yeah, I have the humility to
know all the many things that could break us. And so I remember striking that out and writing instead, the odds are in our favor, which was such a maya thing to put in a vows and made perfect sense to Jimmy and probably made it more romantic from his perspective. But it's so awesome.
It's so statistically, I think the odds are good.
Yeah, the odds are good. So that was kind of acknowledging what you've been saying this whole time, which is things can get really really hard. Yeah, as you think to the future, is there an identity that you would love to lay claim to that you would love to have but you haven't yet? God Lee, Sorry, that's a toughie.
No, it's so good.
I think the identity that I have right now that I can't wait to see where it goes is two have a my guess our mom and partner. I I there's so much better sweetness in being a mom, because the whole gig is such a shit show because you're just really trying to help them leave you, and so that's like tough.
But of course, yeah, yeah, But I will say that I have.
Loved being the mom of adult children as much as I loved you know, four year olds and eight year olds and twelve year olds and fifteen year olds and toddlers.
And it's just watching my kids figure out who they want to be and how they want to contribute to the world and navigate their own partnerships and friendships is just such a privilege to get to do and it's so fun, and so I'm excited to continue that role and just to see how it plays out and to continue, you know, the privilege of getting to be a part of their lives. And I think also I'm very curious and interested in committed to figuring out how Steve and
I do this next season. And I'll be curious to see what I want to do with my career and what I won't want to do anymore. And I have some some usual some suspects on the list of what I don't want to do anymore and some suspects on the list of what I might want to do. I think getting off social for a year was really helpful because I do think there is the leading of who you are for the avatar.
Of who you are.
Yeah, definitely a.
Lot of the systems that we thought would be good around this or broken and the algorithms are set the wrong way.
Do you agree, yes?
Yeah, Yeah, I.
Don't know what the answer is. I don't know how to build community have impact. Yeah, in a world that's full of so much pain and projection.
I don't know what the experience of your advantage point is. I only have my own. But I can see myself tempering classic ambition in this space because I'm afraid of it because it just.
Say that again, because it seems like really important. I really want to understand what you're saying.
So I want my ideas to reach as many people as possible. What I found myself resisting in the recent online climate is more followers, more likes, more downloads, more this, more that, because I don't actually know if that's a net good anymore, And so then what becomes the north star? Like, what is my goal? I mean, it's meaningful connection with individual people, right, how does that scale? And the current social media environment is so unappealing to me because of
what it incentivizes. But at the same time, I spent a lot of time doing a lot of thoughtful work. I want the conversations on the show to be widely heard. I want it in as many earbudds as possible. So like, there's a tension there for me and I just don't know what the answers are.
That's just such a beautiful framing of the question. I one of the questions that I'm asking myself based on what you just said, is how do you operationalize ambition? How do you set metrics for success in the current milieu that we live in.
So, like, one example of this is that I know that a slight change of plans would quote perform better if I did more episodes a year. This is a situation where I will only produce high quality content if I have a life that I live outside of this world, because otherwise I'm not living enough of life to be interesting or to learn to consume other people's content, to read books and just be a better person.
But let's but let's can I just could you just indulge me for a second, please, talking about a powerful and beautiful way of operationalizing ambition. I am ambitious for converse I want to have. I am ambitious for books I want to read. I am ambitious for my own life. Operationalizing ambition in a way that includes our lives and our families and our health and our mental wellness, and then setting metrics for success that include those same things.
Yeah, totally.
So.
One thing I've done recently, just in case this is the thing you want to do too, can really help me is every time I get a letter from a listener over the last couple of years, the ones that really are so beautiful and meaningful and that you're just like, Wow, how did I earn this trust from you? I mean, it's such an honor, right, So I've been screencapping them, and I recently created an album in my photos app
which is called Slight Change Love Letters. So on a rainy day where I feel low morale, go to the album, remind yourself, reorient yourself, reground yourself and what really matters and is actually like all of these tangible lives that have been improved by the work that you do, and that's just going to have to be enough. That's going to have to be what matters, and it's all that matters. Yeah, and oh okay, let me just share this with you,
the interview that you did with me on Dare to Lead. Yes, I heard from a woman who said, I heard your conversation with Brene, and I've been trying to reckon with the loss of my nineteen year old son to a drug overdose, and that conversation that you had with Brene unlocked healing for me.
M I mean that woman that that story, that story is kind of the summary of our entire conversation in my heart, Maya, because that story wasn't like, oh, you and Brene are such badasses and y'all are rock stars and y'all are the best and better than everyone. It was you had a conversation that was intimate and hard, and that specific conversation unlocked something in my grieving process about my child who died. It wasn't the avatar creation.
It was you said something that helped me heal. And it's not about celebrity, and it's not about fame, and it's not about who we are as people flawed imperfect, messy learners. It's about trying to put good work into the world.
Yeah, exactly.
Every time I talk to.
You, I learned things, and I freaking love how your mind and your heart work, and I love how they work together.
Thank you.
It's a really unique and special thing that I know you work hard at.
I really appreciate that. And I've found today just so lovely to talk to a kindred spirit.
Same.
Hey, thanks so much for listening. If you want to listen to my episode with Brene on dare to Lead, check out the link in our show notes. And if you enjoyed this conversation, we on the Slight Change team would be so grateful if you shared the episode with someone you know, maybe it's someone who's finding their own identity shifting lately. It helps us get out the words so we can keep making more episodes for you. We'll be back in just a few weeks with a new
season of A Slight Change of Plans. See you then. A Slight Change of Plans is created, written, and executive produced by me Maya Schunker. The Slight Change family includes our showrunner Tyler Green, our senior editor Kate Parkinson, Morgan, our senior producer Trisha Bobida and our engineer Eric o'kwang. Louis Scara wrote our delightful theme song and Ginger Smith
helped arrange the vocals. A Slight Change of Plans is a production of Pushkin Industries, so a big thanks to everyone there, and of course a very special thanks to Jimmy Lee. You can follow A Slight Change of Plans on Instagram at doctor Maya Schunker. See you next week.