Brené Brown on Listening to Shame at TED Talk (Full Transcript)

Full text of researcher Brené Brown on Listening to Shame at TED Talk conference.

Listen to the MP3 Audio here: Brené Brown on Listening to Shame at TED Talk

TRANSCRIPT:

I’m going to tell you a little bit about my TEDxHouston Talk. I woke up the morning after I gave that talk with the worst vulnerability hangover of my life. And I actually didn’t leave my house for about three days.

The first time I left was to meet a friend for lunch. And when I walked in, she was already at the table. I sat down, and she said, “God, you look like hell.”

I said, “Thanks. I feel really — I’m not functioning.”

And she said, “What’s going on?”

And I said, “I just told 500 people that I became a researcher to avoid vulnerability. And that when being vulnerable emerged from my data, as absolutely essential to whole-hearted living, I told these 500 people that I had a breakdown. I had a slide that said ‘Breakdown.’ At what point did I think that was a good idea?”

And she said, “I saw your talk live-streamed. It was not really you. It was a little different than what you usually do. But it was great.”

And I said, “This can’t happen. YouTube, they’re putting this thing on YouTube. And we’re going to be talking about 600, 700 people.”

And she said, “Well, I think it’s too late.”

And I said, “Let me ask you something.”

And she said, “Yeah.”

I said, “Do you remember when we were in college, really wild and kind of dumb?”

She said, “Yeah.”

I said, “Remember when we’d leave a really bad message on our ex-boyfriend’s answering machine? Then we’d have to break into his dorm room and then erase the tape?”

And she goes, “Uh… no.”

Of course, the only thing I could say at that point was, “Yeah, me neither. Yeah — me neither.”

And I’m thinking to myself, “Brené, what are you doing? Why did you bring this up? Have you lost your mind? Your sisters would be perfect for this.”

So I looked back up and she said, “Are you really going to try to break in and steal the video before they put it on YouTube?”

And I said, “I’m just thinking about it a little bit.”

She said, “You’re like the worst vulnerability role model ever.”

And then I looked at her and I said something that at the time felt a little dramatic, but ended up being more prophetic than dramatic. I said, “If 500 turns into 1,000 or 2,000, my life is over.”

I had no contingency plan for four million.

And my life did end when that happened. And maybe the hardest part about my life ending is that I learned something hard about myself, and that was that, as much as I would be frustrated about not being able to get my work out to the world, there was a part of me that was working very hard to engineer staying small, staying right under the radar.

But I want to talk about what I’ve learned. There’s two things that I’ve learned in the last year. The first is: vulnerability is not weakness. And that myth is profoundly dangerous.

Let me ask you honestly — and I’ll give you this warning, I’m trained as a therapist, so I can out-wait you uncomfortably — so if you could just raise your hand that would be awesome — how many of you honestly, when you’re thinking about doing something vulnerable or saying something vulnerable think, “God, vulnerability is weakness, this is weakness.” How many of you think of vulnerability and weakness synonymously? The majority of people.