Book Review: Daring Greatly by Brené Brown

Learn how to love, live and be happier with an author of reason

Vulnerability’s been and becoming or continuing to become a key factor in American culture. Superman’s themed to this characteristic in the new DC Comics/Warner Bros. movie. By my estimate, the trend’s not hip—it’s more like a slow, steady backburn, going against the brush of ages of bad notions of being human, particularly being male. Back in 2008, for instance, Alanis Morissette wrote and recorded an excellent endorsement of the ideal (listen to the song here). It wasn’t a hit. Vulnerability burrows among the best and brightest in my experience; in practice, it hasn’t caught on.

This is a book review of Daring Greatly: How the Courage to be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent and Lead by a leading, rational advocate for being vulnerable as a superpower, author and shame scholar Brené Brown.

Because I knew this book would be an emotional experience for me, I took the time to listen while driving to Orange County and central California from Los Angeles on audio. Then, I read the e-book. Later, I read a paperback version. I made notes. Know in advance that I came to Brown’s work dubious of the talk circuit star, who broke out on video. A writing client had raved about Brené Brown. When pressed, the client was unable to articulate why he thinks she’s a value. As a journalist, I’m downright suspicious when a person, place or thing becomes popular—especially in Hollywood, where what’s popular tends to be sensory-driven, with visuals, particularly when those raving about what’s hot are at a loss to explain why they like it—and the bandwagon effect takes hold. Brown’s work comes off as platitudes in the re-telling. Now that I’ve read three of her books, I know she’s intelligent, original and astute.

Note, too, that I reject Brené Brown’s political philosophy, which doesn’t match the rational approach she takes to her topic, to the degree she’s political (Brown strikes me as more impetuous than political). This review of Daring Greatly might be titled “Hurting Badly,” because this was the context of my first reading of her work. As I’ve explored in articles about grief and in the Heartstrings series, as well as my short stories and poetry, I turned to Brené Brown’s work in an effort to achieve stability during the greatest challenge of my life. This is my context. I read her book in a season of loss, pain and turmoil.

Daring Greatly, taken from a quote by an American president, Theodore Roosevelt, who was probably mentally ill, helps. Dedicated to Brown’s pediatrician husband, Steve, it was originally published as a Gotham Books hardcover in 2012, and, again, in softcover in 2015. Like this personal note, Brown’s starting points and premises orient the reader by grounding the author.

“[W]hile being called pedantic is an insult in most settings,” Brown writes early on, “in the ivory tower we’re taught to wear the pedantic label like a suit of armor.” Then, she sheds the pedantic and delves into her topic—fueling Brown’s passion for her work—which is deconstructing shame. The author teases a tale in which “core issues [are] the same: fear, disengagement, and yearning for more courage” and foretells a theme she describes as “the very core of this book: what we know matters, but who we are matters more.”

From there, Brown breaks down what she regards as the myth of scarcity:

Scarcity is the “never enough” problem. The word scarce is from the Old Norman French scars, meaning “restricted in quantity” (circa 1300). Scarcity thrives in a culture where everyone is hyperaware of lack. Everything from safety and love to money and resources feels restricted or lacking. We spend inordinate amounts of time calculating how much we have, want, and don’t have, and how much everyone else has, needs, and wants…Worrying about scarcity is our culture’s version of post traumatic stress. It happens when we’ve been through too much, and rather than coming together to heal, which requires vulnerability, we’re angry and scared and at each other’s throats. It’s not just a larger culture that’s suffering: I found the same dynamics playing out in family culture, work culture, school culture, and community culture. And they all share the same formula of shame, comparison, and disengagement.”

Right there, Brown had my attention; I knew before delving into Daring Greatly that shame’s a deep and serious problem and that obsession with and chronic comparison to others is rampant, widespread and bad. Disengagement, I’ve observed as a mate, journalist and American cultural reporter, comes in waves as people literally disengage from conflict, from intimacy and from life. It’s an epidemic. I kept thinking: she wrote this in 2012?

A few pages later, Brown goes against a mindfulness mantra and makes an excellent point that “the counterapproach to living in scarcity is not about abundance. In fact, I think abundance and scarcity are two sides of the same coin. The opposite of “never enough” isn’t abundance or “more than you could ever imagine.” The opposite of scarcity is enough, or what I call wholeheartedness.”

The term I prefer to give to what Brené Brown refers to as wholeheartedness is wholeness. Challenges, insights and points get deeper as Brown goes it alone. In the second chapter, “Debunking the Vulnerability Myths,” she labels “myth number one: vulnerability is weakness.”

My whole life as a man—and this is reinforced by the men I know, including a man who at once challenged and wanted me, and how men tend to think of this concept—is predicated on this myth:

When we spend our lives pushing away and protecting ourselves from feeling vulnerable or from being perceived as too emotional, we feel contempt when others are less capable or willing to mask feelings, suck it up, and soldier on.…We let our fear and discomfort become judgment and criticism.”

Citing studies, surveys, certain data and experiments, Brown proposes a profound central thesis that “vulnerability isn’t good or bad: it’s not what we call a dark emotion, nor is it always a light, positive experience. Vulnerability is the core of all emotions and feelings…to feel is to be vulnerable. To believe vulnerability is weakness is to believe that feeling is weakness. To foreclose on our emotional life out of a fear that the costs will be too high is to walk away from the very thing that gives purpose and meaning to living…I define vulnerability as uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure.”

Then, she comes back to the elementary lesson: “the word vulnerability is derived from the Latin word, vulnerare, meaning “to wound.” The definition includes “capable of being wounded” and “open to attack or damage.”

This is a vital affirmation and recognition of reality. Busting the next myth, she quotes a children’s literary author, Madeleine L’Engle, who once wrote that: “When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown up, we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability. To be alive is to be vulnerable.”

Author Brené Brown doesn’t advocate being vulnerable for the sake of being vulnerable. Brown also doesn’t go for indiscriminate gushing of your innermost thoughts. This is helpful for those who lack boundaries, filters and models for rational behavior. Knowing what’s right to do can be a challenge. Daring Greatly guides.

Acknowledging that while one needs to feel trust to be vulnerable, Brown writes that one also needs to be vulnerable in order to trust. Citing sources with ample credit, including from The Science of Trust and Emotional Atonement for Couples author John Gottman in an article on the University of California Berkeley’s greater good website, she notes that, in any interaction, “there is a possibility of connecting with your partner or turning away from your partner.”

This afforded me an important realization, prompting me to recall that, when I recently stepped away to spare myself and someone I love additional conflict, anguish and higher potential for overloaded bandwidth breeding misunderstanding, the person may have only experienced my taking a pause as disengagement—or, as Brown puts it, “… The betrayal of disengagement. Of not caring. Of letting the connection go. Of not being willing to devote time and effort to the relationship.”

To disengage can be devastating, particularly to the child:

With children, actions speak louder than words. When we stop requesting invitations into their lives by asking about their day, asking them to tell us about their favorite songs, wondering how their friends are doing, then children feel pain and fear, and not relief, despite how our teenagers may act. Because they can’t articulate how they feel about our disengagement when we stop making an effort with them, they show us by acting out, thinking, this will get their attention.”

In one story about a tall man who showed his vulnerability in one of her workshops about feeling like he was being put in a box, she describes the class reaction:

You could have heard a pin drop in the room. Then he stood up, shook his head, and said, “or you stay high so you don’t really notice how unbearable it is. That’s the easiest way.” The students grabbed on to ‘stay high’ like a life preserver and broke into nervous laughter. This happens a lot when you’re talking about shame or vulnerability—anything to cut the tension. But this brave young man wasn’t laughing and neither was I.”

Grief

This review qualifies as a related article in my series on grief. One of the assets of Daring Greatly is the author’s ability to be objective about emotion, particularly with regard to the emotions of men. As an emotion, grief, in my experience, is uniquely miscast, misjudged and misunderstood. It’s often dismissed as something that must be resolved fast or ought to be fleeting and shallow. Grief’s also narrowly cast as something reserved for grieving that which is grand and noble. If someone or something you love was lost or died—suppose it’s a friendship, car, a tooth, a parakeet, a limb, a barista at a place you go every day—it may not rank or matter.

—To those claiming to care about you. During my turmoil, painfully, I came to realize that grief can be extremely layered and complicated and that grief applies strangely and crucially to the smallest loss—the loss of a friend, a neighbor or an acquaintance, not in death, but in absence. Perhaps she went away, gained a boyfriend and stopped talking with you over the fence or having a beer with you once in a while. The loss of a possession—a wedding ring, a painting, things you lost in the fire or in the wake of a beloved one’s death, such as when an estate’s executor robs you of any power to touch or acquire things you’ve loved and lost, whether a photograph, a trinket or a book you shared with the one you’ve lost or who died. This can means the loss of someone’s love, respect or admiration. Or the loss of a sense—sight, hearing, smell—or the loss of a favorite ritual.

Though she doesn’t make this explicit, Brené Brown understands that grief is complicated and that one can grieve for little things—yes, things—not merely the loss of a parent or a spouse—and that grief can go on and on and, left untended, can rot a human life. Observe Brown’s challenge to the whole world in this excerpt about a man:

… His demonstration was one of the most honest and courageous things I’ve ever had the privilege of seeing, and I know that the people in that room were deeply affected by it. After the group interview, he told me about his experiences growing up. He had been a passionate artist as a child, and he winced as he described how he was sure from an early age that he’d be happy if he could spend his life painting and drawing. He said that one day he was in the kitchen with his dad and uncle. His uncle pointed to a collection of his art that was plastered on the refrigerator and jokingly said to his father, “what? You’re raising a faggot artist now?” After that, he said, his father, who had always been neutral about his art, forbade him from taking classes. Even his mother, who had always been so proud of his talent, agreed that it was “a little too girly.” He told me that he’d drawn a picture of his house the day before all of this happened, and to that day it was the last thing he’d ever drawn. That night I wept for him and for all of us who never got to see his work. I think about him all of the time and hope he has reconnected with his art. I know it’s a tremendous loss for him, and I’m equally positive that the world is missing out.”

Building upon her admittedly newfound empathy for the male in today’s feminist-dominated culture—my analysis, not hers—Brown comes to terms with oppression of the man in today’s American matriarchy: “I was not prepared to hear over and over from men how the women—the mothers, sisters, girlfriends, wives—in their lives are constantly criticizing them for not being open and vulnerable and intimate, all the while they are standing in front of that cramped, wizard closet where their men are huddled inside, adjusting the curtain and making sure no one sees in and no one gets out. There was a moment when I was driving home from an interview with a small group of men and thought, holy shit. I am the patriarchy.”

In one of the most profound admissions in recent popular psychology literature, Brené Brown accounts for the truth about today’s modern woman:

Here’s the painful pattern that emerged from my research with men. We ask them to be vulnerable, we beg them to let us in, and we plead with them to tell us when they’re afraid, but the truth is that most women can’t stomach it. In those moments when real vulnerability happens in men, most of us recoil with fear and that fear manifests in everything from disappointment to disgust.”

Brown addresses the truth about what it’s like to be gay: “I think it’s important to add that for men there’s also a cultural message that promotes homophobic cruelty. If you want to be masculine in our culture, it’s not enough to be straight—you must also show an outward disgust toward [the gay man].”

As a gay man, I can attest that this is absolutely true and hers is an excellent insight, though I want to clarify—and it’s my sincere hope that Brené Brown is reading this—that today’s American straight man is emphatically not homophobic (a legitimate term, unlike Islamophobic, in my judgment) yet apes or acts out as homophobic in collectives, clusters or among other straight men—stewed in the bro/bruh/brotha mentality—to the point of physical revulsion and/or the initiation of the use of force against the gay male (rarely the gay female; a figure which is overromanticized).

As an aside, because Brown does not address the corollary of men’s homophobia, with straight women, frankly, in my judgment, the reverse is true; generally, they’re often acting empathetic in both groups and in private yet it’s a facade and they’re often passive-aggressive or outwardly hostile to the gay man—leftist TV personality Joy Reid or conservative legislator Nancy Mace come to mind—in ways which are cruel, insidious and cover or front for her sexual frustration that all men, particularly the gay man who’s sexually uninterested or impervious, don’t submit to being emasculated and subject to accommodating every whim or succumb to the presumed allure of a cosmetic mask.

Whatever the form of irrational discrimination, as Brown writes: “It doesn’t matter if the group is a church or a gang or a sewing circle, or masculinity itself, asking members to dislike, disown, or distance themselves from another group of people as a condition of “belonging” is always about control and power. I think we have to question the intentions of any group that insists on disdain toward other people as a membership requirement. It may be disguised as belonging, but real belonging doesn’t necessitate disdain.”

“Shame is the fear of disconnection”

Explaining why knowingly or unknowingly pushing away vulnerability comes at the expense of accounting and bracing for uncertainty, risk and “emotional exposure of joy,” Brown delves into the roots of shame in the fourth chapter.

Occasionally, as with the imperfect term wholeheartedness, she’s off or slightly misaligned. On gratitude, for example, Brené Brown does not nail the overused, overinflated and overbaked idea; gratitude is an acknowledgment and alignment of what you already have in your life as part of an inventory—expressing gratitude’s an important admission of who you are, what you have—it’s not mere appreciation as Brown implies.

Brown uses the word sacrifice instead of trade-offs, which is what I think she means: “… In its original Latin form, sacrifice means to make sacred or to make holy. I wholeheartedly believe that when we are fully engaged in parenting, regardless of how imperfect, vulnerable, and messy it is, we are creating something sacred.”

Another error: “Perfection doesn’t exist,” she asserts without evidence. Yes, it does—perfection is possible, just not all in one swoop—and I think the fact that it is inextricably propels one to hope, be optimistic and cultivate rational goals, habits and practices.

Most of Daring Greatly is excellent. “Perfectionism is a form of shame,” she writes in the same section. This time, Brown backs it up:

Perfectionism is not the same thing as striving for excellence. Perfectionism is not about health, achievement and growth. Perfectionism is a defensive move. It’s the belief that if we do things perfectly and look perfect, we can minimize or avoid the pain of blame, judgment, and shame. Perfectionism is a twenty-ton shield that we lug around, thinking it will protect us when in fact, it’s the thing that’s really preventing us from being seen.”

The concept that I am sacred—essentially, egoism or practicing the virtue of selfishness—also comes through in Brown’s Daring Greatly. Advocating spirituality—“[n]ot religiosity”—albeit as “a force greater than ourselves—a force grounded in love and compassion” Brown argues that, “[f]or some of us, that’s God, for others it’s nature, art, or even human soulfulness” and explicitly claims that “owning [one’s] worthiness is the act of acknowledging that we are sacred.”

Accepting the ego as sacred requires a deeper examination of fallacies.

Are you a victim or a Viking?

Citing research that shows a false dichotomy—Viking or victim—the Houston, Texas writer found that certain “folks shared the belief that everyone without exception belongs to one of two mutually exclusive groups: either you’re a Victim in life—a sucker or a loser who’s always being taken advantage of and can’t hold your own—or you’re a Viking—someone who sees the threat of being victimized as a constant, so you stay in control, you dominate, you exert power over things, and you never show vulnerability.” Does this describe anyone you know?

Again, examining male-dominated fields, such as the military, she sounds an alarm in this pre-pandemic book that suicide is on the rise. “For soldiers serving in Afghanistan and Iraq, coming home is more lethal than being in combat. From the invasion of Afghanistan to the summer of 2009, the U.S. military lost 761 soldiers in combat in that country. Compare that to the 817 who took their own lives over the same period. And this number doesn’t account for deaths related to violence, high-risk behaviors, and addiction.”

In a powerful rejoinder, she both reassures and challenges the reader:

As far as connection and the military is concerned, I’m not advocating for a kinder, gentler fighting force—I understand the realities faced by nations and the soldiers who protect them. What I am advocating as a kinder, gentler public, one willing to embrace, support, and reach out to the men and women we pay to be invulnerable on our behalf. Are we willing to reach out and connect?”

If you answered yes, here’s a link to her solution.

To the other extreme, she cautions against those using the capacity to be vulnerable as a crutch: “Using vulnerability is not the same thing as being vulnerable; it’s the opposite—it’s armor.” Again, Brown challenges the reader to act upon any admission: “If you recognize yourself in this shield, this checklist might help:”

• Why am I sharing this?

• What outcome am I hoping for?

• What emotions am I experiencing? Do my intentions align with my values?

• Is there an outcome, response, or lack of a response that will hurt my feelings?

• Is this sharing in the service of connection?

• Am I genuinely asking the people in my life for what I need?

Cultivating what she calls shame resilience and engagement, Brené Brown makes the case for judgment, discernment and making a distinction: “… There’s a significant difference between you are bad and you did something bad. And, no, it’s not just semantics. Shame corrodes the part of us that believes we can do and be better.“

“Several years ago, I received a letter from a woman who wrote: “Your work changed my life in a very strange way. My mom saw you speak at a church in Amarillo. Afterwards, she wrote me a long letter that said, “I had no idea there was a difference between shame and guilt. I think I shamed you your entire life. I meant to use guilt. I never thought you weren’t good enough. I did not like your choices. But I shamed you. I can’t take that back, but I need you to know that you’re the best thing that ever happened to me and I’m so proud to be your mother.“ I couldn’t believe it. My mom is 75 and I’m 55. It healed so much. And it changed everything, including the way I parent my own kids.“

Hope

“Hope is a function of struggle.” The bold type is Brown’s emphasis; her thoughts on hope are also lacking yet they’re also, as this quote suggests, cogent, practical and valuable. “And let me tell you,” she writes, “next to love and belonging, I’m not sure I want anything more for my kids than a deep sense of hopefulness.”

Expanding on her definition of hope, she argues with merit that “… Hope isn’t an emotion; it’s a way of thinking or a cognitive process. Emotions play a supporting role, but hope is really a thought process made up with what [another scholar] calls a trilogy of goals, pathways, and agency. In very simple terms, hope happens when:

• We have the ability to set realistic goals. (I know where I want to go.) (… I know how to get there, I’m persistent and I can tolerate disappointment and try again.) (We believe in ourselves I can do this!)

These above points denote confidence, not hope, though she makes a legitimate and, I think, valid, argument. “To learn hopefulness,” she writes, “children need relationships that are characterized by boundaries, consistency, and support. Children with high levels of hopefulness have experience with adversity. They’ve been given the opportunity to struggle and in doing that they learned how to believe in themselves.” Accordingly, Brown presents a “wholehearted parenting manifesto,” which she adds you can download on her website.

Hers is a good manifesto for egoism. Its points include self-talk, a romantic love manifesto, reading aloud to oneself, one’s partner, friend, mate, loved one or a child—an excellent practice in my experience.

Daring Greatly originates with Theodore Roosevelt’s famous quote, which made me wonder, in spite of Brené Brown’s implications and assertions: is Teddy Roosevelt not the critic in the quote? “It is not the critic who counts…” Is he not criticizing, doubting and scrutinizing—critiquing the critic—and what of the one, i.e., the boy in Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” or, for that matter, Brown, who challenges the status quo?

This got me thinking of other problems with the book’s foundational Theodore Roosevelt (TR) quote: Does his “…marred by dust and sweat and blood” overromanticize suffering? TR claims he “…comes short again and again.” For what and why?

And “… who does actually strive to do…” In context of TR’s quote, is this not evidence of perfectionism—doing for the sake of doing? On this point, “who errs…” made me want to ask: why? After all, everyone errs. “…who knows the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause.” What constitutes worthy? And, finally, “…if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly…” But this contradicts his earlier claim that he only fails over and over. I think the TR quote bears closer scrutiny including from author Brown.

“Why does this hurt so much?”

This is possibly the most apt formulation of Daring Greatly’s theme, agenda, and promise. Brené Brown writes: “Just recently, after enduring a few really mean-spirited anonymous comments from a news website, I pulled the [TR] quote down from the pinboard over my desk and spoke directly to the sheet of paper, “if the critic doesn’t count, then why does this hurt so much?”

Brown proceeds to answer her own question.

“…Vulnerability is subversive. Uncomfortable. It’s even a little dangerous at times. And, without question, putting ourselves out there means there’s a far greater risk of feeling hurt.” She applies this lesson to heartbreak, making another crucial distinction between the origins of the terms vulnerability and weakness, and that piercing point that disengagement can be experienced as the ultimate betrayal.

All of Daring Greatly adds up to a manual for self-transformation. It’s daring, pardon my opting for the obvious, and potent. It’s also laced with humor, such as her family story—Brown has a daughter, son and that sympathetic husband, Steve—about the “tardy party” and a poignant story of resurgent romantic love at a lake in Texas. Even these are born of the author’s choice to be vulnerable, which redounds to Brown’s choice to pursue happiness for her own sake; she shares that she dares to be great.

Brené Brown succeeds, making her my most influential writer after Ayn Rand, whose philosophy she, perhaps unknowingly, puts to action. “As a huge fan of the band Rush,” she writes at a certain interval, “this seems like the perfect place to throw in a quote from their song “Freewill”: “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.” The same goes for being vulnerable. Daring Greatly proves that mining the truth about being your best can make risking the dare a great and lifelong reward.

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Additional Excerpts

On Parenting

“In terms of teaching our children to dare greatly in the “never enough” culture, the question isn’t so much “Are you parenting the right way?” as it is: “are you the adult that you want your child to grow up to be?”

“… Raise children who live and love with their whole hearts.”

“Americans today are more debt-ridden, obese, medicated, and addicted than we ever have been…automobile accidents are now the second leading cause of accidental death in the United States. The leading cause? Drug overdoses. In fact, more people die from prescription drug overdoses than from heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine drug use combined.…The most powerful need for numbing seems to come from combinations of all three – shame, anxiety and disconnection.… Disconnection [is] tougher to nail down. I thought about using the term depression rather than disconnection, but as I recorded the data, that’s not what I heard. I instead heard a range of experiences that encompassed depression, but also included loneliness, isolation, disengagement, and emptiness.”

— Brené Brown

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