"I thought it was just me..."

"I Thought It Was Just Me" is the title of another book that Brene Brown has written on shame and shame resilence.   The more I read Brene's work the more I see how insidious and prevalent this is in our society.  One very important way that we can become kind, compassionate and true to ourselves,  is by becoming "shame resilient".   The thing about shame is that everyone has it.   We cannot get rid of it but we can learn to identify it and move through it.  All of us want to be perceived in a certain way. We have an ideal of how we want to be seen.  We also have "unwanted identities" of how we don't want to be perceived.   Many of these unwanted identities come from our family of origin.   Of course, often society and culture contribute to these identities.
There are certain things that trigger our shame.   Brene calls them "shame triggers". 
However if we view vulnerability and shame as "weakness", we are less likely to investigate our own shame triggers.  Understanding our vulnerability and shame is a source of strength and this will lead us to finding the support we need to see the big picture (context) aswell as "normalizing" and "demystifying" it.