320. Brené Brown’s Shame Question That Changed My Divorce Healing Forever

One line from Brené Brown’s Atlas of the Heart hit me like lightning during my own post-divorce unraveling—exposing the exact shame trigger I’d carried for years, the hidden identity fueling quiet resentment, self-criticism, and that exhausting push-pull of “too much” versus “not enough.”

In this powerful episode, I take you straight into the moment it landed (page 30, in the section on resentment), share the raw, tender answers that flooded in when I texted the question to my inner circle (“weak,” “bitch,” “lazy,” “fake,” “unmotivated”…), and walk through my own vulnerable evolution—from “too much or not enough” to fully owning “too much” as the big, intense, storm-cloud-and-sunshine truth of who I am.

Through a trauma-informed, spiritually grounded lens, we explore:

• How this single sentence stem reveals our deepest unwanted identity—the shame elicitor Brené says is the most powerful trigger.
• Why resentment after divorce often stems from failing to claim what we need, and how naming the fear (“It’s really important for me not to be perceived as…”) cracks open the door to radical self-acceptance.
• Somatic practices to locate the trigger in your body (that chest tightness, belly clench, or heat rising) and meet it with fierce compassion instead of more judgment.
• The spiritual invitation: transmuting the exiled parts (your intensity, your darkness, your bigness) into medicine—because divorce isn’t just loss; it’s the sacred threshold to reclaiming your full aliveness.

This isn’t passive listening—it’s an embodied exercise we do together. I guide you to answer the question in real time, feel what surfaces, and begin pouring love exactly where you’ve withheld it. The more we love the vulnerability we’ve feared, the clearer we become about who belongs in our next chapter… and who we lovingly release.

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A podcast exploring the journey of life after divorce, delving into topics like divorce grief, loneliness, anxiety, manifesting, the impact of different attachment styles and codependency, setting healthy boundaries, energy healing with homeopathy, managing the nervous system during divorce depression, understanding the stages of divorce grief, and using the Law of Attraction and EMDR therapy in the process of building your confidence, forgiveness and letting go.

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Transcript

The Line That Hit Like Lightning

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I was deep in Brene Brown's book, Atlas of the Heart, when one line slammed into me like a truth bolt. It lit up the exact shame trigger that I dragged straight out of my divorce. It was a hidden piece that kept my resentment simmering and my real self on mute. So I quickly texted it to my inner circle in like a text frenzy. And the answers that they sent back to this question that I read in her book were raw. Tender as I'll get out. And my answer to the question ripped me wide open in the best way. Today we're gonna dive into this exercise together. I'm guiding you right into the question, sharing what poured out for me and my people, and holding space for you while you name your own and send it back to us. No shrinking, no fixing. I want you to feel it. I want you to pour compassion on it, and I want you to send it to us. Hi, love. Welcome to Dear Divorce Diary, the podcast helping divorcees go beyond talk therapy to process your grief, find the healing you crave, and build back your confidence. I'm your host, Don Wiggins, a therapist, coach, integrative healer, and divorcee. Join me for a fresh approach to healing grief and building your confidence after divorce. Hi, love. Today we are going to talk about something I stumbled across in my reading this week. And it is, I currently feel that it is the most amazing question I have read in a very long time. When I stumbled across this question, I was like, oh my word, how have I not ever asked this question? I'm going to officially put this question on my intake paperwork for all of my new clients. Like, this question is a game changer. I immediately started texting it to the people who are like in my circle. And some of them started texting it to the people in their circle. So I can't wait to unpack this question with you and tell you what many of the responses were. And then let's talk about what's the point of answering this question and what do we do with it once we've answered it. Okay, I feel like I have built this up to be a major cliffhanger. So I am reading Brene Brown's new book, Atlas of the Heart. And early on in the book, let's see, on page 20, nope, on page 30, she is unpacking her experience with resentment. And I'm going to read to you a little excerpt from this section of Atlas of the Heart on Resentment. And in it will be the question. Brene Brown says, We know from research that unwanted identity is the most powerful elicitor of shame. If you want to know what's likely to trigger shame for you, just fill in this sentence stem. Here it comes, you ready? It's really important for me not to be perceived as fill in the blank. I'm gonna read it again. It's really important for me not to be perceived as whoa. So as I'm reading this question, I'm like, I have the most curious mind, okay? So I'm like, how will the people who are closest to me answer this question? Because I feel like the way we answer this question reveals our most vulnerable places, right? It's the it is the most sensitive shame trigger, which means it is the thing about us that we most need to accept. Okay, so I immediately text my cousin, my best friend, my husband, right? Like the people who are closest to me, and they start their answers start rolling in. And then they ask some of the people in their lives, and then their answers start rolling in. So here's some of the answers that I heard. A bitch, lazy, fake, unmotivated. I am fascinated, right? I am so fascinated by how people are afraid. Oh, there was another one. Weak, weak, right? So these are basically our deepest, darkest vulnerabilities. And P.S. I am super honored that these people in my life who love me so much just started answering my question. And one of my besties, she was like, I need more information. So I called her and we had this whole conversation, right? Where I was like, Okay, I am struggling to answer this question, and I like, you know, I'm gonna give you my answer, right? But I was like sorting through it, and she was like, Yeah, that makes sense, and this, this, and that's that. Okay, so here's my answer. My initial answer when I was on the phone with her was I, it's really important for me to not be perceived as, and it was a two-part response, too much or not enough. Too much or not enough. And as I further was unpacking this with my cousin later in the day, I realized that the actual answer is too much. And I feel like I can forgive myself for being not enough sometimes, because that's just like a thing, right? It's like a widely accepted thing that sometimes we're just not enough, we fall short, da-da-da. Like for me, that I can forgive. But I think too much is kind of my most authentic self. I think I have big feelings, big ideas, big sneezes, big reactions, right? Like it sticks in my mind that my ex-husband's friends used to call me intense. So a lot of that has softened, like it has become refined over the years of therapy. And I can thank my divorce for you know, ushering me to the threshold of having a more refined kind of experience of life and and not being quite as necessarily aggressive in my intensity, but more loving in my intensity, more like exciting in my intensity. But sometimes PS, my intensity is like darkness. It's like storm clouds, and it's like pessimism and like Eeyore-ish. And and that's all like old stuff that still needs to be worked with and transmuted, you know, like transformed into more love, more self-compassion. And so when I read this question, it's really important for me to not be perceived as guess what? One of the ways for me to transmute that storm cloudiness about myself is to more fully accept that sometimes for some people, I'm too much. And and their difficulty accepting those things about me does not have to be my difficulty accepting those things about me. And actually, in the conflict between those two things, right, me prioritizing their acceptance of me over me prioritizing my acceptance over me is where the storm clouds happen. Right? Because if I was cool with me on this next deeper level, I'm just I'm intense, you know? I'm there's a lot about me that's big. And that's just kind of how it is. And you know, take it or leave it, but I'm gonna take it, right? If I could be with that, do you know how much more joy I would feel? So now, love, I want you to ask yourself as you're going through all of this, I'm sure you have more, I don't know, maybe you don't, right? But but what is your answer to it's really important for me to not be perceived as? I think that when we're going through major transformations, major transitions like you are right now, you probably have more than one answer to that question currently. But here's your challenge is can you answer that question honestly, recognize it as your greatest vulnerability, and start to pour some love on it. Because the more you can love it, the easier this transition is gonna be. The more clear you'll be about who to bring with you in this transition and who to let go. So I've got a call to action for you. In the show notes, I have a place for you to follow the link and send me your sentence. I want you to send me your sentence. How do you complete this question? What is your vulnerability? I want you to send it to me so I can pour some love on it, right? Because there's so much opportunity here for us to bust out of the chains of self-criticism and judgment and worrying about what other people think. And there is so much room for us to love ourselves and love one another. And I want to be part of that journey for you. So send me your sentence so I can pour some love on it. And let's let's just be in the conversation. I bet you there's a big disconnect between how we finish the sentence and what we actually need to work on, right? And that's a whole nother conversation for a different podcast. But I think the thing that we judge ourselves most harshly by, or we're afraid we're judged most harshly by, probably isn't even the thing that we need to actually work on. It's the thing we need to work on letting go of. I love you. Thank you for being here. Can't wait to talk to you again. Peace. You can find more at mycoachdawns.com.