Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience

“The only thing certain in the emotion field is that no one agrees on how to define emotion.”

Even if we do not choose whether or not to make a comparison, we can choose whether or not to let that comparison affect our mood or self-perceptions.”

Calm is an intention. Do we want to infect people with more anxiety, or heal ourselves and the people around us with calm? As the psychologist and writer Harriet Lerner says, “Anxiety is contagious. Intensity and reactivity only breed more of the same. Calm is also contagious. Nothing is more important than getting a grip on your own reactivity.”

Very few people can handle being held accountable without rationalizing, blaming, or shutting down; and

Vulnerability is not weakness; it’s our greatest measure of courage.

Empathy is not relating to an experience, it’s connecting to what someone is feeling about an experience.

Prentis defines embodiment as “the awareness of our body’s sensations, habits, and the beliefs that inform them. Embodiment requires the ability to feel and allow the body’s emotions. This embodied awareness is necessary to realign what we do with what we believe.”

When we lose our tolerance for vulnerability, joy becomes foreboding. No emotion is more frightening than joy, because we believe if we allow ourselves to feel joy, we are inviting disaster. We start dress-rehearsing tragedy in the best moments of our lives in order to stop vulnerability from beating us to the punch.

So how do we know what other people are feeling? We ask them. It’s only then that we are able to connect with the grounded confidence to engage and the courage to walk alongside. When they tell us what they’re feeling, what happened, what they fear or desire, we listen and we become trusted stewards of their stories.