Atlas of the Heart

How many emotions can you recognize and name? In a survey of over 700 participants conducted by the author, the average was three: joy, sadness, anger. The fact is that we rarely know how to finely define the richness of emotions that run through us. Modern culture teaches us to keep them quiet more than to fully listen to them. And yet, they have much to tell us.

Brené Brown invites us to rediscover the teeming world of our emotions. The examples given as hooks sometimes seem anecdotal but illustrate situations that make up our daily existence. Their banality does not make them innocuous, quite the contrary. These small, accumulated emotions leave very real traces on our behavior, our well-being and our health. The key is to make our way out of this generalizing banalization: identifying and naming each of these emotions; understanding what they tell us about the ways in which we perceive things; anticipating the behaviors they predispose us to; decoding what they teach us about our values and our unmet needs; learning to handle their intensity.

Drawing on a large body of research in medicine, psychology and sociology, this book explores 87 emotions. Being worried is not the same thing as feeling stressed, overwhelmed or vulnerable—just as it is not always easy to distinguish between surprise, interest, confusion, astonishment, admiration, amazement, wonder… Knowing how to name what we are feeling allows us to better manage it.

A precious book to refine our emotional intelligence.