Summary

Chapter 1: Places We Go When Things Are Uncertain or Too Much:

Stressed and Overwhelmed - Brene Brown opens Atlas of the Heart with an anecdote of a recurring dream she has, that of being the only server in a packed restaurant. Brown explains how the reason she has this dream is because she waited tables for years for a “high-pressure, high-expectation restaurant group” (4) and never quite forgot the feelings she had on the job. She describes how, when the restaurant was stressful and busy, the servers used the terms “in the weeds” and “blown” (4) to convey that they had too many tables and needed to get more help from the rest of the wait staff. Brown describes how each of these terms would result in a different outcome, with an exclamation of “in the weeds” resulting in the other servers asking how they...