DR. BRENÉ BROWN: How to Know Ourselves & Be Known by Our People

Anxiety and excitement present exactly the same neurophysiologically. In studies, people who labeled it excitement had positive experiences; those who labeled it as anxiety had negative experiences.

The hardest thing about raising a middle schooler is the unhealed sweaty seventh-grader inside of us who's got the tray in their hand and doesn't smell quite right and doesn't know where they're going to sit. And we so desperately don't want that for our own children ... We almost can't take it if we have to watch it unfold again.

So, overwhelmed is a very intense amount of stress where actually you can no longer function in it. What's interesting is the only real empirically based solution to overwhelm is nothingness.

When we see someone in struggle, reframe 'I'm here to fix' to 'I'm here to walk with.'

Language doesn't just communicate emotion; it shapes emotion.

I interviewed James Clear, who wrote 'Atomic Habits' ... One of his quotes is literally on a sticky note everywhere I walk that says 'We will never rise to the level of our goals; we will fall to the level of our systems.'

If you can tell people what you need, you're probably not overwhelmed.

There was a definition by Jon Kabat-Zinn that I came across when I was studying overwhelm that, really, I think about every day. He said that overwhelm was the feeling that life is unfolding at a rate that's unmanageable for me and my nervous system.

When we see someone struggling, especially someone we care about, my job is to be in connection with, not to fix.

We are not cognitive thinking beings who, on occasion, feel; we are emotional beings. It defines who we are.