Atlas of the Heart Book Review: Why I Recommend It
I put off reading Atlas of the Heart for a long time. So, yes, this Atlas of the Heart book review starts with me admitting I should have read it sooner.
I think everyone knows Brené Brown at this point. The TED Talk. The “shame lady” who then moved into working more closely with organizations and corporations.
When popular writers in this realm get too popular, I normally don’t like their later works. Sometimes it starts to feel like there was a book deal and there simply had to be another book.
So Atlas of the Heart sat on my pile of books to read for a long time. It’s a big pile. It never went with me on an airplane because it’s a hardcover and just too darn heavy to take with me.
One day I finally committed to reading a few pages every morning with my coffee.
And then I got really mad at myself for waiting so long.
Atlas of the Heart Book Review: An Emotion Dictionary
Atlas of the Heart is, literally, an emotion dictionary.
If you are very in touch with your feelings, you may not need this book. But most of my clients—at least early in therapy—have no idea what they are feeling. Feelings charts get passed around during group check-ins, and there is a lot of “I don’t know” going on.
I took pages of notes while I read this book, and I’ve brought those notes into group so we can talk about feelings and what they actually are. It is so helpful.
That is really the value of the book for me. A feelings chart can give someone a list of words, but we still have to talk about what those words actually mean and how one feeling is different from another. Atlas of the Heart gives us more to work with in those conversations.
Do you have trouble identifying or expressing what you feel? The TAS-20 is a validated self-report assessment that measures alexithymia and may help you better understand your emotional awareness.
Why I Recommend Atlas of the Heart
FEELINGS!!!!!
I once had a graduate counseling student ask why we had to talk so much about feelings.
Well, it’s therapy. That’s what it is (mostly) all about!
That is what makes Atlas of the Heart so useful to me. It gives us more language for the part of therapy people so often struggle to name.
Related reading: The Four Agreements: 3 Reasons I Recommend It.
Stock photo by Noha Badawi on Unsplash.
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