I thought about something I taught my kids when they were in elementary school ... I used to ask them to cup their hands and put them in front of me. And I said, 'In your hand is your flame. It's your soul. It's your light. You need to surround yourself with friends who, when your light is shining bright, don't feel the need to blow it out.

Sometimes, this world is tough because we shame and diminish ordinary ... We chase extraordinary moments instead of being grateful for ordinary moments until hard shit happens. Then, in the face of the really hard stuff—illness, death, loss—the only thing we're begging for is a normal moment.

People always ask me what the best parenting advice is that I came across in the 20 years of research, and everyone gets pissed off when I say it. The best parenting advice I can tell you is hard as shit: We need to be the adults we want our children to grow up to be.

Plan on heartbreak ... The only people who don't have heartbreak in their careers are people who have no love or passion for their career. But heartbreak is, while miserable when you're in it, a small price... to pay for doing work that you're profoundly in love with.

If you put shame in a Petri dish, it needs three things to grow into every corner of our lives: secrecy, silence, and judgment. But if you put the same amount of shame in a Petri dish and you douse it with empathy, you've created a hostile environment. The minute you know you're not alone and that your experience is human and you're met with empathy, shame just doesn't survive.

Let's say you decide to make some chocolate chip cookies. You get out a bowl, you add the milk, you add the flour, the brown sugar, the egg. But what if I told you that the cookies changed, the way they tasted, based on the bowl you picked. That's what language is. Language does not just communicate emotion; it shapes what we're feeling.

So, what perfectionism is is actually one of our most dangerous defense mechanisms. Perfectionism says to us, 'Hey, Fern. If you look perfect, work perfect, and do it all perfectly, I can help you avoid ever feeling judgment, blame, criticism, or failure. You just need to do it all perfectly. I'm right here. We can do that.'

I feel like I belong everywhere I go, no matter where it is or who I'm with, as long as I never betray myself. And the minute I become who you want me to be in order to fit in and make sure people like me is the moment I no longer belong anywhere.

I have interviewed people in their 70s and 80s that have such profound regret and sorrow and grief about the things they didn't try, the chances they didn't take... because they had so much fear of what other people would think ... I think it's actually lethal. I think FOPO leads to addiction, depression, lethargy, hopelessness. It's terrible; it's a pandemic.

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.

Now, when I start to feel resentful, the first thing I say is what do I need that I'm not asking for? What do I need: rest, play, sleep, time away? What do I need that I'm not asking for?

Emotional pain is no joke. We know from research that the same centers that light up in my brain when I feel physical pain are the centers that light up when I feel social pain or emotional pain. I mean, there are some studies that show pain from social isolation is improved by Ibuprofen.

What people don't understand is that where perfectionism drives us, shame is there. So, perfectionism is a function of shame.

I call perfectionism the 20-ton shield. We think we carry it around to keep us from being hurt, but what it actually does is it keeps us from being seen, and it is so addictive.

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.

I think our physiological response to excitement & anxiety can be very similar ... What the research shows is that when we're torn between what we're feeling but we label it [excitement], the outcomes are more positive ... When we label what we're feeling as anxiety, it's more negative.

The times when I was the most resentful is when I'm deep into burnout, I'm exhausted, and I don't think everyone else is working as hard as I am. And it turns out that I'm not mad because people aren't working as hard; I'm envious because they're taking care of themselves.

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

The thing about shame is we all have it, no one wants to talk about it, and the less you talk about it, the more you have it.

Shame is completely self-focused. In fact, of all the kind of personality disorders, shame drives narcissism more than anything else. I define narcissism as the shame-based fear of being ordinary.

Now, when I feel envious, I don't say 'What is this person doing to piss me off?' ... Now, I ask, 'What do you need that you're afraid to ask for?'

I would say the greatest infinite game that we're engaged in... and the one that dictates the quality and the depth of the connections we have is probably self-awareness and self-love.

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

Grit is 'this is about me' ... Grind is 'what will people think?'

It's that saying that I think is true in many ways: Hurting people can hurt people; healed people heal people.

I don't think you can truly change for the better in a lasting, meaningful way unless it's driven by self-acceptance.

Curiosity is the superpower for the second half of our lives—it keeps us learning, it keeps us asking questions, and it increases our self-awareness.

If I had a dollar for every interview I did with someone in their late-20s or early-30s who got on the engineer, lawyer, or doctor path because that was the leading escalator for smart people at the time who's now depressed and hates what they do, never realizing they could be a shoe designer, casting director, or microphone builder... If I had a dollar for every one of those, I'd be set for life.

I think we're so shit at holding people accountable that we turn to canceling and shaming and vitriol and name-calling because we either don't know how or we're not willing to do the really rigorous, vulnerable work of holding people accountable.

As someone who has studied and written about shame for 15 years, I can tell you that no one wants to talk about it ... People will do just about anything to avoid pain, including cause pain.

I do not allow myself to say overwhelmed without stopping what I'm doing and going outside and walking. If you're going to say you're overwhelmed, then you're going to own it, and you're going to address it.

I think most of us in our culture find it much easier to be angry than to be sad.

We are not deeply enough connected with the infinite love and energy that we all are to be able to connect with other people.

The best way to describe shame is the feeling that we experience when we don't feel good enough, when we feel not blank enough—smart enough, pretty enough, strong enough, powerful enough, influential enough, relevant enough.

We are a social species. We know that loneliness is a very strong predictor of early death.

The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.

Emotional granularity is positively correlated with really significant life indicators, like positive well-being, social connection. I mean, it's a big deal.

There are so many people in the world today that will never step foot in the arena. They will never, ever show up and be seen and heard, because they can't control the outcome. Yet, they are so free with their opinion around other people's real arena moments—people really stepping in and stepping up.

There's a real yearning to understand who we are, to understand ourselves, to understand where we belong, to understand our worth, to understand our lovability and our capacity to love.

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

Shame is self-focused. Empathy is other focused.

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

Perfectionism is not only a defense mechanism; it's the worst procrastination tool in the world.