{"id":6674588,"date":"2026-04-23T23:14:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T04:14:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/?p=6674588"},"modified":"2026-04-23T23:14:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T04:14:08","slug":"rise-above-by-scott-barry-kaufman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/rise-above-by-scott-barry-kaufman\/","title":{"rendered":"Rise Above by Scott Barry Kaufman"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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\"\"When I hit the trigger words \u201cDon’t be a victim\u201d I knew I was not arriving to Rise Above<\/em> in a neutral headspace. Anything that uses this phrase carries a certain weight\u2014it\u2019s one of those ideas that can either feel clarifying or quietly accusatory depending on the day you\u2019re having, and if I\u2019m being honest, part of me went in ready to push back. But Scott Barry Kaufman doesn\u2019t deny suffering or try to flatten trauma into a slogan. Instead, he draws a distinction: the difference between being a victim<\/em> and building an identity around victimhood<\/em>. That distinction echoed as I read, because it invites an uncomfortable self-audit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Part of why that tension works is because of who Kaufman is. As a cognitive psychologist at Columbia University and host of The Psychology Podcast<\/em>, he brings extensive research on intelligence, creativity, and human potential. More importantly, you get the sense that he has lived inside the questions he\u2019s asking. His experiences with being labeled, underestimated, and navigating the space between diagnosis and identity aren\u2019t front-and-center, but they clearly shape the tone. It doesn\u2019t feel like he\u2019s writing from a distance; it feels like he\u2019s worked through these ideas and is now inviting you into the same process. That combination\u2014research-backed but personally wrestled with\u2014gives the book a grounded credibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The argument unfolds less like a bold thesis and more like a slow narrowing of focus. Kaufman moves through the ways we can become \u201cvictims\u201d to parts of our internal world\u2014our past, emotions, thinking patterns, even our need to please\u2014and what struck me is how little of this is about extreme cases. It\u2019s about quieter patterns: the stories we tell ourselves about why things are the way they are, the explanations that start as coping mechanisms and harden into identity. When he reframes the brain not as a reporter of reality but as a prediction machine, it lingers. Because if your past has trained your mind to expect certain outcomes, you don\u2019t just remember them\u2014you start to recreate them. It\u2019s not asking whether you\u2019ve suffered; it\u2019s asking what you\u2019ve concluded because of that suffering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wasn\u2019t always comfortable with his arguments\u2014especially when he leans into personal responsibility as the primary lever for change. There\u2019s a section on a quieter form of entitlement tied to suffering\u2014the idea that because something unfair happened, we are owed something in return, not just externally but psychologically. That\u2019s uncomfortable, and I caught myself pushing back at first. But the longer I sat with it, the more I noticed smaller versions of it\u2014moments where frustration turns into justification, where past difficulty becomes a reason to disengage rather than re-engage. Still, there\u2019s tension the book doesn\u2019t fully resolve. Structural realities and trauma don\u2019t disappear just because we reframe our mindset, and while Kaufman acknowledges this, he moves quickly back to individual agency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What he ultimately builds toward is what he calls an \u201cempowerment mindset,\u201d and I appreciated that it\u2019s not framed as forced optimism. It\u2019s closer to a shift in posture. The idea is less everything is fine and more something happened, and I still have a role in what happens next. He frames this as \u201cYes\/And\u201d thinking\u2014acknowledging reality without closing off possibility. It reminded me of improvisation, where you accept the scene but still shape how it unfolds. That balance\u2014between acceptance and action\u2014is harder than it sounds, and the book doesn\u2019t pretend otherwise. If anything, it keeps circling back to the idea that this is a practice, not a switch you flip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the end, the book doesn\u2019t settle into a neat resolution so much as it sharpens your awareness. It made me notice the moments where explanation quietly becomes limitation\u2014where \u201cthis is why I\u2019m like this\u201d edges into \u201cthis is why I can\u2019t change.\u201d That\u2019s not a comfortable realization, but it\u2019s a useful one. What Rise Above<\/em> adds\u2014especially in a time where identity and lived experience are central\u2014is a counterweight. It asks, without dismissing those realities, when our understanding of ourselves might start narrowing what we believe is possible. There\u2019s no simple answer but sitting with the question feels like part of the work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And maybe that\u2019s ultimately what the book offers\u2014not a set of solutions, but a shift in how you relate to your own story. Not by erasing what\u2019s happened, but by loosening the grip it has on what comes next.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I hit the trigger words \u201cDon’t be a victim\u201d I knew I was not arriving to Rise Above in a neutral headspace. Anything that uses this phrase carries a certain weight\u2014it\u2019s one of those ideas that can either feel clarifying or quietly accusatory depending on the day you\u2019re having, and if I\u2019m being honest, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":6674589,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[198,35,108],"class_list":["post-6674588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews","tag-book-reviews","tag-psychology","tag-trauma"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6674588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6674588"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6674588\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6674590,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6674588\/revisions\/6674590"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6674589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6674588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6674588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6674588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}