Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
We’ve been talking about vulnerability in the Kintsugi living book club this week in a way that I’ve never though of it before. I’ve always thought of vulnerability as being about how much of my real self I let other people see.
While that is an important form of vulnerability that has a large impact on the health of our relationships and on our own well-being, that’s not the only kind of vulnerability there is. In fact, it may not even be the kind of vulnerability that matters most.
Vulnerability starts with being truly open and present with ourselves about who we really are, what we are really feeling, and our raw experience of life. We must open ourselves to raw, untidy, uncontrollable reality of our experience and our emotions first before we are able to share those truths about who we are with others.
That’s harder than it sounds.
I quickly resort to trying to manage the degree to which I feel my emotions (especially difficult ones). I try to control the amount of risk I expose myself to in order to stay inside my comfort zone. I back away from some of life’s harsh realities when they get to be too much (which they all to often do). I hide behind masks (even from myself sometimes) and easily default to trying distract myself from life’s hard places, numb my more painful emotions, and bury things I’d really rather not face under busyness and work when life gets hard.
Here’s the things, though: I put a lot of effort at controlling my vulnerability to life and to the emotions it can trigger in attempt to protect myself only to discover time after time that it only creates more problems. I’m no more “safe” from life’s broken times for all that work; I just diminish my ability to hand those hard times by cutting myself off from life as it truly is.
In the meantime, I’m also cutting myself from some of the best parts of being alive as I try to hide and control my experience.
As Miriam Greenspan says in Healing through the Dark Emotions:
“Vulnerability is not just about hurting. It is about openness. Not only to pain, adversity, loss, and death, but also to the things we most desire and cherish: to love, intimacy, creativity, sex, birth, wonder; to being truly touched by another human being; being truly seen for who we are; to the sheer adventure of being alive; to the sacred spirit that imbues the world.”
While life’s broken places tend to push us into greater vulnerability as they strip away our ability to hide from our difficult emotions due their intensity, I don’t want to wait until the next time life cracks open around me to work on this.
I want to be more open and vulnerable with myself, my emotions, and my actual experience of life here and now to develop the skills I need to be ready for future challenges and so that I can be more open to all of the wonder of life in the meantime.
What is your experience with this kind of vulnerability? How many masks do you wear to hide even from yourself? What helps you stay open to all of life as it comes?
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