Vulnerability is strength
Brene Brown, Brad Stulberg, Joe Dispenza and more talk about vulnerability, and the growth that comes from it, in their writings. Are you vulnerable, or do you pretend to be vulnerable? I think it’s important to recognize the difference. I think a lot of people pretend to be vulnerable in today’s world. How can you spot the difference?
This is just my perspective on the topic.
Faking Vulnerability: When people get online and complain about things going on in their life, they think that’s being vulnerable. They may make jokes about their own body when someone in their life starts making healthier decisions. They recognize they’re not happy with how they look and joke about it, showing they are aware, but not truly being vulnerable. They are just putting it out there so other people know they know. It’s deflective. They refer to life being hard and the circumstances that they experience (that’s not vulnerable… everybody deals with that). They are honest about how relationships take work, but they push through anyway. Again, this is something everybody deals with. They don’t discuss the internal battle they may be having participating in this external relationship.
There is a common theme with all these things: it is about everything outside of them… life, body, relationships.
True Vulnerability: When people are talking about the issues deep within surrounding those topics, that is vulnerable. There’s a big difference between complaining about your kid not making the team, your body image, a hard life, relationships, etc. and talking about how you actually struggle internally. True vulnerability would be to discuss how your kid not making the team affects you internally. True vulnerability would be saying how you are being brought back to pain in your childhood with similar experiences, and you want to protect your kid from any discomfort, but you know you can’t, and you also know it’s good for their growth, but still trying to control the situation, and the only way you know to express this is through complaining.
True vulnerability about your body would be sharing how you are battling with coping with your emotions and resorting to food to escape those thoughts. You know you want to exercise, but just can’t seem to get past needing to see quick drops on the scale for you to continue doing it. You fear starting again, because you have quit doing it so many times in the past. Vulnerability is sharing how your insecurities with your body, and the weight you have gained, is stemming from some form of depression through living a life focused on presenting a certain image, while simultaneously losing the image you’ve wanted to maintain. Your need to keep up with the Jones’ has kept you from truly being happy. Joy is an emotion you present to the public, but haven’t felt in awhile. That is true vulnerability.
True vulnerability is sharing why your relationship is hard. It’s sharing how you love your partner, but you’ve just grown apart and become two different people. It’s sharing how you want the ease of staying together: the financial ease, the public image ease, the ease for the child, etc. You battle with the fear of discomfort of all that change, and the discomfort of staying and feeling like it’s not the true path for either of you.
As you become more vulnerable, you discover your true self. As you discover your true self, you are able to find true joy. The path to getting there is painful. It’s uncomfortable. You will not like what you discover. You will resist it. I encourage you to stay curious. What the hell else do you have to do? You’d rather pretend it doesn’t exist and “power through”? You’d rather pretend that all this is BS, and it’s just part of life, and you just have to toughen up? There are resources out there. Maybe this summer, you put down the popular romantic novel all your friends are reading, get less caught up in news and sports, and pick up something by one of the authors mentioned above.
