The Courage To Be Vulnerable

The attempt to be strong, omniscient and invincible makes us much weaker.
How can we learn to live in peace with the fact that we are not perfect?

The bravest thing is to admit that you are actually afraid - Image Credit

I heard a sweet, sarcastic song together. The singer-songwriter, Gabrielle Aplin, called him "Please Don't Say You Love Me." Her boulevard is quaint and courteous. The relationship with him makes her calm, and like in movies, she misses a beat as he looks at her. Still, she asks, "Do not say you love me because maybe I will not tell you this back." Many times we already feel the need for change, the fire to fulfill the dream, or the explosive desire to turn to the good friend and offer him to be a little more than good friends. Other times we want to try something new, we want to share some great insight, or we just love, but like Applin, we have a voice that calls 'danger' and we can not pronounce the words out loud.

There are a million and one reasons for the fixation we feel when we want to do something that frightens us but stays where we are. We fear the reaction of those around us - they may cluck their tongues, criticize, or ignore. We fear failure and are afraid to be humiliated. All these fears together create one of our greatest fears - the fear of being vulnerable. The fear of admitting that we do not have all the answers, to be imperfect, to reveal hidden feelings, and to be a little sloppy and different. Paradoxically, the attempt to be strong, omniscient, and invincible makes us much weaker.

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There is nothing more whole than a broken heart

Vulnerability is what we feel when we are in a state of uncertainty, risk, or emotional exposure. In such situations, we are exposed to the criticism of the environment, but also to the voices of the internal critic who together call "danger!" "You're not good enough." A sense of vulnerability has two sides: it can give rise to shame, disappointment, anxiety, and deterioration of our self-worth, but it can also bring joy, creativity, feelings of belonging, acceptance, and love into our lives.

Sociologist Dr. Brené Brown of the University of Houston was interested in the connection between shame and vulnerability. Brown hated to feel vulnerable and believed that with the aid of science and statistics, she could break the concept of shame and make herself vulnerable. She gave her experiment an entire year, which lasted six years of long qualitative research and gave rise to a successful theory and book. During the study, Dr. Brown collected interviews and diary entries from people describing their lives, their relationships, their struggles and successes, and Dr. Brown quickly divided the people into two groups: a group of high self-esteem and low self-esteem.

The inquisitive Brown decided to focus on the group of happy people who managed to establish such self-worth. For four consecutive days, the researcher sat in the light of her desk lamp reading the interviews over and over again. She tried to find a pattern that gave the lucky ones, whom she called "wholehearted" people, their power. She found three repetitive elements: courage, compassion, authentic relationships, and vulnerability.

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Bravery, according to Braun, is the ability to tell your personal story with all your heart, in a complete way, without turning corners and hiding the flaws. It is no wonder that the definition of courage in English comes from the Latin word cor, meaning "heart". The people of the whole heart had the courage to be imperfect. They showed compassion for themselves and for their mistakes and challenges. Out of compassion for themselves, they were able to show compassion for their spouses, children, and friends. Finally, the people of complete hearts also had more authentic ties. They allowed themselves to set aside what they "should" be in favor of who they really are. Above all, they truly believed that they deserved to be loved.

The last element shared by all the owners of complete hearts, and the one that surprised our researcher, was the vulnerability. All the brave, compassionate, and deep-bonded people were those who embraced their personal vulnerability. They were the ones who were willing to say "I love you" even before they heard this trio of words being said. They invested time and effort even if the result was not known, showed understanding for complexity, doubts, and uncertainty. They put their dignity in their hands and dared to ask for help from their partner, initiated sex, were able to refuse, invited potential partners to a date, were rejected and rejected. The people of the whole heart believed that their special beauty was given to them by the things they felt vulnerable to. They did not show shame towards the object of their vulnerability but accepted it as they received their good qualities and skills. They nurtured traits such as laughter, play, joy, and authenticity, minimizing the influence of perfectionism, judgmental, comparison to others, and dichotomous vision in their lives.

To have a complete heart, you should be ready to be heartbroken - Image Credit

With a sense of insult and embarrassment

If vulnerability causes us to belong to the group of those who pay attention, the one who drives us away from them is the shame. Our shame makes us believe that there is some great and shameful secret that if someone finds out, he will look at us differently, and maybe he will not want to be with us at all. "Three things are important to an understanding about shame," says Brown, "we all feel it, we all do not like to talk about it, and it takes over all of us as much as we talk about it less and less." Shame appears to be different in men and women. : A superwoman should tap the house, the children, and the career, but show that it is not really a story, she will be beautiful, thin, young and vital. In the new project at work, in bed, in marriage, or on the soccer field with friends S. Malik of Boston College found that women would use all their resources to be kind, lean, modest, and pleasant, while men would do eighths in the air to show emotional control, advance in work, and pursue status.

Perfectionism, drugs, and cancellation of joy

To deal with the terrible fact that we are imperfect, we do one of three things: blur the vulnerability, repress it, present perfect representations, or ignore it and search for certainty. The blurring of vulnerability is done by loading external distractions; Obsessive shopping, substance abuse, or obesity. Our generation, Brown says, is the one with obesity, addiction, and debt, much more than any of the generations that preceded it.

Another mechanism we use to hide our vulnerability is our perfectionist pretense. We spend hours to make every event and every product perfect. Add another filter to the picture, tell everyone who is willing to hear, how perfect that vacation was, and educate our children as the perfectionists and the best gift God has given to this world. "You are hurting your children," says the doctor with a smile, admitting that she also falls into the same kindergarten from time to time. "Our children are not perfect, and they are allowed to be." Is an education that says, "You are not perfect, but you can deal with challenges and succeed in them, you deserve love and success, just as you are."

The last way to paralyze the vulnerability must be seen in social networks. We become very dichotomous. "You are with me or against me," and "black or white." Things that once had a certain degree of uncertainty are now becoming absolutely true. There is one way to understand reality, and those who do not reconcile with our understanding are probably wrong.

When we try to mechanically paralyze our emotions and get rid of fears, disappointments, vulnerability, and shame, we also get rid of our positive emotions and throw love, happiness, and gratitude into the trash. When we paralyze our emotions in such a destructive and totalitarian way, we feel insignificant, become indifferent to the environment, and wallow behind the walls we have built for us, afraid of the vulnerability and the shame even more.

Who looks at me from behind do not know who I am

I suppose you'll read sometime a poignant and touching post, written or written by someone about a personal experience. "What courage?" You must have smiled before you pressed the button. To allow himself to be exposed and vulnerable like that? Requires true daring. To make peace with our vulnerability, Berna Brown proposes to practice a few steps. First, she says, "Let yourself really show." To show with the bags under the eyes sometimes, the lack of knowledge on certain subjects, and the recognition that you are human. Second, she asks, allows yourself to love with all your heart. Really love even when there's no guarantee that the other side feels exactly like you. Practice an optimistic and grateful view, even on the moments in your life that are not glowing. They are part of what makes you who you are and you are lucky to actually feel these feelings. Above all, feel that you, just as you are, are sufficient. This does not mean that from now on you do not need to improve, or that you should abandon your dreams of progress. To be sufficient means to be worthy of love and appreciation, to be 'a whole greater than the sum of its parts', even if some of its parts are broken or pointed. Being "sufficient" means loving the complex character that you are.

Try asking yourself: How do you define success? Do you feel shame in the face of a certain quality in you? If so, how do you deal with shame - trying to repress or deny it, or try to correct it in recognition? Do you define yourself by phrases like "I'm not enough ..."?
What emotions or actions make you feel vulnerable? What do you think will happen if you allow yourself to express your feelings out loud? What behaviors do you use to blur what you feel? When you can make peace with the answers to these questions, you will find that you have made a broader peace in all areas of your life.