The Careful Path To Vulnerability

IN A WELL-KNOWN AND POWERFUL TED Talk, Brene Brown talks about the power of vulnerability. She speaks of the courage required to be vulnerable, and that the original meaning of courage is “to tell the story of who you are, with your whole heart.”

Her TED Talk is, in itself, a powerful story told with her “whole heart.” Brene speaks of letting go into her own vulnerability and her journey from a person who was a guarded, scientific researcher to a person who felt the healing that comes from being more open to others.

Below the video, I have also added some comments on my work helping people to un-shield their vulnerability, and how carefully the work around letting go of defences needs to be in a therapeutic context.

Vulnerability is crucial. It does offer us a closer, more intimate life with others, and it is one of the keys to living more fully. That being said, our defenses against vulnerability arose for very good reasons and we need to move carefully back to vulnerability. At a young age, our human personality made brilliant moves during emotional storms to survive intact. And in therapy, it is crucial to enter slowly and safely into these old, dark waters.

There are degrees of guardedness around vulnerability. In some cases, we can reclaim trust and safety relatively quickly after a painful breakup or after a breach of trust, if we have a strong sense of self.  In cases when our emotional or physical safety was threatened for “feeling” or “showing emotions” the move toward openness is often a slow and careful process.

In the latter situation, imagine a parent with serious mental health issues who is keenly able to sense vulnerability in their child. And imagine – for that parent’s own complex set of reasons – that they take advantage of that vulnerability. They smell it in their child like a shark senses blood. Let’s say the child’s name is Darlene. Darlene learns, quickly, in the face of emotional pain or physical abuse, to become stoic, to swallow sadness, frustration, hurt, and often anger. If she doesn’t, she knows she may be hurt even more; hit, screamed at more loudly or – strangely worse – left alone. Over time this repeated swallowing of her emotions – a psychic version of you are what you eat – alters her. Her general interactions with others in the schoolyard may stiffen. Her sense of trust may atrophy. Her depth of connection with other kids may remain more surface, keeping friendships from deepening.  She may keep parts of herself, her most intimate self, hidden from others, and often from herself. Vulnerability is simply not an option for her survival. She must keep herself, to herself. In therapy, helping a client such as Darlene recover a sense of openness and trust in others is careful and slow work.

In my practice, when I work to support a client’s sense of vulnerability I do so with safety as my prime guiding principal. As always, our work is a dialogue, and I check in often about your experiences. Some of the ground rules in my own practice are the following:

1)   at any time, we will step out of this work and come back into the present for safety

2)   at any time, we can put this chapter of work away, and return to it when you are ready

3)   I will always leave fifteen minutes at the end of the session for you to return to the present moment

4)   we work with respect for the shields and defences that have been put up because they needed to be there 

5)   sometimes, we will invite back these defences and even strengthen them, if need be for a particular time or event or upcoming interaction.

6) I encourage experiments around choosing how much to reveal in any given moment.

In my practice, a main task around vulnerability is to be able to develop the ability to be vulnerable when that openness has a fair chance to engender a better relationship, and to remain closed when that is simply what is needed to keep mind and soul and body together.

If you are interested in a more detailed discussion on how I might work with you on this topic, please click on the contact link and we can speak further about particulars.