Vulnerability is not weakness; it is our most accurate measure of courage -Brene Brown
I am a person who never thought so much about being ‘vulnerable’ in a relationship. Relationships sailed smoothly in my life in the earlier years of my life.
At the age of 17, I entered into my first relationship. It was all flowers and butterflies until he told me that he had issues being ‘vulnerable’ in a relationship.
I remember googling the term only to struggle with it several years later. I had now become a person who browsed through parts of my personality to decide which ones to present to the person in front of me. I used to hide things from my ‘best friends' and I had no idea when and why I had started doing it.
Upon reflection, I realized that at the core of it all was shame. The more I used to hide my feelings from people around me, the warier I grew about myself. If you were to slice open my layers, you would find not just a lack of worthiness but also the fear of being abandoned. Due to the feeling of shame and unworthiness, I stopped putting out my true self in relationships.
For a long while, staying aloof kept me safe. But it didn’t take me long to realize that I was not putting out my true self in relationships. Since I didn’t share my stories, the other person hesitated to do the same. All that was around me were surface-level relationships until I decided them to be otherwise.
I realized I could stay stuck in this vicious cycle forever and gain nothing. I had to open the lock but I had no keys.
I looked it up online. Among so many resources I found online to fight the fear of vulnerability, I found the research done by Brene Brown to be the most inspiring. Not because she told me what to do, but because I learned how research works, by looking at the stories of people around us.
Just as researchers look at the data of people to identify patterns of behavior in people who practice a certain emotion and those who don’t, I looked at the people around me who had really deep relationships and tried to identify the factors. I realized I had so many people around me who lived their lives wholeheartedly. The hard part that kept me out of connection was the fear that I was not worthy of connection. The shame didn’t allow me to be seen for who I really was and that acted as a hindrance to connection. the connection came automatically as a by-product of authenticity. It is the understanding that we are all imperfect and that is what makes us beautiful which allows people to be vulnerable.
Living with vulnerability is difficult but it is so beautiful. You bare open yourself to the possibility of being hurt but also to the possibility of being understood completely and embraced for who you are. People who live with vulnerability acknowledge not just their imperfectness but also have compassion for other people.
It took me looking at people who lived a vulnerable life and a lot of reflection to finally stop controlling and predicting. I understood that I couldn’t numb selectively. When I numbed the bad feelings and reduced the possibility of being hurt or abandoned, I also reduced the possibility of making deep and meaningful relationships.
For once and for all, here is the thing, we’re all imperfect and wired for struggle, but that doesn’t make our worth any less and we belong, all of us do. I cannot say that I am completely vulnerable in all my relationships. Time and again, I do get tempted to cover myself in a shell, but I am aware of the things I will be missing out on if I do so. I have understood that vulnerability is not a skill that you can master, and definitely not a weakness. Vulnerability is the most daunting, yet the most rewarding experience in life.
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