I hate vulnerability

[Justmehere]

My therapist gently confronted me on how much I resist vulnerability in therapy, and in life, and she’s right.

She wants to work on leaning more into vulnerability more.

Cue panic.

I want to go there with her more... but when my heart starts to race and the fear hits, and sometimes, so does anger.

I feel stuck. She knows I feel stuck. My homework this week is to push into vulnerability where it doesn’t matter so much. Oh ok. Nice easy homework.

But seriously, how do I even do that?

 

[Friday]

She wants to work on leaning more into vulnerability more

I don’t understand this, and maybe never will.

Why work on being deliberately helpless? Why not, instead, work on trusting yourself more so that you’re not helpless.

To me, it’s a risk assessment.

What’re the risks for ABC? XYZ. Can I handle (trust myself with) XYZ? Yes.
Voila!

No? Or Yes to XY No to Z? Then I’m vulnerable. I am susceptible to harm / attack beyond my ability to deal with it. Sooooooo how about f*cking work on my ability to deal with it??? :O_o:

 

[Freida]

Oh I so get this. It's like how wigged out I was that there were volunteers for the horse therapy. For me to be there and them to be there one of us had to admit we were vulnerable. And it was supposed to be me. The farthest I could go was just showing up.

My t tells me I keep people at too much of a distance also, and I need to understand it's ok to be vulnerable. And yep - panic attack.
But - then I told her about coming here! We all show vulnerability on this site - probably because its anonymous. But it is still showing vulnerability. So we decided that if I wasn't ready for doing the real world stuff, I could practice here. So I do, and report back on how it feels when people support me.

I know a ton of people love this gal too.... (personally she drives me nuts but - hey - I'm an oddball)
Link Removed

Might be worth a look?

 

[ILoveLife]

I learned that there's a difference between trusting and being vulnerable. The former being able to open up, be emotionally present, open to new experiences outside of our control, accept the good in the bad, etc; the latter being opening up about out emotions, in and out of emotionally charged states, even if people do hurt us, in times of stress.. The two are not mutually exclusive, you need one for the other and vice versa, but there's a difference in what they mean for us.

I don't like vulnerability, but I'm willing to learn how to trust myself more.

Maybe she thinks your able to handle if people hurt you when you have your weapons down, or maybe she means you need to trust the natural hurt of life. Either way, it's a choice you make when you're ready for it, and it often comes naturally.

 

[Suzetig]

This is something I’ve massively struggled with, and still do. I guess I don’t think of vulnerability in the sense of being helpless in the way @Friday fesribed it, vulnerability for me means letting me and my needs, feelings and thought be known to someone else who I fear might judge me or think less of me. In that sense therapy has been a very hard ride in that I didn’t even know how to let my guard down even if I wanted to.

I wish I had a magic answer for you but in my case it’s been slowly slowly chipping away at it. I’ve really tested my T in terms of her response to me when I’ve shared something that’s felt quite vulnerable and I can honestly say there are fewer guards in place. I also have some very close friendships where I let myself be vulnerable but the groundwork for vulnerability in my daily life was laid in therapy, not the other way round.

 

[Rumors]

I often think it is so that we can model what a real and healthy relationship looks and feels like. I hate the word vulnerable so I like to think of it as being, "all in" which I have never really been for most of my life. I think the value of seeing, feeling, touching vulnerability gets you in touch with your authentic self. If you are ALWAYS holding back, then who are you really?
I have lots of faces as it pertains to friendships. Mostly, I am the dependable strong friend that helps you bury the body..lol...inside though, I am really the scared and unsure friend that would really like for someone else to drive the bus for a while. If I ever told my friends that, they would absolutely think I was off my rocker bc I never portray that. However, in therapy...ugh... sometimes I just let it spill out and trust the relationship and the process. FIRST. TIME. EVER. and it has been scary as hell and sometimes I get an "oversharing" hangover. My therapist has done a great job of sharing stories of her family, not oversharing but enough that it is a reciprocal relationship knowing that I am NOT going to sit there for an hour talking about how shitty my week went. It has actually made trusting that process and being "all in" possible.
I don't know if anything I just said is helpful. I can only tell you that in time it begins to make more sense. Sometimes just talking about vulnerability and what it looks like and define it more clearly can make it easier to dip your toe in the water. I suck at it and I likely will never be awesome but I have a small group of friends that I am "mostly in" with and that is better than where I was 2 years ago. The rest of the world *thinks* we are tight, but really they are at arms length. Anyway, good luck. Hoping you can make room for giving it a try!!

 

[Suzetig]

I couldn’t agree more with @Rumors - there’s something about not always hiding everywhere that feels very important. Trying to be authentic.

I’m seeing my at this morning and am about as “all in” with her as is possible but it wasn’t like that to begin with. In terms of therapy it meant me testing things out, trying to be more myself - in whatever state that was.

Outside of therapy, it might help you to think of the times you don’t say the thing you really were thinking, don’t have the cake you wanted because you were scared someone would think you’re greedy, that you leave a tip instead of complaining about shit service because you don’t want to rock the boat, the time you tell someone their bum doesn’t look big in that (when it makes their arse look the size of a small country) because you don’t want to hurt their feelings. Basically try to identify the times when you bite your tongue, hold yourself back or pretend - I’m not saying let it all go, but give yourself some wiggle room to let your “real” self show.

It’s scary but does make for more solid relationships.

 

[blackemerald1]

Yeah it's a great idea and I wish you well with it @Justmehere.

I wish I could face up and let myself be even a little more vulnerable.

I'm okay with my T but that is a long established relationship where I was very vulnerable when I met him and he didn't exploit me or harm me.

The rest of the world no... It's too much.

I suppose so much depends on whom and where you allow your vulnerabilities to be seen too.

How are you going to allow yourself to lean into this?

 

[Mach123]

I want to be vulnerable but don't you mention it. I hate it and love it.

 

[scout86]

Be sure to let us know where this goes, ok?

My T recently asked me to listen to a set of Bene Brown CD's on vulnerability. I listened to the first one, emailed him & said "this woman is clearly nuts!" I listened to the whole set, twice. I guess I'm missing something. (T agrees with that LOL), because I still think she's nuts. In my brain "vulnerable=probably dead".

I'm trying to be open to different views, but I really don't get it.

 

[Justmehere]

My therapist is trying to help me learn and experience that vulnerability doesn’t mean helpless. Or death.

(But my brain screams at me that it is both!)

I am working through some hard stuff with her, and relapsing with a mal adaptive coping mechanism. We are working with anger, and shame, and I keep holding some strong walls and boundaries with her about what I won’t tak about. She is asking why, and I have been able to explain that I’m keeping myself from waking out so I don’t yell at her. So we have been sitting on the edge of me feeling so angry it takes all I have to sit with it IN THE ROOM and not leave... and not dive into that anger or bad ways of coping.

It has come up that if I can slightly push into vulnerable, and sit with that, I can go there with her on those topics and not flip out.

It physically hurts. Right now, we are just talking about trying to go there with vulnerability and I feel so bad it physically hurts.

If it can help me connect with people more to be able to tolerate being vulnerable better, and if it will keep me out of the unhealthy ways of coping, or from walking out on my therapist... ok... let’s try...

But it’s so hard to discover that my default when I feel vulnerable, is to feel shame and anger.

Argh.

 

[Tinyflame]

I don't think Brene Brown is nuts, she just doesn't impress me as being vulnerable, herself. Selling it but not entirely subscribing?

I think it matters how it is defined. I think being vulnerable is being in a position where you know things could be used against you, in any form, but willfully or unable to protect yourself, in that position. So it's important, if possible, to be selective. 'In someone else's hands', really, whether that's physical or emotional or financial- whatever.

Because I could be entirely honest, truthful, disclose- and still not be vulnerable. Vulnerable would depend on what I disclose or what physical position I'm in, and trusting someone else with that. Saying the 'real' truth in the moment. Like, if BB said, ~'at this moment I'm hoping people believe what I'm saying, because this is my career and I'm also nervous how it will be received', or whatever she hoped for. The real feelings and thoughts about something. But JMHO.

So I guess being vulnerable to me is also speaking the truth about thoughts and feelings in the moment, the internal ones, especially as regards our own fears, worries, etc.

I think vulnerability is freeing in very select, safe company and potentially deadly in unsafe company.