Vulnerability

[Survivor2Thriver]

Even with my PTSD, I still believe that the most beautiful, fulfilling experiences in life happen when we allow ourselves to be vulnerable. I think its only through those relationships (friendships and romances) that we can truly be ourselves and claim back life trauma threatens to steal away from us.

Beautiful!

To give Brene Brown credit, she is trying to explain these things to the general population-- not to trauma victims.

I understand what you are saying. As a rule generalizing usually is a problem. I am not completely dismissing her work. The problem with clichés is in the unfortunate fact the general public believes them. Ms.Brown has an opportunity to share greater mental health awareness and settles on clichés. It is with great hope the self help communities new "norm" will include deeper issues for greater awareness for all.

 

[Survivor2Thriver]

I'm not saying she is wrong - I ask myself what the hell she actually means. How does one go about it? Okay, Brene, what is the next step? What do I actually DO? And what is 'vulnerability'?

Apparently she believes our self worth determines how other people treat us. Um..hello..where do I buy that pixie dust? LOL

To be vulnerable requires trust. I trust myself completely. Self esteem? Got it! I endured a lot of abuse to keep it!

Hopefully her website has a comment section and I'll go ask her... :D

 

[Pencil]

Here's how I see it: Yes, she is absolutely correct - life only makes sense in inversion, in a way. Strength and vulnerability go together, it is a package deal. The irony is that people who have the ability to be vulnerable, and to reveal that vulnerability are strong, secure, evolved, whatever. Vulnerability is not a path to strength. It is not something that one can acquire on its own. In other words, it is the flip side of the 'tough' things, and it happens spontaneously, for want of a better word. She is preaching to the converted, or the saved, or the nurtured, or the 'therapized' - and the rest ... well they have one hell of a long way to get there. So I'm not sure what her point is.

 

[Booknerd]

I don't possess the emotional flexibility to be strong enough to allow myself to be vulnerable. And therein lies the problem. Those of us that have survived horrors are strong. We survived. But to be vulnerable or "open" is not a pit that I am willing to fall into again. I can't even imagine being that type of person. Her idea of a "good human being" is insulting.

 

[Hashi]

The thing is, to a survivor of abuse/assault "vulnerable" has all sorts of meanings it doesn't have to someone else. And risk is a whole different thing.

With reference to what BB is talking about:

Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging and joy

It depends on what you mean by vulnerabilities, and vulnerabilities to what? Bearing in mind that for many of us our fundamental safety radar is broken. And for some of us, the idea of love and belonging can keep us in truly terrible situations.

I don't have a problem with Brene Brown's context being non-trauma/non-PTSD. I do have issues with it being spirited over to a trauma/PTSD context, as if it's a universal wisdom regardless of personal history, as if there's no difference.

 

[Rumors]

@Pencil
I think you just have to "do" life and not continuously question it or second guess it. That is how you move forward and exhibit light. If you continuously "what if" everything, you don't ever leave the starting gate. So you have a relationship that doesn't work out, you have undoubtably lived through that before and you most certainly will again. I am not trying to minimize your attachment questions, but if you always question, sweetheart, you will never actually go and do. You are brilliant beyond belief, yet you question the unanswerable things in life. No one has any real answers, not Brene Brown or even the Dahli, but inside each of us is the power to go find what makes us happy if we will just take a step, or a leap. It may be the wrong step on occasion, but I believe that those bad steps can guide us to even stronger ones.

I am afraid you are going to ask the infinite questions of the universe and never receive the answers that you are looking for. One day, you will wake up and be too old to find out for yourself and have a pile full of regret. So, if your question is "what's next" I would say stop questioning and start doing. You are funny, smart as hell, and a great mom...the real deal!!! Go make some more mistakes and have some great experiences and live life without regret. Please know that I say this from my heart because I think you are quite unique and you and I have been able to chat on this forum for a long time. I know your fear, I feel your fear, I have your same fears. I just don't want to wake up age 90 and realize that I questioned my life away and never did.

I have had great pain in my life and I have had great happiness. I will suffer the likes of great pain again and I will bask in happiness as if it were sunshine pouring over my soul. I will not, however, come to the end of my life and realize I let it slip away... (())

 

[Pencil]

Rumors, I'm really bowled over and really touched by your post. Let me read and let it sink in before I respond. I'm a little emotional right now. Thank you.

 

[Rumors]

Just know that it really comes from my heart and is in NO way a means to minimize your pain. I know life hurts, I really do. It sucks on occasion and can feel enormously heavy, but the options are to keep moving forward or get to the end and realize that you have loads of regret for at least not finding out. I am sorry that you have ever had anyone hurt you in such a way that you find yourself in a scenario that makes you not be able to trust people. That completely sucks! I certainly haven't walked your path or made your journey, but I can associate with being hurt and feeling vulnerable. I don't like either one, but I don't like the thought of not ever finding out if I could have had a better and happier life. That, in itself is the light of vulnerability, finding out and exploring for ones self if there is something more out there. Find out for yourself, Pencil. Don't rely on Brene Brown, or anyone to answer that for you. At the end of your journey, you will still feel great pain from loss and hurt, that is inevitable for all of us, but will you feel happiness and peace from a life spent seeking the answers through your experience and not through others???? (())

 

[Survivor2Thriver]

Bearing in mind that for many of us our fundamental safety radar is broken.

Is it broken? Or still protecting us?

The thing is, to a survivor of abuse/assault "vulnerable" has all sorts of meanings it doesn't have to someone else. And risk is a whole different thing.

I agree. Vulnerable child = wise adult. :)

 

[Meadowsweet]

Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging and joy. ~The experiences that make us most vulnerable.

This part is arguably invalid by PTSD as well as dissociation. In order to 'embrace our vulnerabilities' sometimes it is necessary to give up on 'love and belonging and joy', for a while at least, because our minds are just messed up enough that looking for love and belonging and joy takes us into genuinely dangerous situations and we might end up dead.

Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.

In light of a messed up mind, braveness can be easily mistaken for numbness, suicidal couldn't care-lessness, guilt, shame, self-loathing, denial or dissociation. Although maybe I'm taking it too literally. Perhaps she means explore imagined fears, rather than real ones.

Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it.

This bit I can agree with, lol, but 'can be hard' is the understatement of the century.

This kind of clap-trap is easily marketed to people because it has the shallow feel good factor. But it has little relevance to mental disorders. If my therapist was using cliches like this, I would have to ask her to stop.

 

[Valentino]

I think it's worth noting that Brene herself was extremely resistant to vulnerability, and fought it tooth and nail until her research proved otherwise.

And you know how I feel about vulnerability. I hate vulnerability. And so I thought, this is my chance to beat it back with my measuring stick. I'm going in, I'm going to figure this stuff out, I'm going to spend a year, I'm going to totally deconstruct shame, I'm going to understand how vulnerability works, and I'm going to outsmart it. So I was ready, and I was really excited. As you know, it's not going to turn out well.
...
I personally thought it was betrayal. I could not believe I had pledged allegiance to research, where our job -- you know, the definition of research is to control and predict, to study phenomena, for the explicit reason to control and predict. And now my mission to control and predict had turned up the answer that the way to live is with vulnerability and to stop controlling and predicting. This led to a little breakdown -- I call it a breakdown; my therapist calls it a spiritual awakening. A spiritual awakening sounds better than breakdown, but I assure you it was a breakdown. And I had to put my data away and go find a therapist.
...
So I found a therapist. My first meeting with her, Diana -- I brought in my list of the way the whole-hearted live, and I sat down. And she said, "How are you?" And I said, "I'm great. I'm okay." She said, "What's going on?" And this is a therapist who sees therapists, because we have to go to those, because their B.S. meters are good. (Laughter) And so I said, "Here's the thing, I'm struggling." And she said, "What's the struggle?" And I said, "Well, I have a vulnerability issue. And I know that vulnerability is the core of shame and fear and our struggle for worthiness, but it appears that it's also the birthplace of joy, of creativity, of belonging, of love. And I think I have a problem, and I need some help." And I said, "But here's the thing: no family stuff, no childhood shit." (Laughter) "I just need some strategies." ...

And it did, and it didn't. And it took about a year. And you know how there are people that, when they realize that vulnerability and tenderness are important, that they surrender and walk into it. A: that's not me, and B: I don't even hang out with people like that. (Laughter) For me, it was a yearlong street fight. It was a slugfest. Vulnerability pushed, I pushed back. I lost the fight, but probably won my life back.

And so then I went back into the research and spent the next couple of years really trying to understand what they, the whole-hearted, what choices they were making, and what are we doing with vulnerability. Why do we struggle with it so much? Am I alone in struggling with vulnerability? No. So this is what I learned. We numb vulnerability -- when we're waiting for the call. It was funny, I sent something out on Twitter and on Facebook that says, "How would you define vulnerability? What makes you feel vulnerable?" And within an hour and a half, I had 150 responses. Because I wanted to know what's out there. Having to ask my husband for help because I'm sick, and we're newly married; initiating sex with my husband; initiating sex with my wife; being turned down; asking someone out; waiting for the doctor to call back; getting laid off; laying off people -- this is the world we live in. We live in a vulnerable world. And one of the ways we deal with it is we numb vulnerability.

-- excerpt from her famous TED talk http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability

And she also can get specific with suggestions, here's some tips for shame resilience:

The heart of my shame research is really about resilience. Across all of my interviews, women and men with high levels of shame resilience share four things in common – they:

1. Recognize shame and their triggers
2. Practice critical awareness
3. Reach out and share their stories
4. Speak shame

Unfortunately, no matter how much you know about shame, it can sneak up on you (trust me, I know). You can be in the middle of it without even knowing what’s happening and why. The good news is that, with enough practice, shame resilience can also sneak up on you!
...
Most of us rely on one or more of these strategies to deal with shame:

1. We move away by withdrawing, hiding, silencing ourselves and secret-keeping.
2. We move toward by appeasing and pleasing.
3. We move against by using shame and aggression to fight shame and aggression.

Most of us use all of these – at different times with different folks for different reasons. I just know that becoming resilient requires us to understand how we protect ourselves and why. All of these strategies move us away from our authenticity.

Using shame to fight shame is how I armor up – it’s not me at my authentic best. Luckily, I have great friends and brave, insightful students to keep me true.

-- from blog entry titled "shame researcher heal thyself" [DLMURL]http://brenebrown.com/2008/08/08/200888shame-researcher-heal-thyself-html[/DLMURL]

If you find Brene's teachings too simple or shallow, I suggest John Bradshaw's work, it's been around for decades, and he speaks from personal experience of alcoholism, child abuse/incest, and having been abandoned by an alcoholic father. Bradshaw also makes a distinction between healthy shame and 'toxic shame' which I think is important and often overlooked.

 

[Philippa]

Brene Brown is not saying this in relation to trauma victims or ptsd, so why is everyone speaking as though she is?

She says nothing specifically about it relating to ptsd, or bi polar, or BPD or schizophrenia...she is speaking about regular people who have trouble being vulnerable in relationships, and regular people relate to what she is saying.

Obviously things are not that simple with a disorder...which is why it sounds shallow to you all. It may be excluding of her, but she isn't a mental health advocate, she's a public speaker and an author who talks specifically about shame, empathy and human connection.