I’m going to ask a question. Your answer will place you as one of two kinds of people. So here it is: Do you agree or disagree with the following phrase?
“I hate vulnerability.”
If you said “Agree,” you’re not alone. In fact, you’re in the majority. Vulnerability is letting yourself be left hanging. It’s the willingness to say “I love you” first. It’s the initiative to do something where there are no guarantees.
It’s also the only way to establish real, life-giving connection.
Hopefully, one or both of your parents gave you a solid sense of connection, a feeling that you belonged and were loved. Maybe it was a teacher, whom you’ve never forgotten. Maybe it was given to you by a friend, or a coworker, or a significant other. Think about who you’d be if it had never happened at all.
The feeling of connection is neurobiologically necessary. Strangely, it’s also impossible for most people to define.
Brené Brown, a research professor at the University of Houston, gave a talk on this issue at a TED conference last year. Discussing the findings of her research into human connection, she said that “When you ask people about love, they tell you about heartbreak.” Similarly, when asked about belonging, or connection, people talked about exclusion, or disconnection. Apparently, we define connection by the ways that it has failed us.
About six weeks into this research, I ran into this unnamed thing that absolutely unraveled connection in a way that I didn’t understand or had never seen. …It turned out to be shame. And shame is really easily understood as the fear of disconnection. Is there something about me that if other people know it or see it that I won’t be worthy of connection?
What underpinned this shame…was excruciating vulnerability. This idea of in order for connection to happen, we have to allow ourselves to be seen, really seen.
And shame, she found, was a two-edged sword. No one wants to talk about it, and the longer shame was not talked about, the stronger it grew. So strong, in fact, that it precluded any possibility of being vulnerable.
Our society today has a whole complex of ways to avoid vulnerability.
The first way is to numb it. “We are the most in debt, obese, addicted, and medicated adult cohort in history,” says Brown. But she points out that it is impossible to selectively numb painful emotions. When we block out our feelings of fear and shame, we also block gratitude, joy, and happiness.
The inability to feel the good emotions makes us miserable, causes us to despair. It makes us feel vulnerable again. So we go again to the medications. “We need,” Brown says, “to think about why and how we numb.”
Dogmatic certainty is another means of avoiding vulnerability. Blaming others, demanding proof, insisting that we are right, are all ways to defend ourselves from the fear of the uncertain.
We strive endlessly to perfect ourselves, to rid our minds of the source of shame. Or we pretend the shame was never there to begin with.
After six years and thousands of interviews, Brown says,
If I took the people I interviewed, and divided them into people who really have a sense of worthiness…a strong sense of love and belonging, and folks who struggle for it, who always wonder if they’re good enough, there was only one variable who separated [them]. The people who have a strong sense of love and belonging believe they’re worthy of love and belonging. The one thing that keeps us out of connection is our fear that we’re not worthy of connection. …This may be one of the most important things I’ve ever learned.
Following this revelation, Brown took all the interviews with the people who did feel worthy–she called them the “whole-hearted” people–and looked at what they had in common.
She found that they shared a sense of courage about their own stories. They shared an ethic of compassion, to themselves as well as to others. They also shared a spirit of authenticity. “They were willing to let go of who they thought they should be, in order to be who they were.”
Finally, Brown found that the whole-hearted people fully embraced vulnerability.
They believed that what made them vulnerable, made them beautiful. they didn’t talk about vulnerability being comfortable, nor did they really talk about it being excruciating. They just talked about it being necessary.
Brown laughingly reveals that her hope, in studying shame, was to find a way to predict and control it. Instead, the research led her to see that the only way to live without shame was to live with vulnerability, which involves letting go of the need to control or predict.
I know that vulnerability is the kin of 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.
Successful vulnerability starts with the willingness, says Brown, to “let ourselves be seen, deeply seen. to love with our whole hearts, even though there’s no guarantee. to practice gratitude and joy in those moments of terror.”
By the time you’re a social worker for 10 years, what you realize is that connection is why we’re here. It’s what gives purpose and meaning to our lives.
Watch the whole video here.
I am what Ms. Brown would call a “whole hearted” person. After a heated debat with my husband I left and went to work. On my return my husband pulled me into the house and hugged me. Tears filling his eyes, shared that he feels he dosen’t provide enough for us and he took it out on me, that he was very sorry. I also apologized.
I know how hard it must of been for him to say – to be vulnerable! No matter if we are married or friends, peers or a manager of people we have to vulnerable! We have to be willing to show people our ugly under bellies. Because it’s not the falls it’s how we get back up that makes us extrordinary! :D
For years, my wife and I dreamed of starting up a business that would fulfill our lifelong dream of owning and running a retail store where we could earn money to help our children, our friends who were out of work, and to give charitably to those in need. In 2008, we opened our first business location, with hopes of having additional locations in the future. We were able to be buyers, merchandisers, and the face of the business to the customer as we started on a dream adventure. Just 2 short years later, we faced financial ruin as the business that we personally started with all our savings and credit began to fail with the economy. We lost our business, our credit, and had to face the very real prospect of losing our home with no prospect of owning a future home for 7-10 years. All of this stress led us both down a path of self-preservation as we tried to protect ourselves from the hurt, stress, and fear that we were facing. Our communication and emotional connection declined as we sought refuge and distraction…we did not want to make each other feel worse by discussing the elephant in the room. When I realized that this path was jeopardizing our relationship with each other, our children, and with friends, I knew something had to change – we had to start communicating about how we were feeling no matter how embarrassed we were by our feelings of failure and embarrassment at what a financial mess we got ourselves into despite our good intentions. It began by taking time to build each other up. We started by telling each other 2 things that we appreciated about each other each night and how grateful we were for that person’s strength that they brought to our marriage. After 30 days, when we felt that we had spent conscious time trying to fill each other’s emotional bucket, we then began very frank and honest discussion of how we felt. My wife felt responsible for our “financial ruin” and was embarrassed that we had destroyed our credit-worthiness. I told her that I was emotionally drained and was having a difficult time balancing the energies of being a husband, father, business leader, volunteer, and most importantly giving her the emotional support and encouragement that I should have. I felt guilty for neglecting her needs and for making her a priority. After a lot of tears and hugs, we renewed our realization that happiness does not come from a credit score, a house, or things…it came from each other, our love, the love of our family, and the need to remember that life is really about maintaining our spiritual, emotional, and value priorities. We knew that all along…but had lost our way temporarily and had tried to focus upon ourselves until we felt strong enough to support each other. 1 + 1 can equal 3 in tough times. As we have kept first things first and most importantly, as we resumed our dates each week to invest in each other and to talk about how we feel and what we need from each other during these times of stress, we have felt energized, renewed, and the optimism of life has returned. There are many things to worry about in life, but “things” really are not important, we are!