Embracing Vulnerability: A Holistic Journey to Authentic Connection and Healing
Welcome back to our conversation on vulnerability. I'm glad you could join us as we delve deeper into relational openness, consciousness, and authenticity. We can approach vulnerability from many different angles. However, together, we will focus on these five specific themes:
Vulnerability as We Define It: Explore our shared understanding of vulnerability and its significance in fostering authenticity and connection.
The Road to Becoming Vulnerable: Understand the interplay between willingness and resistance, embrace communal vulnerability, and engage in individual activities to cultivate vulnerability.
The Mind-Body Connection to Vulnerability: Examine how our past experiences manifest in our bodies and influence our ability to be vulnerable, highlighting the significance of somatic awareness in vulnerability.
Vulnerability Equity: Introduce the concept of vulnerability equity to explore how power and privilege impact one's ability to embrace vulnerability, acknowledging the unique challenges faced by marginalized communities.
Vulnerability in Therapy: Discuss strategies for working on and with vulnerability in therapy, including exploring childhood experiences, addressing bodily sensations, and navigating power dynamics.
Are you ready? Let’s dive in.
I: Vulnerability as We Define It
I’d like to ground us in how we define vulnerability. From Unveiling the Power of Vulnerability: How It Nurtures Authenticity in Relationships - A Deep Dive, we defined vulnerability as “the state of being open and acknowledging while standing in our integrity with respect and conscious to share, what is on our mind - even when it is hard - with the people who benefit from hearing, learning, and growing from our words, needs, and beliefs.” Vulnerability is about taking healthy risks and being honest about who we are and what we think/believe/experience, even if someone disagrees, feels threatened by, and disregards us because of their own limitations, incomprehension, and feelings. When practiced in small to big moments every day, week, and month, vulnerability offers us beautiful moments to be more settled in our thoughts and more self-honoring, self-forgiving, and self-compassionate.
So, what can we do to be vulnerable or more vulnerable?
II: The Road to Becoming Vulnerable
Vulnerability begins with our willingness to be open and honest, even when we feel resistance and fear about potential outcomes. As we grow older, we often become more risk-averse, conflict-avoidant, and closed-off to new opportunities. This rigidity can stem from childhood experiences, unresolved pain and trauma, and a fear of negative outcomes. To become more vulnerable as adults, we must identify what is holding us back and take steps to overcome it. This involves exploring our fears and building our readiness and openness to vulnerability.
It can start by going within and answering these questions:
Question 1: How do I feel about what I think, who I am, and what I believe? If the answer to this question feels negative, shaming, or blaming, it is essential to take some time to be more forgiving and compassionate towards ourselves.
Question 2: Can I value who I am and what I think and believe, even if no one else does? This question helps us understand who we prioritize - ourselves or others. If we believe that others need to value us for us to feel worthy, we are more likely to resist being vulnerable.
Question 3: How has the past impacted when, how, and with whom I choose to be vulnerable? Reflecting on moments from the past when we either took or did not take risks with vulnerability can be a helpful step in identifying what influences our decision to be vulnerable in the present.
Question 4: Does my willingness to be vulnerable outweigh my resistance? Our willingness and resistance to vulnerability can fluctuate for various reasons. While vulnerability may always be accompanied by some anxiety, we don't have to force ourselves into it. Small risks are just as valuable as big ones when it comes to vulnerability.
While reflecting, it's important to remember a few things. No matter where you are on the journey of vulnerability, avoid judging yourself or moralizing your experience. There's nothing inherently bad or wrong about where you are regarding vulnerability. The goal is to give yourself what you need and to take steps to be more honest with yourself and others. Vulnerability always has the potential for loss and grief, but it's important to remember that grief and loss are a part of our growth. While we can't avoid them, we can support ourselves through them. Let’s unpack what communal and individual vulnerability can do for us.
Communal Vulnerability
Learning and practicing vulnerability in the community offers significant value and builds our vulnerability resilience. Communal and collective vulnerability is beautifully rewarding. Not only are we adding a buffer of additional people to support us in taking healthy risks, but we are also grounding ourselves in interdependence, social empathy, and social change. One way to experience communal vulnerability is by participating in group activities, encouraging honesty, curiosity, and flexibility. For instance, you can gather a few friends and use a discussion questions card deck - you can even use mine found here - to challenge the assumptions and limiting beliefs you have about one another and discuss things you know or don't know in greater detail. Other examples of collective vulnerability are attending a social protest, visiting a support group with a friend, inviting friends to a show, experience, or creative event that has significant meaning to you, and participating in a service day at a park, beach, or public space.
Individual Vulnerability
In addition to the communal activities listed above, here are additional micro-to-macro moments that build your vulnerability -
Create an apology practice and “practice with a friend.” An apology practice is one of the most loving and “adult” things you can do for yourself and your community. Sharing apologies you are proud of is incredibly vulnerable, life-changing, and affirming to self and others. Whether the person receiving it can accept it or not, you allow yourself to explore forgiveness and genuine care.
Create a self-compassion phrase and gesture. A phrase or gesture that reminds us how deserving we are of kindness, care, and thoughtfulness can be supportive in moments of low self-esteem and shame. So take a moment to think of a short 1-2 sentence phrase that makes you smile and feel loved. Think of a gesture—a hand on your heart, clasping your hands, hugging yourself—to remind you, “I am worthy of love.”
Write down everything you felt right after a challenging experience. Getting into the habit of writing your feelings, thoughts, and activations during an event can be immensely clarifying. The more you do it, the more you give yourself the fuller story.
Complete one activity a month that incites a little anxiety in you. Whether the activity is with people - attending a silent book club - or alone - spending the day at the park or beach alone -prove to yourself that you matter and that you can do things that are anxiety-inducing.
Be intentional about self and communal play. We can all benefit from play, and it helps us connect to the younger, joyous parts of ourselves that were open, unrestricted, and experiencing awe much more often. As you turn toward play, you turn toward vulnerability.
Send a message to someone you admire or a virtual or in-person meeting request to someone who inspires you. Whether they respond or not, you allow yourself the opportunity to be honest and take a healthy risk. Remember, this activity can be scaled from low to high stakes.
Set vulnerability goals. The more you get clear about your micro-to-macro vulnerability goals and how they can be adapted each season, the more intentional and consistent you can be about building vulnerability.
Practice conversations you’d like to have with friends. Open your favorite recording app and practice saying the things you need to others to yourself. You deserve to get comfortable with your words, beliefs, feelings, and truth.
Before starting the suggested activities, it's helpful to understand how our mind and body teach, support, and protect us during moments of vulnerability.
III: The Mind-Body Connection to Vulnerability
Understanding the messages our mind and body send us when we feel vulnerable can be useful in many ways. Whether we are experts, still learning, or just starting out in understanding what our body sensations, emotions, and thoughts mean, we can all benefit from adopting a paradigm that helps us ground ourselves in our body knowledge. But don't worry. I can provide you with a resource to help with that.
There are many people out there whose work can help you better understand your body and how it narrates your experiences, but I particularly admire Resmaa Menakem. He is a healer and trauma specialist who focuses on race, culture and shared humanity to help people recover from historical and racialized trauma that is held in their bodies. Resmaa is an expert at helping people understand what their body is trying to communicate through different moments, emotions, and life experiences. Together, we will explore his somatic wisdom and approach, VIMBASI, which stands for Vibrations, Images + Thoughts, Meanings, Behaviors, Affects + Emotions, Sensations, and Imagination. Let’s take a deeper look, shall we?
Everyone has experiences, events, and traumas that shape their feelings. According to Resmaa, these experiences have distinct characteristics such as charge, weight, speed, texture, direction, volume, urgency, rhythm, pressure, impact, and force. VIMBASI is a tool that can help us reflect upon what we have been through, what we have seen, what we have lost, and what we have gained. It provides a comprehensive way to examine our environment, interactions, conversations, and relationships. Especially in terms of vulnerability, VIMBASI enables us to define, acknowledge, and process the moments of relational openness and shut-downness in our bodies. By becoming more aware of our emotions and behaviors, we can better equip ourselves for individual and relational healing. (MENAKEM, 2022)
Reflect on a recent experience when you shared something vulnerable with someone. Take a moment to identify if that experience had any vibrations, images, meanings, behaviors, emotions, sensations, and imagination tied to it. Ask yourself if you felt any energy, saw an old memory, created distinct judgments, or had any impulses. Did any fear arise? Did you feel hot, cold, or constricted? Did you experience any pressure or numbness? As you work through this exercise, being kind and patient with yourself is crucial. Identifying the details may not always be easy, especially if the experience has been left unresolved for a long time, causes discomfort, or involves people who have consistently harmed you. However, the more you use VIMBASI, the more you give yourself an expansive self-definition of how vulnerability is felt, held, and experienced by you.
When we recognize our thoughts, feelings, and actions during moments of vulnerability or resistance, we become more aware of our emotional experiences. This awareness leads to a better understanding of where we are in our journey towards healing and vulnerability. At the same time, it's essential to give ourselves the time and space to identify significant obstacles that still impact us, particularly as women and femmes of color, when it comes to vulnerability.
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IV: Vulnerability Equity
Let's talk about the concept of Vulnerability Equity. This term refers to how power, privilege, and access can expose us to vulnerability or exempt us from it in specific ways. For example, women and femmes of color and culture who navigate communities with historically excluded identities have to live with more discomfort, disconnection, burdens, and overwhelm, as they are always on display and have more at stake. Unfortunately, those who hold more power and privilege are often less empathetic and less skilled at perspective-taking, making it even riskier for us to build relationships with them.
After reading that, you might wonder, Domenique, why should I risk being vulnerable in the first place?
Because what vulnerability has the potential to give—if we are willing—far outweighs what we protect or lose when we resist. Vulnerability gives us clarity, connection, consideration, and consciousness. It also gives us integrity, healthy emotionality, and strength.
V: Vulnerability In Therapy
As we end, I want to give you all one more thing to support you on your vulnerability journey - How to explore, learn, and cultivate it in therapy. Here are some suggestions on what to ask and discuss with a therapist to build, understand, and connect to your vulnerability.
It is crucial to talk about our experiences during childhood because they can provide insights into how vulnerability was modeled, judged, valued, praised, or discussed. We should also discuss past resentful or unresolved experiences with family members, friends, or partners. These discussions help us to understand why we are disconnected from or drawn to vulnerability. In addition, it is helpful to explore how our body and mind react to vulnerability, such as feeling connected, constrained, numb, or other sensations. Mastering our emotions, body sensations, history, and relational patterns can be incredibly empowering and validating.
In summary
As you begin your journey towards vulnerability, it's important to keep a few things in mind. Firstly, being vulnerable does not guarantee that you will never face relational disharmony and hurt. However, with the right resources, strategies, affirmations, and community, you can still thrive even in the face of adversity. Secondly, vulnerability can start small and build up over time, or it can remain small and still be a healthy risk. It's up to you to define what vulnerability means to you. Finally, vulnerability is a gift that allows you to explore all aspects of yourself, and it provides a model for others in your life who may benefit from their own journey toward vulnerability.
So, take a deep breath, take small steps, give yourself grace, and move forward with vulnerability.
Reference
MENAKEM, R. (2022, July 21). The Reckoning Is Now. Resmaa Menakem. Retrieved March 5, 2024, from https://www.resmaa.com/somatic-learnings/the-reckoning-is-now
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