Unveiling the Power of Vulnerability: How It Nurtures Authenticity in Relationships
Vulnerability has become THE buzzword in discussions around cultivating healthy relationships lately. Vulnerability is felt, seen, and experienced differently across relationships, in our roles and identities, and with our power and privilege. And still, having the fortitude to be vulnerable with the people in our lives reaps a high personal and relational reward.
Vulnerability is the state of being open and acknowledging our needs to people we believe benefit from hearing them. Being vulnerable allows folks to know who we are, what we like and want, and how we intend to be in the community with them. Vulnerability is also a considerable risk that leads to experiences of rejection, shame, self-doubt, insecurity, and more. Yet, being vulnerable is how we start to trust in our voice, stand in our truth, and become congruent in our internal and external world.
So Why is Vulnerability So Hard?
Vulnerability is hard because safety and acceptance are not always guaranteed.
When it comes to being vulnerable in our familial, platonic, and romantic relationships, there is much at stake for both the person sharing their truth and the listener holding it. The sharer risks misunderstanding and misinterpretation while chancing a potentially self-protective and traumatizing response from the listener. The listener has the task of bearing another person’s truth, experience, and needs with curiosity and clarity and their own emotional, physical, and mental responses to that truth.
More than anything, we need to experience psychological safety to show up fully, respond flexibly, and intentionally resource in challenging moments while navigating the dance of vulnerability. Psychological Safety, a term coined by Professor and Researcher Amy Edmondson in our work relationships, is defined by our ability to speak up to colleagues and work leadership without fear of retribution. However, psychological safety isn’t just something we deserve at work, but with our friends, intimate partners, and family members as well. Feeling resourced enough to speak is often compromised by previous experiences of vulnerability that went well or not so well. When our truth is met with someone’s disconnection and disregard, choosing to “be open” becomes more complicated.
In my work as a Licensed Psychotherapist to a majority of Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian, Middle-Eastern, and multi-racial women, I often talk about the challenge of being our whole selves in a world that doesn’t value our innate humanity. Many of the women have shared experiences of minimization, invalidation, silencing, and shaming for being authentic and truthful. These historical moments aren’t processed through their bodies; they get stuck in certain places like our back, stomach, shoulders, hips, hands, legs, feet, neck, and chest. They also remain unresolved and frozen in our mind - in a theoretical “pile of unsettled experiences” that need our attention and curiosity.
To overcome these historically traumatizing experiences, I first sit with and honor the feelings of frustration, sadness, rage, shame, guilt, and blame. We then collaboratively explore their pattern of muting themselves. Whether consciously or unconscious, we resort to behaviors of fighting, freezing, fixing, and fawning,
We then metabolize the emotions and acknowledge the survival tactics - we validate their very human response, identify where the sensations live in their body, provide correlative care, and reinforce the movement of that experience through and out of the body.
Next, we get specific about our internal boundaries - the limits and rules we agree to set to protect our truth, stories, and knowings from our family, friends, and partners’ constrictions and limitations. Then, we reflect. I ask my clients to reflect on a statement that someone said that made them feel their truth wasn’t safe. And we explore these four questions:
Is their response about me and true?
Is their response about me and not true?
Is their response about them and true?
Is their response about them and not true?
Once that is clarified, we honor the importance of reinviting vulnerability back into our lives with intention. Vulnerability, as I define it, is about standing in our integrity with respect and consciousness, sharing what is in our mind - even when it is hard - with the people in our lives who need to hear, learn, and grow from our words. The more we practice vulnerability, the more we let the world experience what we value. And with more vulnerability comes the opportunity to live more congruently in our bodies, minds, and communities.
What is Congruence?
Congruence, as it relates to our mental and physical well-being, is having our thoughts and feelings reflect our behaviors and actions. We, as women with dominant and non-dominant identities, often struggle with living congruently. Being consistently dismissed in our communities and relationships leaves us physically and emotionally hurt and second-guessing our worth. And when we choose silence, we stop the natural release that our bodies and minds need. Our bodies and minds are now focused on survival and self-protection rather than thriving and growth.
So, How Do We Change This Vicious Cycle?
We start to share small things with people we trust. We take intentional relational risks. And we believe in our words, whether our partner, friend, family, or coworker responds to them healthfully or unhealthfully.
What you say has inherent value, and that value doesn’t just go away because someone is not resourced enough to understand, accept, or explore it with curiosity.
When we trust our truth regardless of someone’s response, we can become freer in our mind and body. And with more mind-body freedom comes more flexible and liberatory relationships.
What Does Vulnerability in Relationships Look Like?
Vulnerability in our relationships can look like -
Sharing a request with an intimate partner, detaching from the outcome, and holding your needs and wants with warm regard.
Acknowledging a boundary you have, activating that boundary, and caring for yourself through any mixed emotional experience.
Inviting the people to grow with us or reconnecting with people after we have done the maturing we need.
Vulnerability is NOT boundarylessness, intrusion, or unbridled self-expression.
If you desire to be more vulnerable in your current relationships, start with this affirmation: "My words have value. I can risk being vulnerable to be seen and understood.”
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