Courage takes many forms, vulnerability is one. If you are like me, being real about your fear, pain, insecurity, depression and loneliness is not easy. We hate looking and feeling weak. We fear how others will view and treat us if they really know us. Letting anyone in is too risky, so we carry our pain alone. Inevitably, we will grow exhausted. Maybe that’s exactly where you’re at and why you have landed on this page. I’m thankful you are here.
As a fellow journeyer on the road, I have learned that my greatest need often lies on the other side of fear. Denial, avoidance, minimizing and numbing are well-worn paths for dealing with pain. In truth, the only way forward is through. Research professor, Dr. Brene Brown has spent her life’s work on the power of vulnerability. She says, “vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage. Truth and courage aren’t always comfortable, but they’re never weakness.”
Honesty about your pain is courage. Vulnerability about your fear, loneliness, anxiety and depression is not weak. Leaning in for help to trusted family and friends is strong. I am continually surprised by what we will find when walking through the door of vulnerability. Instead of judgment and rejection, we walk into connection, healing and hope.
I encourage you to read the following excerpt from Dr. Brown’s book, Daring Greatly:How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead. I am convinced that her perspective will help you move forward with courage. Dr. Brown’s well-received Ted Talk on vulnerability (34 million views) is also posted below.
The perception that vulnerability is weakness is the most widely accepted myth about vulnerability and the most dangerous. When we spend our lives pushing away and protecting ourselves from feeling vulnerable or from being perceived as too emotional, we feel contempt when others are less capable or willing to mask feelings, suck it up, and soldier on. We’ve come to the point where, rather than respecting and appreciating the courage and daring behind vulnerability, we let our fear and discomfort become judgment and criticism.
Vulnerability isn’t good or bad: it’s not what we call a dark emotion, nor is it always a light, positive experience. Vulnerability is the core of all emotions and feelings. To feel is to be vulnerable. To believe vulnerability is weakness is to believe that feeling is weakness. To foreclose on our emotional life out of a fear that the costs will be too high is to walk away from the very thing that gives purpose and meaning to living.
Our rejection of vulnerability often stems from our associating it with dark emotions like fear, shame, grief, sadness, and disappointment—emotions that we don’t want to discuss, even when they profoundly affect the way we live, love, work, and even lead. What most of us fail to understand and what took me a decade of research to learn is that vulnerability is also the cradle of the emotions and experiences that we crave. We want deeper and more meaningful spiritual lives. Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, and creativity. It is the source of hope, empathy, accountability and authenticity. If we want greater clarity in our purpose or deeper or more meaningful spiritual lives, vulnerability is the path.
I know this is hard to believe, especially when we’ve spent our lives thinking that vulnerability and weakness are synonymous, but it’s true. I define vulnerability as uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure. With that definition in mind, let’s think about love. Waking up every day and loving someone who may or may not love us back, whose safety we can’t ensure, who may stay in our lives or may leave without a moment’s notice, who may be loyal to the day they die or betray us tomorrow – that’s vulnerability. Love is uncertain. It’s incredibly risky. And loving someone leaves us emotionally exposed. Yes, it’s scary, and yes, we’re open to being hurt, but can you imagine your life without loving or being loved?
To put our art, our writing, our photography, our ideas out into the world with no assurance of acceptance or appreciation—that’s also vulnerability. To let ourselves sink into the joyful moments of our lives even though we know that they are fleeting, even though the world tells us not to be too happy lest we invite disaster—that’s an intense form of vulnerability.
The profound danger is that, as noted above, we start to think of feeling as weakness. With the exception of anger (which is a secondary emotion, one that only serves as a socially acceptable mask for many of the more difficult underlying emotions we feel), we’re losing our tolerance for emotion and hence for vulnerability.
It starts to make sense that we dismiss vulnerability as weakness only when we realize that we’ve confused feeling with failing and emotions with liabilities. If we want to reclaim the essential emotional part of our lives and reignite our passion and purpose, we have to learn how to own and engage with our vulnerability and how to feel the emotions that come with it. For some of us, it’s new learning, and for others it’s relearning. Either way, the research taught me that the best place to start is with defining, recognizing, and understanding vulnerability.