Vulnerability

You are imperfect, but you are worthy of love.

Lessons in vulnerability:

I started this blog as an outlet, a place for discussing topics that I am passionate about and interested in. I wanted to address some of the bigger questions and lessons I have been faced with as I search for my healthy, happy, and loving self. I feel as though I've been straying away from this, so as an attempt to get into something of interest and away from blah, blah, blah, choices concerning being sober or lack of sobriety, pettiness, raging, blah, and blah, in this post, I want to discuss something I am currently grappling with. It has to do with vulnerability. 

I started thinking about vulnerability after I met someone who, from the get go, struck me as a very confident and fantastic individual. I was caught up in the momentum of their energy and didn't see something staring me in the face, until they revealed this other element. In an instant, I saw this person's Jekyll and Hyde. I was taken aback and as I emotionally pulled away from them, I immediately heard my little life mantra in the back of my head - "Life is too short to surround yourself with people who do not bring out the best in you".

I started to dislike this person. I thought to myself, "This is a hateful and ugly person" and I didn't know what to do besides continue this internal dialogue. I felt as I do when someone makes a racist comment - uncomfortable and stuck deciding between my two options: 1. Disregard the comment and act like it never happened or 2. Say something to the one responsible for the comment, letting them know that that kind of discourse doesn't really fly around me. I'd like to say that I make the choice to call someone out wherever this kind of situation arises (when I feel out of my comfort zone due to someone's assumption that I feel a certain way due to the way I look or where I am from), but I know that there are plenty of occasions when I witness someone being mean or disrespectful to another person and I let it slide, justifying my inaction as an attempt to mind my own business and strengthen my resolve to be loving in my own life. I see the contradictions here. I don't like this scenario in any sense, but this is the best way I can describe my feelings during this particular interaction.

Feeling breakdown:
Stage 1: I thought this person was hurtful and hateful even though the animosity they harbored was not directed at myself, it still made me uncomfortable and I was resentful that they were dragging me into their negative world.
Stage 2: I saw something else. I saw intense insecurity. I saw someone projecting a negativity that resided in the core of this person's self. I saw someone who did not love themselves, but again, I was observing instead of acting one way or another. "Hey, this isn't my responsibility or within my control. I can not change how they are and I just need to try to be loving in my own life", I said to myself, once again.
Stage 3: I started thinking about how people are scared to be seen. Truly seen. I identified myself in this category and was left just feeling down about the whole interaction - sad for insecure people, sad for myself, sad for those who are hurt in the wake of "I don't know how to love".

A couple of days later, my friend passed along a TED talk given by Dr. Brené Brown. Not only is she a talented speaker, but the nature of her 10 years of research in social work makes her talk regarding vulnerability not only ground breaking, but very uplifting and inspiring. In the video, she discusses a couple of things that really helped me get my mind around connection and vulnerability. She says that in order for people to connect with one another, they "have to be seen". Additionally, people must address this underlying vulnerability in 'being seen' en route to connection.

I had always thought about insecurities and understood that we all have them, but I liked how vulnerability seemed to encompass the magnitude of our insecurities. Brown went on to say that people who have a sense of worthiness, a combination of love and belonging, believe they are worthy of these things: connection, love, and belonging. She calls these kinds of people, the people who believe they are worthy, 'wholehearted' individuals. She found that people who were 'wholehearted' have 4 attributes:

1. Courage. Courage to be imperfect. Courage to tell the story of who they are using their whole hearts.
2. Compassion. Compassion to treat themselves kindly.
3. Connection through authenticity. This authenticity is achieved through letting go of who you think you should be in order to reach connection.

The fourth attribute is vulnerability. People who are wholehearted embrace vulnerability. Brown argues that what makes someone vulnerable, also makes them beautiful; reiterating that embracing vulnerability means "having the willingness to say 'I love you first' or act when there are no guarantees". This can even be extended to when we "invest in a relationship that may or may not work out".

I love the way that she talked about these things. She seems to do so in a very loving way and it reminded me of Pema Chodron, a Tibetan Buddhist and author of many meditation books, including, When Things Fall Apart. It was through her writing that I began thinking about the impermanence of life - that life is unpredictable and, at times, very mixed up. Pema Chodron teaches about the uncertainty of life and living in a way of getting to know yourself through embracing the uncertainty.

Similarly, Brené Brown says that engaging in vulnerability is the basis of love, of creativity, and acceptance. I was left wondering, when we spend all of our lives building walls and for myself, striving for ice queen status and teddy bear-barbed wire-hearts, how do we embrace vulnerability?

Then she came back with an answer. She concluded that we numb ourselves in order to deal with vulnerability, however, when we numb ourselves, we numb all of the positive aspects of the emotional spectrum as well. Therefore, we have to feel. We have to be okay with hurting and being seen. We have to have the courage to be flawed and we have to believe that despite these flaws, we are worthy of being loved.

The kicker, right? Being seen. Who wants to feel emotions and really be seen anyway? Am I really enough?

If you are still with me at this point, thanks for the patience as I reveal the underpinning of my struggles. I always say that the point of life is learning how to love, and a very critical part of this love-learning process starts with self love. We can not go around, heart in our hands, asking people to be gentle with heart strings and accept us, if we refuse to accept ourselves. To go back to the person who started the snowballing of this rant, I hope they find a way to self love. I trying not to demonize them as being ugly on the inside, but am instead attempting to be compassionate towards them - or at least emphasize with them - regarding them as someone who is just like me - afraid of being vulnerable or of being seen.

As my friend said after we discussed the TED talk, "Aren't we are all just afraid of being unwanted?"

You can check out Brené Brown's full TED talk here: The Power of Vulnerability.