TL:DR: The author asserts that vulnerability isn’t key to relationships as many mental health and relationship experts claim. Rather, it’s actually a problem the author says. They then explain why it’s better to focus on one’s thoughts and beliefs in order to create better relationships. In doing so, people get everything they want: better relationships and freedom from fear that comes with trying to be vulnerable.
Vulnerability. Mental health and relationship “experts” claim it’s something special. They say it’s something we all should practice in order to thrive in relationship. But is vulnerability really the key to happiness, relationship success and more? Or is something afoot here that can disempower us?
In this post, let’s explore why vulnerability is a myth and how dispelling the myth can help us live more joyfully. Along the way we may just also discover the key to everything else we want.
Why humans vaunt vulnerability
Vulnerability is both feared and praised. We fear it because it implies possible rejection. We praise it because we’re told to. Being vulnerable can also feel good because we’re putting ourselves out there honestly. And doing that can feel good. For most though, it can be terrifying.
But what is “vulnerability” exactly? The definition doesn’t seem to imply something praise-worthy:
So it would seem, based on the definition, that being vulnerable is a bad thing. So why do people vaunt it so much? One source suggests being susceptible to physical or emotional attack or harm increases intimacy and trust. Not being vulnerable, it says, can lead to emotional distance, disconnection and resentment.
It would seem being vulnerable then is essential to good relationships. But is that really the case?
Rejection inherent in vulnerability
The trouble with saying it improves relationships is that being vulnerable usually requires a quid-pro-quo situation. I would suggest everyone would be vulnerable in a relationship….if their partner were equally vulnerable. That’s the trouble. No one really wants to subject themselves to physical or emotional attack. It seems extremely logical to me, then, that no one wants to be vulnerable in a relationship either. Which explains why people aren’t.
But there’s something about this vulnerability thing that runs afoul of what’s really happening in physical reality. It’s that being vulnerable is based on something that isn’t happening in reality at all. Well, it IS happening. But only because people believe it’s happening. And that belief is what perpetuates fear associated with being vulnerable.
In other words, the myth of vulnerability is what keeps people from being vulnerable in the first place. Replace the word “vulnerable” with a different word, for example, and the whole calculus changes.
What word do we suggest? How about authenticity.
That’s right. If instead of thinking about being vulnerable, we think of being authentic, then we go a long way to easing fear that comes with being vulnerable. The problem remains however, with the essence of what both words conjure: the risk of being harmed. And in most relationship cases, that “harm” looks like “rejection.”
So let’s unpack that.
Our thoughts make it so
In order to be vulnerable, a condition must first exist. That condition is risk. In other words, the person considering being vulnerable or authentic must first believe there is something they may be rejected over. Rejection can feel bad, but a simple reframing of the story we tell when “rejection” is experienced can cause that bad feeling to turn into appreciation.
What if, for example, someone rejects us because we share something intimate about us? Does that mean anything? What does it mean about us? It means nothing really. We shared authentically. That person chose something else. In this situation, both parties are better off. We’re free to connect with someone who accepts us. The other party is free now to connect with someone they connect with.
Where’s the harm in that? But when we think the rejection means something about us, then we feel bad.
We can see, then, the act of rejection isn’t bad, instead it’s what we think of it that makes it bad. The same is true for being vulnerable. It’s the thought about being vulnerable that makes it so scary. Our thoughts about it make being vulnerable a vaunted thing as well.
As we say all day every day here at Positively Focused, our thoughts make everything. Including the need to be, and the fear of being, vulnerable.
Preferring rejection
Being vulnerable means having to take a risk. Hardly anyone wants to take risks. But if there is no risk in being authentic, if instead there’s everything to gain by being that way, I would suggest many more people would be authentic.
Again, the problem is the thoughts people have about rejection and what they think that means.
Vulnerability then, isn’t the problem. Making it into a venerated way of being is. Because doing so makes it seem doing something we’re scared to do is something worth doing. It’s not. Instead, it’s better to develop a new set of thoughts around authenticity so that acting authentic is preferable to not acting that way.
That’s easy to do. And it’s not scary. When we do it, the vaunted idea of being vulnerable becomes meaningless. And when that happens we’re free; free to be who we are. Whether people take that or leave that is up to them. It’s not our problem.
So there’s nothing special about being vulnerable. And, with a little tweaking of our thoughts, we can eliminate that concept from our minds, thereby freeing us to be. Now let’s turn up the woo a bit and see what we find.
Finding power in changed belief
Believing vulnerability is a thing presupposes there’s something that can happen to us that’s beyond our control. Usually, that something is bad: rejection. From the Positively Focused perspective, however, nothing can happen to us that is beyond our control. We invite everything that happens to us through our thoughts and beliefs.
If that’s true, we can see how vulnerability would be a problem. That’s because it presupposes risk. Belief that there’s risk is a belief. That belief will create reality consistent with it. And that explains why so many fear being vulnerable. It also explains why it feels scary.
Rejection is similar. There are many thoughts and beliefs around “rejection”. Those thoughts and beliefs, like those behind “vulnerability”, create reality consistent with them. That’s why hardly anyone wants to feel rejected.
Change those beliefs though and the experience changes. This explains why very successful sales people, for example, don’t experience “no” as rejection. They think different thoughts and beliefs around the word “no”. This also proves it’s possible to change our beliefs around things like “vulnerability” and “rejection”. Doing so makes one much more powerful.
Beliefs matter…a lot
So if we invite our experience through our thoughts and beliefs about them, that means something important. It means that being vulnerable isn’t the key to anything. Instead, our thoughts and beliefs are. Indeed, thoughts and beliefs are everything. They literally create the world around us.
The better beliefs we hold, the better our life gets. My clients are discovering this. The more they change their beliefs to positive, empowering ones, the better their lives get. My experience is similar. The more I’ve changed how I think and what I believe, the more my life has improved. So much so, hardly anything “bad” happens to me. And those “bad” things that do happen are so insignificant, I don’t consider them “bad”. They just are.
In a short while, a person can create an ideal life, what I call the Charmed Life. This is true for relationships too. We don’t need to experience risk in relationship. But getting there requires something: not being vulnerable. Being vulnerable is a myth. Instead, what’s needed is a new way of thinking. One that invites only good. Including good relationships, ones matching what we’re wanting.
And if that relationship matches what we want, is risk needed? I don’t think so.
Rather than experience risk and fear at being vulnerable, I suggest we give up this myth. Let’s replace it with something better. Something like knowing we create our reality. And the more true we are to who we are, the better realities we create, including relationships.
By “true” I mean being positive, happy and easy. Easy with ourselves and easy with others, so that we create an easy life. One in which we can be ourselves. An in doing that have everything we want.