Vulnerability. Good Or Bad?

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Psychologist, Clinical Psychologist CBT

Chelyabinsk

Vulnerability is the experience of feeling dependent and insecure.

When do we start to feel our vulnerability? Why do others feel more vulnerable than others? Is it good or bad to be vulnerable?

A person is most vulnerable in childhood, it is during this period that his deepest beliefs about his vulnerability are laid. The schema therapy provides 3 main ways to cope with feelings of vulnerability:

1. surrender - recognition of one's vulnerability, resignation to it, living in fear that something will happen, seeking support, submission to others; 2. avoidance - avoiding situations of increased risk, responsibility and the possibility of getting into dependent, subordinate relationships; 3. overcompensation - demonstration of one's own strength, fearlessness, independence, denial of one's own weakness or contempt for the weakness of others.

A feeling of vulnerability appears when a child experiences a sense of danger, insecurity in relationships with parents, in other traumatic situations; when he meets the rejection of himself as a person, the devaluation of his feelings and needs.

The more pronounced and longer these conditions were, the more emotionally charged will be the experience of their own vulnerability.

To feel less painful about their vulnerability, the child develops one of the three above ways of coping with frustration. From time to time, he may resort to other methods, but the leader, as a rule, is alone.

Growing up, the child transfers his fear of personal vulnerability to relationships with others, this is especially clearly manifested in relationships with friends, a psychotherapist, and partners.

Unconsciously, a person goes to various tricks so as not to experience the pain of vulnerability: he appeases others so that they do not inflict a mental wound on him, demonstrates distrust and directly says that if someone opens up, you can get stabbed in the back …

The more pronounced the fear of vulnerability, the less a person is able to build satisfying relationships, including therapeutic ones.

In a relationship with a partner, you need to be vulnerable in order to share your feelings, emotions, talk about your needs, at the same time empathizing with the other and caring about "how our word will respond."

If you break the negative on your partner, cover with obscenities, then you should not expect from him empathy and understanding of the degree of your mental traumatization.

Sometimes a person misinterprets self-disclosure and expression of emotions as throwing mud at others and making many claims to the world.

You need to express emotions through "I-statement", talk about your feelings and needs, without blaming or insulting the dignity of another person: "I would like to …", "I think …", and not from the position of the axiom that "everyone should ".

Broadcasting such behavior, a person risks facing rejection again and so endlessly fall into the funnel of his trauma.

Denial of vulnerability speaks first of all about a person's fear than about his strength. Demonstrating this perceived invulnerability is the path to proud loneliness or a relationship filled with misunderstanding, suffering and alienation.

The series "Trotsky" shows an extreme degree of fear of vulnerability and denial of it, when Leon Trotsky kills Nikolai Markin, who at one time saw him weak, helpless, frightened, having protected him from robbers.

Of course, you need to understand with whom you can show your vulnerability and with whom you cannot. Is it worth being vulnerable with a manipulator who is just waiting to turn your vulnerability into his own service?

You can afford to be vulnerable in a safe environment, and for this you need to objectively assess the reality - how safe the environment is, based on facts, not emotions and subjective experiences.

It is also necessary to understand that it is impossible and inexpedient to walk all your life, pulling on yourself a "condom of feelings." Denying ourselves some feelings, we also deny ourselves the experience of the whole gamut of feelings and cease to receive joy from life, to feel its fullness.

Satisfying your relationship needs without becoming vulnerable to another is as impossible as taking a steam bath without taking off your clothes.

And it is always useful to ask yourself: why should I become vulnerable at this moment?

Dear readers, what is your attitude to vulnerability?