03/11/2020
Why it is important to be vulnerable?
Vulnerability is like skydiving. It is an incredible, heart-pounding type of scary. The most frightening part is when you are standing at the edge of the door, wind blowing your face and your heart pounding so loud you think you might throw up at any moment. And then, the jump happens. As you scream with fear, you realize that as you are dropping through the sky, fear is suddenly replaced by something else….a sense of freedom and joy.
Many of us grapple with vulnerability. Opening up can be frightening. Taking off that mask you wear to face the world and be as you are before your romantic partner, family and friends can drive the bravest of us scurrying for the hills. Like the analogy above, it is the most scary yet liberating feeling we can ever experience.
If you tend to keep things bottled up or ignore problems, it’s important to learn how to be vulnerable. Not only is it key to emotional change, but vulnerability can also help you make friends, learn new perspectives, and achieve progress in therapy. Here are three reasons why vulnerability is important — and how you can work to overcome the fear of opening up.
Being Vulnerable Allows You To Be Open To Change
No matter how much you want to change, you can’t actually change until you’re willing to put in the work. And that work requires vulnerability — no matter how hard it can be. Vulnerability is the key that unlocks the treasure chest.
Let’s say you have a bad habit that you want to break, like eating too much junk food. You desperately want to stop. Junk food is affecting your waistline and your regular trips to the convenience store are putting a serious dent in your wallet. Before you can stop your bad habit, you need to look at the root cause. Are you bored? Comforting yourself because you feel depressed at state of your personal or professional relationships? You need to dig deep and ask yourself the tough questions. Doing so requires vulnerability.
After all, you can’t examine your deepest, darkest feelings without revealing deep, dark feelings. Change requires serious, honest self-analysis, and vulnerability is key to finding that truth.
Being Vulnerable Allows You to Understand New Perspectives
Finding our place in the world requires accepting the importance of other people — and allowing yourself to be vulnerable can make that much easier.
Accepting new ideas and perspectives means acknowledging that your experiences aren’t the end-all, be-all of life. And that can be difficult! There’s no shame in not wanting to set aside your beliefs, even momentarily, but you must think bigger than yourself.
Vulnerability helps you accept that your needs and desires aren’t always the most important — which is key to expanding your viewpoint and making friends.
When we are vulnerable, we are bringing down our emotional walls to invite connection with others and ultimately understand others. By bringing our walls down, it would inspire the other to do the same. As the saying goes, be the change you want to see. It always starts with us.
Vulnerability Builds Intimacy By Allowing People To See The Real You
If you have trouble making friends or sustaining a long-term relationship, ever wonder why? It might be because you’re scared to be vulnerable; that you are scared to be judged for who you truly are. Developing close relationships require revealing private parts of yourself you might prefer kept hidden.
As we learn more about a person, the closer we get thus the bond of the relationship (both romantic and non-romantic) strengthens. Empathy and intimacy are the glue that solidifies relationships with our partners, family and friends. But how can you share life experiences with someone if you’re afraid to open up?
The struggle to be truly be your vulnerable, authentic self is a lifelong process. Don’t beat yourself up for having a hard time opening up to people. It is our natural defence mechanism to protect us from being hurt emotionally. Being truly vulnerable puts us in a position to get hurt, rejected and ridiculed. It takes time and consistent effort to build the inner courage to wear our hearts on our sleeves. The key to vulnerability is that you are willing to accept the consequences (good or bad) no matter what.
It may be the riskiest thing you will ever do in your life, but it will also be the most rewarding.
