{"id":1894,"date":"2015-10-17T18:12:46","date_gmt":"2015-10-18T00:12:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/?p=1894"},"modified":"2015-11-14T22:08:43","modified_gmt":"2015-11-15T04:08:43","slug":"healthy-vulnerability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/?p=1894","title":{"rendered":"‘Healthy’ Vulnerability?"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s been some pretty emotional stuff happening in my world lately. Lots of processing, lots of thinking about the stories I tell myself. Yesterday, something triggered memories of deep wounds and it left me feeling very, very emotionally \u2018raw\u2019. And it got me thinking about what I wrote two days ago about vulnerability (Why Vulnerability?<\/em><\/a>).<\/p>\n

I believe there are \u2018degrees\u2019 of vulnerability, and while I haven\u2019t figured this all out, I know that it\u2019s not healthy (or \u2018safe\u2019) to share all my most intimate details with everyone I meet. In fact, doing this is a shield against vulnerability as I mentioned in my Vulnerability Armour post (see \u201cletting it all hang out\u201d)<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

Brene Brown uses a beautiful phrase to describe being vulnerable. She says we share with those who can bear the weight of our stories<\/em><\/strong>. These are the people we have built connection with, we\u2019ve cultivated these relationships, there is trust and mutual empathy \u2013 in other words, these people have earned the right to hear our stories in honesty and vulnerability.<\/p>\n

This doesn\u2019t mean we\u2019re not honest in the rest of our world. We should be! But the \u2018degree\u2019 to which we are vulnerable will depend on the strength of the relationships we have with the people we are with. The more intimate and \u2018raw\u2019 the vulnerability, the smaller the circle of people with which that is shared. I\u2019m going to call this \u2018healthy\u2019 vulnerability (I just made it up; it\u2019s not from any research I\u2019ve read).<\/p>\n

I\u2019m just starting to figure this out. It wasn\u2019t something I really thought about before because I had so much vulnerability armour up there wasn\u2019t much vulnerability happening. But as I\u2019m slowly learning to take down the armour, I\u2019m thinking about what it actually means to be vulnerable. How much do I share online? How much do I share in my larger church community? How do I learn to be vulnerable in a healthy way with the people closest to me? It\u2019s easy to throw the old vulnerability armour back on when I\u2019m feeling uncomfortable and exposed. How do I not<\/em><\/strong> do that and allow myself to be \u2018seen\u2019 without being overexposed at the same time? I don\u2019t have the answer for that.<\/p>\n

Because of what happened yesterday, I decided not to go to a mini women\u2019s retreat at our church today. I knew I was feeling emotionally tender and \u2018raw\u2019. The retreat would mean hanging out with 30 women that I have varying degrees of closeness with \u2013 for the day. I was anticipating what would happen \u2013 either I\u2019d throw up my vulnerability armour and pretend as if everything was okay or I\u2019d be a weeping mess at the back of the room. Many of those women don\u2019t have the strength of relationship with me to bear the weight<\/em><\/strong> of what I was feeling and processing. While this might have been an opportunity for women to surround me and encourage me, the scene could just as easily have backfired with people who don\u2019t know me potentially giving \u2018pat\u2019 or inappropriate responses which would have left me feeling worse. So I opted to stay at home.<\/p>\n

Considering my degree of emotional tenderness I chose not to be with a larger group of people, although I would have been willing to be with a smaller group that I am closer with (like my church life group), though probably not for the entire day. I\u2019m finding making these decisions involves learning to have healthy boundaries and to understand what we need. Sometimes it\u2019s okay to consider ourselves and our well-being first. Too often I put others and their expectations first to the detriment of myself. I think it serves us well to become more self-aware and to take steps to care for ourselves in the ways we need to when in pain. And this means sometimes saying, \u201cNo\u201d, and that\u2019s okay.<\/p>\n

So, embrace vulnerability in healthy ways and be true to yourself. They must not be mutually exclusive.<\/p>\n

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There\u2019s been some pretty emotional stuff happening in my world lately. Lots of processing, lots of thinking about the stories I tell myself. Yesterday, something […] Read More<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,9,20],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1894"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1894"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1894\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1899,"href":"https:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1894\/revisions\/1899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}