Vulnerabilities = Our Superpower
We all want to hide our vulnerabilities. It’s a protective mechanism to survive attack. Just as the cactus has evolved to shoot out its spikes, a turtle throws sand on its back, a lizard blends in with the tree, a snake plays dead, or a pufferfish who gulps water to appear larger, humans are no different. We learn to hide these perceived weaknesses at a very young age and often we continue this into adulthood (using the same methods).
As we move through life, more things happen that remind us that it’s not safe to show our vulnerabilities—in romantic relationships, work relationships, with certain friends or family members—but what if our greatest strength lay in these vulnerabilities, remaining dormant and inactive? What if, as humans, we are supposed to show our vulnerability to others and that’s a part of our purpose? Or just a part of us having a richer experience of life? We must ask ourselves, is being vulnerable a weakness or a strength? The answer is both of course.
In high school, I remember always having my emotional defenses up with my mom and sister; I was tough, defensive, sharp-tongued. I refused to show my feelings. Dinner table arguments led to other people’s tears. I’d apologize every time until my mother asked: What’s the point of an apology if you don’t change? This caused me to reflect why do I act this way? As I self-analyzed, I realized this was due to being left alone as a young child and learning that I didn’t have anyone to express my feeling to, so it was my plight to keep it to myself—in essence to be a defensive prickly cactus, a turtle, a snake. I had to defend myself because I learned subconsciously very early in life that expressing my true, vulnerable feelings was not safe.
The next day when an argument began to brew with my sister, I tried to practice showing vulnerability. Instead of spitting out my defensive quip, I said how I truly felt in all my vulnerability. I told her that she hurt my feelings, and I watched as something amazing happened—the sparring match halted, dead in its tracks. She did not know what to say. I had won. What? That's when I first realized that sharing my feelings was not only liberating, it was powerful.
I continue everyday to learn this lesson, deepening into it with practice, not always succeeding, but always trying.
We often have to do an audit of self to understand what we are protecting (and why).
For example, I remember reading a short haiku style poem in a high school class physics class, and another female student burst out in laughter after I read it, puncturing the silence in the room. I had brushed it off, quickly filed it away in my brain as an uncomfortable moment, but to this day I still remember how I felt. That shock of someone laughing at expressing the deepest part of me told me on a level that it’s not safe to express that. As I pondered my blocks in vulnerability, this experience was retrieved from my memory files. It must have affected me more than I realized. How many small moments like this build up in our subconscious? How can we unearth them, see them for what they are (tiny, inconsequential and in the past), and release them from blocking us?