Vulnerability Is Having Courage to Be Yourself
The topic of this week for my 7 Week Resiliency Workshop is vulnerability. I believe vulnerability is an important part of resiliency. When I was dealing with my life challenges, being able to say that I am weak, or I need help, helped me a lot to receive help from others. Sometimes, receiving help takes courage, and there are many people who cannot simply accept other people’s help or offer.
Brené Brown explains what vulnerability is.
Vulnerability is not weakness
Vulnerability is emotional risk, exposure, uncertainty
Vulnerability is our most accurate measurement of courage
We have to understand and know empathy because empathy is the antidote to shame
If you put shame in a Petri dish, it needs three things to grow exponentially: secrecy, selence, and judgement
I believe my personality is helpig me to be vulnerable with relative ease than others. For some, being vulnerable is very difficult. In order to support people to be courageous and be authentic, we need to create a safe space. As Brown says, empahy is the best to do that. She references Theresa Wiseman’s for defining attributes of empathy.
To be able to see the world as others see it
To be nonjudgmental
To understand another person’s feelings
To communicate your understanding of that person’s feelings
As I mentioned earlier, being vulnerable and being authentic are my strengths, but it is true if I’m talking to a person who does not do any of the avobe four, it becomes very difficult to be vulnerable and have a quality conversation. I feel that it might have something to do with the other person’s defense mechanism. Maybe for that person, being empathetic itself is a risk because you have to lower your guards. You have to be vulnerable yoursel in order to receive someone’s vulnerability.
So, it seems like vulnerable people have courage to be themselves, and courage to be empathetic to others. And this will influence the other person to be able to be vulnerable. It’s a positive spiral. Then does that mean having courage to be yourself can influence others to be themselves? That sounds right.
And I would like to be that kind of person.