The Beautiful Truth About Vulnerability

            I’m learning that one of my greatest weaknesses is my aversion to being vulnerable. This admission is quite ironic because an aspect of being invulnerable is hiding and minimizing one’s weaknesses. Two of my biggest reasons for this aversion are pride and fear of judgment. I’ll come back to these two sentiments as a basis for why I avoid vulnerability. Even if you fail to recognize these tendencies in yourself, my hope is that you walk away from reading this encouraged to be vulnerable in your daily conversations and interactions.

The Correlation Between Vulnerability And Pride

            I used to think that pride was synonymous with boastfulness. However, I have since concluded that boasting is only one expression of pride. Pride promotes oneself in whatever way places them in the most favorable position. While boasting certainly falls into this category, a subtler expression of pride exists in hiding one’s flaws and weaknesses. To have your weaknesses exposed is not generally a desirable or comfortable experience.

In Anne of Green Gables, Anne flies into a fury at Mrs. Rachel Lynde for calling her redhaired and homely. Anne has said this often enough about herself, but plaintively observes that “there’s such a difference between saying a thing yourself and hearing other people say it,” and her reason follows: “you may know a thing is so, but you can’t help hoping other people don’t quite think it is.” Maybe the desire for strength, the hunger for control, and the yearning for excellence are in the DNA of the human soul. But I think there is another reason we shrink from our weaknesses.

How Does Judgment Impact Vulnerability?

Not only do we desire to be strong, in control, and excellent, but we also desire to be stronger and have more control and greater excellence than the person next to us. Observation states facts; it tells us that two people are excellent. Judgment, on the other hand, ranks facts; it tells us which of the two people is more excellent. I often judge myself, and this can lead to the assumption that other people judge me too. One noteworthy difference between these kinds of judgment is that we are intimately acquainted with the former, while the latter tends to be perceived rather than articulated and expressed. I often minimize my weaknesses because I fear other people’s judgment; however, this judgment is often assumed rather than fact.

For example, I know I am an amateur writer, and that my writing has flaws. If one looks hard enough in any area, they will almost always be confronted with room for improvement. (It makes me laugh when Grammarly suggests how to improve a quote from a famous piece of literature.) My perception of my flaws leads me to conjecture that you, my dear reader, are likely judging what I have written, too. Maybe I have even lost some ounce of your good opinion by taking the bold step of infiltrating your inbox with my thoughts. This train of thought could easily become a never-ending spiral of pessimistic assumptions that will do nothing beneficial for me.

Is Judgment Always Bad?

The simple answer to this question is no. Judgment can quite often be positive.

When you get trapped in a rabbit trail of what ifs, there is always an even if to combat it. I can’t take credit for this concept, but I’m not sure who said it first. This is just my recycled version of someone else’s genius epiphany. It is a simple yet effective way of flipping not only your sentence, but also your mentality. For example, the question “What if I am judged?” becomes “Even if I am judged,___________.” Filling in the blank can be very specific to people’s individual situations, but these next few paragraphs will explore some general applications of this line of reasoning.

Even if I am judged, it does not logically follow that someone’s opinion of me will be negatively influenced. For example, consider whose job it is to award first place in a competition. Typically, a judge carries out this office. To be invulnerable not only avoids criticism, but it also avoids positive feedback. Likewise, being vulnerable leads to opportunities for both criticism and positive feedback.

So far, we have established that neither vulnerability nor judgment is necessarily bad. Likewise, criticism does not have to be bad either. Just as a judge may award a first place, a judge often gives criticism. Simply put, criticism informs those not awarded first place how to get closer to that esteemed position. In many situations, criticism can be hurtful; those instances can create a lasting negative connotation that tells your brain that criticism is bad.

“we remember negative experiences well, because they are prioritized for processing, and we grant them more of the cognitive processes that are well-known to increase the likelihood that an event becomes a part of our memory representations.”

-National Institutes of Health

However, we should be careful not to characterize one bad experience as our precedent for all other similar experiences. For example, if a child burns their mouth on a chocolate chip cookie fresh out of the oven, they could come to the conclusion that they dislike chocolate chip cookies. However, it is likely not the cookie that they dislike, but rather the temperature of the cookie. We can inadvertently do the same thing. If our previous experiences with criticism have been harsh, painful, or disheartening, we tend to characterize criticism itself as negative.

In Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, Gildor Inglorion counsels Frodo, saying, “The wide world is all about you: you can fence yourselves in, but you cannot forever fence it out.” You will likely experience painful criticism and harsh judgment at some point or another. That’s just a part of life. You cannot forever fence the criticism out. However, you can make the choice not to fence yourself in. Invulnerability asks: What do I have to lose? Conversely, vulnerability asks: What opportunity can I seize? My final word of encouragement is to lean into the opportunities, both large and small to be vulnerable. Seize the opportunities as they come!