Date: 03-25-2024
Tags: vulnerability connection worthiness
What is more precious in this life than connection between human beings? What a rare and sacred thing is genuine vulnerability, the gateway to true connection.
It seems strange and tragic to me, since I’ve discovered the infinite value of connection, that we expend so much energy in devising ways and crafting personas to avoid the very stream of vulnerability that would guide us gently to intimacy with those around us.
We build up walls to protect ourselves from the very thing that would save us. In the bleakest moments of my Dark Night of the Soul, my guiding light was the love and support of the people in my life who care for me. There was no other way out.
I had always prided myself on my self-sufficiency. I imagined that as long as I cultivated an inner world that was deep and impenetrable, I’d be fortified against the inevitable onslaught of the tragedies of life.
This season has thrown an unexpected curveball. This was the first time I couldn’t get myself out of a rut. This was the first time I actually needed to rely on others to get through.
When I fell apart, I had a choice. I could collapse under the weight of my anxiety and hopelessness, or I could take the biggest, scariest risk I could have imagined at the time: I could allow myself to be truly vulnerable with others. Vulnerability was unthinkable in my twenties. To be seen, with all of my imperfections and insecurities, was my greatest fear. I had devised all sorts of methods (conscious and unconscious) to avoid this catastrophe. What Terrifies us Often Holds the Key to our Greatest Power
I had intimations at times that there was something false about the way I interfaced with the world; something contrived about how I showed up in relationships, but I wasn’t yet ready to face the shadowy conglomeration of personas that I was intuiting.
It took a complete breakdown and a massive (and quite unplanned) ego-death for me to finally see what I had not wanted to see. They say that we usually only make changes when our current circumstance becomes more painful than the fear of taking the risk to change. Well, that crossroads had come for me, and my attempts to cling to old personas were causing such excruciating anxiety that I finally decided to let go.
To let go and trust what would come up.
What came up was my true self. She was scared, abandoned, and worst of all, vulnerable. I had tucked her away so deep within me, so far behind masks and personas, that she had scarcely seen the outside world. I certainly made every attempt to avoid letting her be seen by others. And now she was out in the open, being seen. It was absolutely terrifying. I had no idea how to interface with the world as my true self.
In my initial attempts to communicate authentically with others around me, the anxiety reached peaks so severe that I literally had panic attacks in the most mundane and seemingly stress-free settings. I’d be sitting in a yoga class, sweating and silently panicking as the group went around sharing in a circle why they had decided to come to yoga that night. My voice quivered as I shared the honest truth, that I was making an attempt to connect authentically with others.
And many such attempts were made. I look back now and I’m so proud of myself. I went to many a meditation class, yoga class, one-on-one meetings with new friends, etc.—things I would never have attempted to do in the past, at least not as my “true self” without a facade of some sort to protect me from being seen.
What I’ve learned since the beginning of this journey of vulnerability is that the only way to live fully is to show up as your real self and allow yourself to be seen. It’s true that this puts you at a greater risk for rejection, betrayal, heartbreak, and all of those painful experiences that we’d rather avoid in life. But as Carl Jung says, “No tree grows to heaven whose roots do not reach to hell”. In order to fully experience life, we must take the pain with the joy. We must take the risk of vulnerability if we wish to truly connect with other human beings. As you increase your capacity for negative experiences, you also increase your capacity for positive experiences
I discovered through the process of unfolding in my vulnerability that the richness of connection is worth the risk of heartbreak. The moments when I’ve felt most alive, I’ve also felt a sensation similar to the flesh burning off of my body—that raw, wildly uncomfortable, almost intolerable feeling of being seen. In that excruciating sensation I found a treasure I never expected to find: that I could be known in all of my imperfection and frailty, and still be loved.
I found that in allowing the walls that once protected my true self to fall, I invite those around me to let down their walls as well. And when that happens, something magical follows: connection. True, deep, soul-mingling connection. To see and be seen is to love and be loved. And there is nothing more precious than that.
It’s like Joseph Campbell says, “the cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek”. All this time my terrifying cave of vulnerability held the treasure of connection I’d been longing for my whole life.
Links to:
A symphony of a single life Anxiety is about control The Stranger The Fire of Affliction True to Myself Or Else… Dark Night of the Soul Connection is All Connection at the Core