Denying Vulnerability

Brene Brown (2013) suggests that being able to own and bear our vulnerability is key to experiencing ourselves, our emotions and our lives more fully and remaining creative in the face of challenges. I believe that our capacity to remain creative in the face of challenges is an essential hallmark of personal resilience and self-resourcing. Moreover, denying our vulnerability prevents us from drawing upon the resources and supports around us when we need them the most.

In a broad sense, the tendency for us adults to deny our vulnerability arises out of the individualist-development paradigm that is, I would suggest, still dominant culturally. Development in this sense is characterised as an evolving process of an individual entity toward a decontextualised self (Woolants, 2012). According to this paradigm the self actualises when the individual is abstracted from their context and the individual develops or matures as he or she obtains greater capability and independence.

This paradigm infers that both health and maturity are to be understood in terms of autonomy and self-reliance. What follows, implicitly at least, is that temporary dependence on another is a mark of immaturity or a regression to an infantile state. The act of expressing vulnerability therefore inevitably correlates to the experience of shame, as we are culturally and socially conditioned to attach judgments of being weak, infantile and inferior to the act.

The dangers in marginalising our vulnerability have been well documented by writers such as Brown (2013), Hollis (2001) and Kauffman (1992). All these writers also agree that vulnerability, however painful, is very close to the authentic experience of being human. So how can we begin to address the widespread denial of vulnerability?

At the collective level, normalising the expression of vulnerability significantly enhances culture. In my work with teams, the first step towards this is to encourage and support leaders, partners, judges, associates and senior lawyers to express their own vulnerability. When courageous leaders share their own vulnerability, they provide permission and inspiration for others to do so also.

In my coaching work with individuals, I work with clients to address and contextual feelings of shame that attach to the expression of vulnerability. Such work supports my clients to become better resourced for responding to challenge. Resourcing in this sense does not solely imply the acquisition of new tools or techniques to “deal with it all yourself”. Rather, it includes the development of nurturing support networks you can lean into and rely upon without enlivening a sense of shame for doing so. This approach acknowledges that it is precisely our vulnerability that compels us, in the evolutionary sense, towards being social and relational beings. Only when we lean into our vulnerability and accept our relational needs can we begin to feel safe and fulfilled.