Vulnerability

Being vulnerabile is often not a feeling with which any of us are comfortable. Much of our lives is an attempt to mask our vulnerability regarding survival and need for love, connection, community, and value. When something goes wrong with your body, even a cold or a stomach flu, you realize that just below the veneer of "having it all together" and being ok, there is a big fear, a big question, a big vulnerability which perhaps you have never even allowed yourself to feel. Perhaps this vulnerability is what allows us to each come into real connection with each other even more than our strengths because then we actually greet each other in humanness, in compassion and in a certain "nakedness" about what life is.

In psychology the term "objectify" or "objectivity" is used. We have learned to "objectify" each other. It's part of how our brains work to make life and other understandable. We learned a certain pattern of life based on our family's patterns of what was acceptable and right. We learned a certain value system through the family, educational system, political system, religious systems and in the families of friends and family. We can often think we KNOW when in fact we have accepted a pattern that is untried. It usually takes 30 to 40 years of life before a person somehow meets his or her own "waterloo" and realizes that life isn't quite as easy as it seems, that one is no longer the idolized child, that other people aren't the parents anymore, that one really does have to work and work together . . . It takes quite a few years before one even begins to realize that one "objectifies" the other -- meaning you project your own "stuff" onto the other and "label" the other with your own stuff which may or may not be true and real.

When we objectify another person, our ability to feel and see the other person as a real and legitimate "other" is limited. We believe we understand that person or we believe that we have the right way or best point of view, but the truth is, most likely we are only seeing part of the truth of the other. Like the 3 blind men feeling only part of the elephant and thinking he sees the whole elephant, we are always only seeing partial truth as we come into relationship with each other.

Somehow when I can step back and open my heart into my own vulnerability, I am better able to see another person and help another person. Vulnerability is this sense of my heart softening. It includes my fear, like when I am sick or when I am not "swinging the world by its tail". It means stepping back away from "having it all together" and into a certain sense of not knowing what is always best or right for myself or for another. It's a softer space that allows my own fears and unknowing and sense of inadequacy to open.

What's amazing, however, is that when I soften into my vulnerability . . .sometimes just below that surface is a joyous place that is actually very alive and secure in a sense of beingness and love that will hold my own vulnerability and another's. This place is one of a childlike happiness and knowing of my own Inner Being, of God if you will, of an aliveness that no longer objectifies you or the other. This sense of vulnerability leads me into a place where I am more aware of just being alive, of being able to love, of touching other lives as equal human beings on a rare and beautiful and even mysterious journey. In this place I just am, helping because I have certain skills and a certain nature, but underlying it all, is an amazing exchange of realness and human heartedness and dignity and love and compassion and hope.

Vulnerability is a key to actually dropping into yourself and coming into relationship with yourself and hence others too. It's from this place where we can all begin to somehow actually touch each other through the heart. Vulnerability allows the walls and defenses come down so we can actually begin to talk and touch each other's lives, beyond judgment, beyond objectifying and knowing what is right or best or anything. Softening into our vulnerability will open a door to something even more beautiful and honest and good.

Perhaps this is one of the best ways in which I begin sessions . . . because there are many tears cried at my table and I am so honored. Know that I too have cried many tears, that my heart has been etched with pain and confusion and unknowing and mistakes. In our shared vulnerability, we actually start to have a real discussion about turning your life around, of beginning to heal the wounds of the heart, and beginning to find a new strength about who you are so that you can create the life you really want to live.

If my words and heart feels right and you think I might be able to help you, please feel welcome to call me and talk. Or email. I'll usually get back to you in a day if not sooner.

Take Care, be soft and strong . . . and skip like a child sometimes too!