Vulnerability Creates Invulnerability

I can hear the shouts now. We all know that opposites cannot co-exist, so what kind of nonsense is this? And certainly one opposite cannot arise out of another! More nonsense. And what could such ideas have to do with thinking, anyhow?

In my usual way of thinking, I contend that at one level these concerns are valid and at another, more sophisticated level, they are not. Further, appreciating the latter enables us to achieve a higher state of emotional well being. And, lastly, I also believe that understanding the more subtle level is at least an indirect aid to our thinking.

Whether these two words and the concepts they represent can exist together depends not on any superficial sense of incompatible opposition, but on how the words are used. We all understand what invulnerability means---we are armored-up and cannot be harmed. Simple and true enough. None of us wants to be or be seen as vulnerable, and for good reason. If we are vulnerable to physical attack, for example, we will naturally experience fear and a strong desire to avoid the challenges, creating anxiety.

But vulnerability is not limited to the physical. We may fear emotional vulnerability, which can be a normal response. But it may be much more threatening if it is the result of a person’s unbalanced inner state. As an internal condition, the vulnerability is present all the time, just waiting for an excuse to show up. And it shows up most often and most dramatically when we are under stress.

For much of my life the big vulnerability was shame, the idea that others would find out who I really was as opposed to the carefully (and entirely unconsciously) crafted image that I wanted to portray. I was under stress nearly all the time trying to maintain this fiction. My vulnerability arose because at some level I sensed that if someone found out “who I really was” they would dismiss me or dislike me, and I would be shamed. This had to be concealed. If someone asked me how business was going, as just one example, and it was not going well, I would assure them all was fine. I was not consciously lying---I believed exactly what I was saying, all to reinforce the story I told myself that I really was worthy, a view that in my deepest recesses I knew to be false.

My vulnerability came from a weak sense of myself that I could not let anyone see, a characteristic that, like it or not, nearly all of us share. This is dysfunctional vulnerability because, in my case, it was built on a great fear causing me to try and hide aspects of myself that desperately needed exposure and the strong light of day for emotional health. Most people think they are immune from such fears, and from the distortions that follow from them, but that is only because the fears are lodged deep in the unconscious. Our powerful inner needs to protect the false stories must go unacknowledged. My particular need was to avoid shame, but there are many others, such as the need to control, to be right, to win, to be perfect, to be loved, and so forth. These are all large vulnerabilities that need feeding, but which can never be fed enough to resolve them.

From these needs and fears we construct a reality that does not exist, usually a set of stories that give us the illusion of feeling and looking just fine. The stories enable us to keep these troubling aspects below conscious level so they are deniable, which we imagine allows us to avoid vulnerability. But in trying to make ourselves invulnerable by hiding who we are, and by our protective stories and mis-representations, we actually produce the opposite outcome.

The effort to create invulnerability results in unhealthy vulnerability.

Adding to the challenge is the fact that our inner selves “know” that we have failed to achieve invulnerability, fueling the firing of anxiety. Perhaps even worse is the fact that our real vulnerability is obvious to others because they can often see the inconsistency between who we are portraying ourselves to be and how we act, which is who we really are.

But there is a positive side to vulnerability. One cannot love and be loved without some emotional vulnerability, without taking a chance on love or affection or friendship. At some point, we have to say, “I love you,” and hope for a good outcome. That vulnerability is necessary for a healthy emotional life. Vulnerability also has a normal situational aspect. The death of a loved one or the loss of a job may leave us temporarily emotionally vulnerable. Healthy people will recover over time from these losses.

In the positive and most healthy sense, vulnerability means openness and fearlessness, and a willingness to give up the hold that our fears and stories have on us. We see ourselves as we really are and have no apprehension about letting others see this, including our mistakes or weaknesses. Paradoxically, it is this attitude that creates invulnerability. If we have no weak ego to defend, no false story to protect, openness is easy. We have no armor, and need none, and yet we are invulnerable. With nothing to shield from critical eyes---and there are plenty of those---we have nothing to fear because no one can hurt us. We see that wonderful things are gained from transparency. Others will respect us much more for telling the truth about who we are, and our relationships with them will be improved immeasurably as they sense the demise of our earlier falseness. But perhaps most importantly, we will be more emotionally healthy as the fear of being exposed disappears. A great weight is lifted from us as the emotional energy used to maintain the illusions is no longer needed, allowing us to deal with the world and its challenges with greater integrity.

So, invulnerability arises out of vulnerability.

Finally, how is thinking enhanced in all this? Simple---as we adopt openness and fearlessness, our inner clarity increases and the need to protect our opinions and views recedes. Since strongly held opinions can be anathema to objective thought, reducing the grip our opinions have on us frees us to look at things as they really are rather than as how we want them to be. The adverse impact of opinions on thinking is so important that I will address this challenge in the next post.