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Margo Mitchell

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How we learn to become vulnerable gracefully. I tend to swing from one extreme to the other - never good.

I was what they call "counter-dependent" until my mid/late 30's. I refused to allow myself to be vulnerable in relationships due to my childhood experiences. Once I realized that the only way to get the emotional intimacy I craved so much was to allow myself to be vulnerable; I just bared my soul to the first person who came along. It was a long and considerably painful lesson in discernment, and it nearly killed me. Still, I refused to give up, refused to put the walls back up, and slowly I have grown. How have you learned to be more vulnerable? Have you made the mistakes I did? Did you find that any pain made you want to pull back into your shell and say, "forget it, it's not worth it"? What did you do?

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    Debra Smith 200+

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    May 26 2012: Grace and vulnerabity may be mutually exclusive, But so what? Be vulnerable anyway!

  • david la rose

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    May 11 2012: My wife and I and fundamentally different in this way... I guage how much I want to embrace a concept.... Like someone else commented, "lean in slowly"... My wife however, is 100%. She's either in or she's not. She either hates or she loves you... The point is, I think some people are hard wired like that... It can be discplined slightly, but not changed (IMO)...

  • max golding

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    May 9 2012: Here's a great article on how to think about vulnerability without having to pendulum big swings like how you're describing.

    http://www.psychalive.org/2012/02/on-being-vulnerable-part-i/

    But I know exactly what you mean. Walls up high and thick, walls fall down and you're naked. Some might say this is a bipolar kind of thing but I'm not particularly stoked on the diagnosis-reductionist psych view. Hopefully that way of viewing people is dying out!!

  • kandy davis

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    May 8 2012: maybe lean into it slowly.. allow for a bit of discomfort every day.
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    Fritzie Reisner 100+

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    Apr 29 2012: This is such a difficult question to address in the abstract. I think we all learn by experience what we can reveal of ourselves and to whom. If you want to be sharing yourself authentically with people, you will sometimes find you have revealed something to someone you shouldn't have trusted. Depending how wrong you were, it could be devastating for awhile. You then lose confidence in your judgment about who to trust and might naturally play it safe for awhile.
    I think it is gratifying to share yourself fully with some people but a mistake to feel you need to share your every thought and feeling with everyone. I think it works better to share with someone who is showing her interest and trust in you by also sharing her own ideas and feelings openly.
    It sounds like you have discovered that it is safer to reveal yourself in stages rather than putting everything out there at once.
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