A conversation on TED.com: How do you open your heart and get vulnerable?

Richard Knight
Bordon
United Kingdom

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How do you open your heart and get vulnerable?

Conversation: After several years of taking part and teaching courses I am more and more able to move into a state of vulnerability intentionally with the gains that Brene has listed. As an Architect and Database programmer - this is not my normal state. It seems irrational to be vulnerable. But the results are an incredible sense of inner peace and strength that I would want everyone to experience. I am so glad that this subject is getting an ever greater variety of speakers on TED. But how do you go about gaining the courage, compassion and connection that leads to vulnerability... that is powerful rather than weakness? You need to understand how your consciousness works - how to get out of your mind and into the present, examine the your blueprint that has given you both useful and less useful patterns of default behavior.
In David Christian's Big History I feel there is a clue as to why this might be important. We need to get to the next level of smartness quick - we need to look at what we are creating and why - how we connect with each other and what is the real use of our intellect. Thank you Brene for stopping from using measuring devices and starting to use a higher state of consciousness.

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Bernie White
- +2
May 8 2011: I've found going to acting classes is a great way to practice courage, compassion and connection. It's a great experience of vulnerability in a safe environment. Particularly recommend Sanford Meisner style classes - repetition rocks!
You don't have to be interested in acting per se.
Ann Nunnally
- +4
May 4 2011: I think you have to decide to do it. If it is very frightening, do it in a very small way. I don't think you either have it or you don't. I think there is a spectrum, and you can move backward and forward along it based on your experiences. Almost 24 years ago, I was told my two-week old son had a congenital heart defect. His father and I chose to love him and let him do what he could do, but he struggled with denial and I struggled with distance. He was in and out of the hospital until he was four, and then he was healthy for a long time. We had a "normal" family life with him and his younger brother. When he was 16, he died suddenly. No one to blame except his poor, malformed heart. It has been seven years and I find I have gone back and forth on the spectrum of vulnerability many times. I have never felt it was not worth it to have loved him, but there are many times I have felt shame for something I did wrong when he was alive or made myself numb because I was tired of grieving.

If we are not careful, we can use vulnerability as another club to beat ourselves up with. You can't be perfectly vulnerable!
Anfernee Chansamooth
- 0
May 4 2011: This is not easy to do but the more that we do it, the better we get at it. Practise awareness. When you are in a situation where you are vulnerable pay attention to what is happening. Are you shutting down? In that moment ask yourself the big question: "WHY?" What am I hiding from? What do I fear? Is it being judged?

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. - Eleanor Roosevelt

Forget about being right, perfect or anything. Just be.
Janice Clarfield
- +4
Apr 29 2011: "To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then one suffers from not loving. Therefore to love is to suffer, not to love is to suffer. To suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy then is to suffer. But suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be unhappy one must love, or love to suffer, or suffer from too much happiness. I hope you're getting this down." ~Woody Allen
Jon Patch
- +2
Apr 27 2011: Richard, you ask, "But how do you go about gaining the courage, compassion and connection that leads to vulnerability... that is powerful rather than weakness?" I believe this question is uniquely answered by each of us. For me it is about sharing my truths, in person, with someone I am close to, without the need for agreement, but with the desire to be seen. Brené describes how difficult this is, so I think the starting point, the bootstrap moment, is finding the courage to do this, and to persist over time. Neural plasticity theory would say that reprogramming entrenched shame avoidance strategies could take months or years.

How to bootstrap? I consider the alternative: lack of connection and authenticity, and that motivates me. It's still hard.

And vulnerability is powerful when done appropriately. Those who don't perceive that are perhaps those with whom it is best not to share your innermost secrets. A friend of mine said, "Choose WHAT you share with WHOM and HOW." For me it's not about blabbing through a social media channel, that's a cop out. Nor do I choose to share with people that are combative, shaming or intolerant.

So I see the steps (as related to the attributes you chose) as interconnected and overlapping: exhibit courage, show compassion (for self), be vulnerable, and achieve connection. Stir and repeat.

Your journey is more, as I understand, about embracing "Big History" to give the paradigm intellectual context and meaning. I hear that and honour it, and my path differs. Hopefully we'll end up with the same result: the connection we yearn for and deserve.
Debra Smith 100+
- +1
Apr 27 2011: Richard, we all feel as though too much transparency or openness will kill us. We are all faced with the fact that while it can hurt- it can lead to the connection we all want and need. Sooooo.......the choice is to hurt a bit to find the ecstacy. I think most of us can find the courage if we believe that we are worthy of the reward. Who ever indicated that you (or anyone else) was not is full of BS. You need to exorcise them out of your heart and head.
Janice Clarfield
- +3
Apr 27 2011: In my experience, vulnerability is a portal to humility. And humility is an integral aspect of egolessness.
Vulnerability is not to be rejected, rather it is a quality to cherish. With the willingness/courage to be authentic, one can rest in tenderness, self-compassion.

Let the heart break ... open ... again ...
As Brene says, wholeHEARTedness
(or is that wholehearTEDness?!)
Heather Reynolds
- +2
Apr 23 2011: How do you gain courage, compassion and connection that leads to vulnerability? Knowing how consciousness works sounds like you are in your head thinking about consciousness. I believe courage comes from believing you have absolute value even if you have nothing to offer. There are ways to meeting that version of yourself, for me, it requires stillness. Just sitting and being, cultivating a sense of love, gratitude and effortlessness.
Bob Van Oosterhout 20+
- +14
Apr 20 2011: I think vulnerability decreases as hearts open. Someone with a fully open heart would have no fear of or resistance to pain or hurt. They would see potential and limitations in themselves and others, recognize that acting from the heart might cause pain, and realize it’s worth it. Examples are Ghandi, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandella.

You asked “How do we open our hearts?” That’s a process I’ve been exploring with my students and patients for 35 years. I believe that people who consistently strive to open their hearts recognize that love is the most important thing in life.

We become inauthentic by resisting life. The impulse to resist pain is consistently reinforced by Western culture. Resisting emotional pain is even more deeply entrenched. When we try to stop feeling, we tense various muscle groups and hold our breath. Since the limbic system (emotional center of the brain) is linked to proprioception (muscle movement), this tension inhibits the experience of emotion and provides an illusion of invulnerability as we feel less and less.

In my experience, letting go of patterns of tension takes regular practice over weeks and months. It involves learning to keep our body in a neutral position so muscles are in balance with opposing muscles and the skeleton becomes the primary means of support (we don’t have to hold ourselves up). This is called “grounding” and it involves learning to sit, stand and move with minimal muscle tension. When combined with slow rhythmic diaphragmatic breathing (this seems to stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system which inhibits muscle activation), patterns of tension are resolved. We become able to move, feel, and respond authentically.

When our bodies tense, our minds narrows focus on the negative (an adaptive reaction in a threat situation). This creates more tension which further narrows focus on the negative. These become habits of thinking and perception. They can be resolved through regular meditation and learning to clarify thoughts and perceptions. Resolving patterns of tension makes this easier.

In sum, I believe we open our hearts by (1) Restoring balance by resolving and preventing physical, mental, and emotional tension; (2) accepting pain and the threat of pain, and (3) clarifying that love is the most important thing in life. In short, Balance, Accept, and Clarify (ABC but start with B).
- Michele Patsula
  - 0
  May 13 2011: This was so well said. Thank you Bob you helped me a lot.