On Vulnerability

I am reading a book by therapist Daniel Gottlieb who is a quadriplegic. His book, The Wisdom We’re Born With, offers profound insights gained from his own experience and trauma. While the book explores courage, humility and faith among other topics, there is one little chapter called vulnerability that speaks particularly to me. Perhaps because after I left my comfortable job as a teacher, I entered uncharted territory as a painter and started to feel more insecure and fearful about being judged by my peers. There was a new vulnerability I never felt before. (I certainly began to empathize more with artists who struggled with showing their work to the public, but I will leave this for another blogpost!)

For Dan Gottlieb, vulnerability was not an option. He could not do the everyday stuff we take for granted like going to the toilet, dressing up and eating. As a practicing therapist, he needed his patient’s help and understanding as much as they needed his.

His experience with his own impossible vulnerability made him come to the conclusion that we cannot have intimate relationships if we do not let ourselves be vulnerable. He says, “If someone says they love us but does not know our darkest side, our fears, our fragility, our areas of shame and hostility, all they can love is what we show. If we don’t communicate with them that we are sometimes ‘full of shit’ then we live in fear that we will be rejected if they see this side of us.”

His insights give us a new perspective on the necessity of vulnerability and how it helps us connect with others. His advice is not just relevant for our personal relationships but really speaks to our general attitudes towards living more courageously. Because every time we take a step to do something brave and new, the feeling of vulnerability steps in and tells us that we might fail. That someone might laugh at us and reject us. So we stop short, do the ‘logical’ thing, and fall back on something familiar.

But he says the more we embrace vulnerability and accept it as an important part of our humanity, the more courageously we live. The more we avoid it, the more alone and isolated we feel. So today, I remind myself not to avoid vulnerability or let it stop me from being more generous, open and honest. The more vulnerable we are, the more compassionate we are towards others and ourselves.