Vulnerability As A Pathway to Your Personal Power
Moving Out of Shame and Overwhelm
Do you ever feel stupid?
Are you ever embarrassed?
Have you felt small or less than, like everyone else knows something you don’t?
Have you felt shame for something you did or worse for who you fear you are?
Last week I was scammed out of a lot of money by someone I met on an internet dating site. Someone I thought I was building a connection with. You may wonder, why am I sharing this with you?
Well it’s not about what happened but about my response to what happened.
In the moment I realized what was happening, I felt so much shame. I felt stupid for letting it happen. Stupid for not seeing the signs. Stupid for trusting someone I had never met. Ridiculous for believing the person. I also felt hurt and scared and weak. I felt overwhelmed with emotions. Overwhelmed with negative thoughts.
Even if you’ve never shared the experience of being scammed, we’ve all had moments where we felt we had to hide for fear of how the world would judge us.
It makes sense to have those fears because the world can be full of judgements. At the same time, if we bury our negative emotions and stuff them down, they tend to sit there festering in our unconscious.
Those negative emotions can impact all our decisions or even keep us stuck in indecision. Unable to move forward, in constant fear that we are going to be found out for the fallible beings that we are.
But you don’t have to be controlled by the shame. You can take your power back.
Most of my life I‘ve had two voices battling inside me. The one that knew i was amazing and the one that thought I was less than everyone else. I often chose to give the power to the voice that felt less than, even though I thought i was doing the opposite. I did this by hiding my insecurities, hiding the places I felt small. By my fear that I would not be loved or valued if anyone saw or knew that I had weaknesses or insecurities.
So I chose to put my energy into appearing how I believed everybody needed to see me in order to value me. In order for me to value myself. Where might you be doing that in your life? Where might you be hiding your humanity from others and even from yourself?
Here’s a few quotes from shame researcher Brene Brown:
“Vulnerability is hard, and it’s scary and it feels dangerous. But it’s not as hard or as scary or dangerous as getting to the end of our lives and having to ask ourselves, “What if I would’ve shown up?”
“Vulnerability is not about winning. It’s not about losing. It’s having the courage to show up when you can’t control the outcome.”
“What we don’t need in the midst of struggle is shame for being human.”
In the midst of my discomfort, fear and shame, I felt alone and unworthy. I knew I could let those thoughts fester and dig myself into a deeper hole or I could expose them to the light of day.
I chose to post a video of me in my low moment and ask my community for support. Honestly I was scared to make that post. I felt shame in asking for support. And a part of me was aware it was the path forward for me. Through a culmination of the self work I’ve been doing for years, through gaining small wins as i revealed parts of myself I was afraid to reveal.
Of course a part of me would prefer to have not gone through the experience. At the same time, I know this is where growth is created. People responded in a big way with love and support. Letting me know they see me, letting me know it’s happened to them too. Telling me how much they admired my vulnerability and how much it meant to them to feel the shared humanity in all the responses.
The way i reached out may or may not be the method you choose when you’re feeling shame or feeling small, scared or alone. Maybe for you, it looks like reaching out to a trusted friend or family member, speaking with a coach or therapist or mentor. In some way, allowing the darkness that you feel to be exposed to the light so it does not eat you up inside.
The reality is, we are all fallible, we all make mistakes, we all do things we are not always proud of, we all sometimes come up shorter than the expectations that we hold for ourselves.
We have a choice in those moments.
As I’ve learned more and more to be vulnerable, to share with those I trusted about what was happening for me, to be discerning with how and when i shared, I discovered what i feared would drive others away actually allowed my connections with others to become stronger.
It also allowed me to be more compassionate with myself and as importantly more compassionate with others. Because when we can’t be vulnerable with ourselves we often become more critical and judgmental of others as an unconscious way of making ourselves feel better. As a way of protecting us from examining our own insecurities.
Where might you be judging others as a way of protecting yourself? Where might you be judging yourself as protection from the pain of your experience or the desire to not repeat the same thing again?
When we vulnerably share where we struggle, we connect to our own humanity and the humanity in others. It is from this place that we truly flourish. Our courage becomes an example to others. We become stronger through the process and our connection to ourselves and to others becomes deeper and richer for it.