I hope you started with superpower #1 first and enjoyed getting to know yourself a bit, and got some pleasant surprises whilst at it! #Self-Awareness. The next superpower, vulnerability, flows right from it.

Superpower #2: Vulnerability

Vulnerability is the courage to be authentic, open and honest about your thoughts, feelings, and experiences. The definition that I like is ‘openness to attack/harm’ or ‘the willingness to risk harm’.

For me, it takes the ultimate strength to do that. You present yourself to another person at least a layer bare, with no weapons of defense or attack, and you give that person a weapon to use against you.

And many times they do use it against you!

The funny thing vulnerability does though is that it strips receivers of weapons to use against you but, caveat, when you have de-weaponized them to yourself.

I mentioned in the post about self-awareness that it gives you a platform for self compassion and self-forgiveness, the way to disempowering negative effects of your experiences, and the beginnings of inner freedom.

Vulnerability allows you to stop hiding. It allows you to be your authentic self, greatness, flaws, imperfections and all, take it or leave it.

You allow others to exercise their right of taking the real you or leaving the real you, which can only be good for you.

In my opinion, the opposite of vulnerability is the tough bloody and sweaty business of pretense! I don’t know if it’s sustainable at soul level to not be your true self.

When I started sharing some of my experiences openly, I allowed the other party to say ‘me too’ and start allowing healing to happen. I started experiencing inner freedom myself.

You wanna turbocharge your relationship? Vulnerability with your partner is the foundation of intimacy, deep connection and trust.

How is your partner going to know and practice your love languages if you’ve never opened up about them? Of course, thanks to self-introspection, you would have sat down and figured them out first.

Vulnerability with your kids builds mutual respect, encourages open communication and enhances their emotional intelligence and sense of confidence. They see that they don’t have to hide.

I knew I had to bite the bullet and let my kid in on why I decided to be in therapy, especially since she had been bearing the brunt of the harmful habits.

Of course that doesn’t mitigate the effects, but it gave her the ability to put things into perspective and to be a little more forgiving. She says she’s considering being a therapist!

Levels of vulnerability

Your level of vulnerability will differ between your relationships. You peel back a layer with the people you choose to be open with, and even deeper layers with your kids.

However, you should (ideally) eventually find yourself layer-less with your spouse. Maybe this is where you’ll hate me!😊

You’d have had to find yourself completely bare with yourself to begin with, circling back to self-awareness again. Vulnerability must first start with you.

Should they betray your vulnerability in any way, yes it will sting, but it was not about them in the first place.

It was about your freedom, your authenticity, your purpose mandate to express and walk in who you are in the world, and your mature desire to foster a deeper relationship with them.

One flip side of the vulnerability coin is that you risk hurting the other party with your truth. You risk making your partner feel inadequate should you tell them you feel dissatisfied with how things are going.

You risk increasing your diabetic parent’s sugar level if you tell them what happened to you as a kid.

Again, the boldness is in standing for your truth, in the desire to start to heal, be it yourself or your relationship.

It’s in the hope that this can only fortify your concerned relationship.

It’s in having the confidence to say if they consistently reject my truth, then maybe they are not for me. Maybe they are not for my intimate space, and I can love love them from an emotional/physical distance.

It may be that the world didn’t treat you well at some point and now you are distrusting and utterly afraid to open yourself and allow yourself to bloom.

Can I submit to you that the pain of conforming to and hiding, even behind, what the world did to you far outweighs the pain of being vulnerable with someone.

The flipside of it…

The other flipside of vulnerability is you creating the space for others to be vulnerable with you. This is so challenging when it comes to parenting.

Do you personalize things when someone attempts opening up to you? Do you get triggered and react inappropriately? Do you judge? Do you listen? Do you impose your own thoughts and beliefs?

I know I struggled with this. Again, it takes self-discovery, healing and continued learning to be able to not focus on your own hurts and pains, because that’s what it is when you can’t create that space.

THE TAKE HOME

Vulnerability buys you freedom, emotional intimacy and healing. It costs a high price, but it yields a high prize.

When you remove the power from the things you experienced that left you feeling disempowered (e.g. low self-worth, self-confidence and self-acceptance), no one can use them as weapons against you, not even yourself.

You foster deep meaningful relationships, and you also give others the permission to stop hiding and to be themselves.

Do you see how vulnerability is not a weakness? It is definitely not for the faint-hearted, but definitely for you. Because you reading up to this point is not a coincidence, you are telling the universe, bring it on.

You are ready to turbocharge. Let’s go.

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