Archive for the ‘vulnerability’ Tag
Our closest relationships are the source of our greatest longing and deepest pain, so we armor-plate our souls against the danger. The only access is through the chinks in our armor where both arrows and salve can reach our core, and we martial all our defenses to these vulnerable spaces, blocking out both suffering and compassion. It is a terrifying dilemma. For love to touch and heal our wounds, we must reveal them and face possible rejection. The closer our relationship, the more power it carries to heal and to harm.
We all hide our so-called weaknesses with our individual schemes: humor or dominance, popularity or withdrawal. The better our defense mechanisms work, the safer we are from pain but the farther from deep relationship. My major defense was over-achieving, stuffing the gaps of failure with redoubled efforts at success… until the whole structure imploded. My greatest sacrifices and determination could not stop failure. And out of that ruin, genuine life began to grow. Those of us with broken defenses suffer most, but are closer to genuine connection and healing.
Kimberly tried to find safety by making everyone around her happy. She was good at it. They called her “Sunshine.” But inside she was dying as she stifled her own feelings and views to make room for everyone else’s. Both of us were too wounded to keep our shields up, but we found in each other a tenderness that invited deep connection. Our shared brokenness created a level of intimacy that few experience.
Since August I have been clutching a runaway roller-coaster as it crashed through a collapsing building. You know the “fire and flood” metaphor… well, it wasn’t a metaphor in my case… but we’ll get to that. Let’s back up to July when Berly and I realized that we could not live on my low-level wages, that I needed more training to land an adequate job, and that my best option was to go into counseling. The right program fit was a school in the opposite corner of the country, and I started inquiring, thinking to start in the spring semester. But they only accepted new students in August… one month away. We both said, “That’s insane!” But should we wait another year while our savings dribbled away each month?
They assured us that acceptance would be valid for a year, so I started the process: updating my resume, getting references, requesting transcripts, and writing a couple of essays while we took our vacation to the west coast. We joked about the craziness of uprooting ourselves and moving across country in a 3-week time frame. Finally, Berly asked me, “So what would it take, how would it be possible?” And ever the problem-solver, I laid out a theoretical plan, which she outrageously declared workable. “Are we really doing this?” we asked each other incredulously. I was accepted into the program with barely two weeks to give in my notice at work and transfer my Home Depot job from the Southeast to the far Northwest corner of the continental U.S. It felt like moving to a foreign country.
I was scheduled to work until the day before leaving, with 3 1/2 days in hand to drive 3000 miles, just in time to reach school for the first day of classes. Berly would come later. I had to sell my cast-iron jointer and repair and sell my zero-turn mower and trailer; I had to fix my truck, get a student loan, plan my trip and living arrangements in Washington, register for classes, get our rental house ready for final inspection. It was a crazy two weeks, but far saner than what followed.
Kimberly found the metaphor into which we jumped, a scary new twist in our pilgrimage. We clung to our trust in a God who was an unmoving rock in our ever-confusing and unpredictable journey only to realize that God is not static, but always moving, inviting us into ever-fresh insight and experience. He is full of surprises, shocks that pry our fingers from our clenched securities. Peter Mayer’s lyrics speak for us:
- Establishing an environment of grace. Unless someone feels safe to share and explore their own viewpoints with a non-judgmental and supportive listener, they cannot be honest even with themselves, and especially not with the other person. This is quite tricky in close relationships because we get enmeshed in our own issues, are blind to our underlying assumptions, and confuse support with other problematic responses (such as the tendency to ‘fix’ or rescue or diagnose). It can get messy–sometimes the focus must switch from the original topic to the current hurtful dynamic–but if we keep flailing towards the goal, we will learn a little through each encounter.
- Sharing vulnerably. We can only share vulnerably in an environment made safe by grace, but unless we share the things that we guard most closely to our hearts, we cannot go very deep in relationship and mutual understanding. It is our fear, often stoked by self-condemnation, that prevents us from sharing at the level that breaks through the surface to the core of ourselves. Sometimes this fear leaks out as sarcasm, blame-shifting, or other ways of self-protection. Vulnerability is especially hard if the listener incites these fears so that they react to our sharing in self-defense. Sometimes a third-party can help in “translation.”
- Supporting ourselves. We cannot make the other person responsible for our safety or support, which is a subtle form of co-dependence. This means I must go at my own pace in self-revelation, not risking more than I can bear in vulnerability. Of course I can be aided in this effort by the listener, by their gentleness, affirmation, and support, but ultimately I must stand up for myself by establishing healthy boundaries and a pace and level of vulnerable sharing that is sustainable.
- Sharing responsibility. It is not possible to go deep in relationship with someone who is unwilling or unable to respond in kind. Vulnerability must match vulnerability, depth match depth, grace match grace. Of course any of these may come more easily to one party, so it is the effort or commitment of each that is matched, not the content. A person may value self-discovery enough to share in a one-sided way, but if it is not matched, it does not deepen real relationship.
- Giving mutual respect. When one position is privileged over the other, it becomes very difficult to find any insight that does not simply support and expand that perception. If one person is presumed to be “right” because of greater experience, insight, knowledge, etc. or because of accepted norms, the process will be undermined. The experiences, feelings, and viewpoints of both parties must be accepted as equally valid–after all, the key does not lie in these perceptions, but in what underlies them, and we cannot reach these hidden roots unless we are sympathetic to what is shows above ground. This is as true for ourselves as for the other–out of hand dismissal or critique will kill the process. (We also have no basis for judging without understanding these foundations). This openness is not easy to do, especially if one is more assertive than the other, but real understanding depends on it.
- Discerning Subconscious systems. The focus is always on deeper understanding, discovering the root system beliefs that establish our conscious behaviors, thoughts, and feelings. This means working to understand the subconscious presuppositions from which our feelings and views flow, otherwise we are stuck on the surface, unable to grow personally and relationally in transformational ways. The question “Why?” repeated (like two-year-olds!) at deeper and deeper levels is key to this process until a whole integrated system is revealed: values, priorities, fears, safety nets, and the like.
- Identifying family-of-origin values and dynamics. This is a huge asset in self-discovery. The most profound and opaque engine of our viewpoint is how we were raised, not the actual teaching of values (though that also counts), but the unspoken and unrecognized values out of which the relational dynamics were formed.
- Placing our role in the family. After we begin to discover the overall picture, we begin to see how we fit into that schema–were we compliant or rebellious? Over what issues? Did we take more after our mother or father? Regarding which values and with what impact on ourselves and our family relationships? How did our siblings impact us and the family dynamics? What did we hide from our families and why? Who were we closest to (or fearful of) and why?
- Understanding our personalities. Our families’ values are filtered into and out of us through our unique personalities. We may be confident or doubtful, introverted or extroverted, pensive or active, cautious or adventurous, and each aspect causes us to respond to family values in different ways. Our personality has a huge impact on our belief structures, self-perception, and relational patterns.
- Being patient with the process. The more foreign to our minds or objectionable and threatening to our thoughts and feelings, the more the effort required and the longer the time frame to reach a new level of discernment. All explanations are tentative until a system begins to form through repetitive confirming discoveries. Our hearts can only go at a certain speed and to push them to go faster will undermine the process. It is the most difficult conflicts in our relationship that touch our most important beliefs, so these are key, but we may have to gradually work up to them.
- Using coping strategies in a healthy way. Our coping mechanisms (people-pleasing, controlling, withdrawing, etc.) are crutches to help us heal. They protect us from too much vulnerability that would set us back in our growth process. But if we use them to avoid growth, our spiritual muscles atrophy, our personal and relational growth is stunted. We need to push ourselves into what is uncomfortable, challenging, even scary, but not so far that we injure ourselves by pushing past our sustainable limits. Most importantly we should recognize when we are using coping mechanisms and why–be conscious, deliberate, and strategic in their use rather than slipping into them by default without noticing.
- Finding support. There are many sources of support and direction for this process: books, podcasts, friends, counselors, self-reflection, exercises, etc. Support may come from the relationship in question, but often there is so much tension there when discussing conflicting feelings and views that outside support is needed. Pseudo-support is especially dangerous, posing as “for your good,” but ending up making us feel worse about ourselves (or feeling better like an opioid). With less support, the process will take longer.
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.” C. S. Lewis
I have not visited my own site since I last posted. When I sink too far down, I just work each day on breathing. Sickness of soul has many comparisons with physical illness, and in both cases healing requires rest, the kind of rest and as much of it as a soul and body need. Most of my life I put my body and soul on strict rations, telling them what they needed and giving only that. I now realize my body and soul are a good bit smarter than my brain in knowing what they lack. I now see my brain is called to support those needs and not contradict and fight them. What I need, I need. There is no shame in needing.
THE TOUCH OF GENTLE HANDS
It is true that being “needy” is considered socially ugly in America. Some of this springs from a reaction to manipulators, folks who take advantage of others’ sympathy–and as a healthy boundary this caution may be good–but I suspect much of it springs from a sense of prideful independence… at least I know how powerfully this has worked in my life. And the natural partner to pride is shame (recognized or not), so I have also been ashamed for my need of others, as well as fearful of their resentment in helping me. I have discovered that the more I try to deny my needs, the more I close off grace from my life. Openly acknowledged need is the entry point for grace, though such vulnerability must be exercised with wisdom since letting down the defenses not only allows for more personal healing and deepened relationship, but may also open the way for much harsher wounding, depending on the response of the one we trust. I thank God often for my trustworthy wife.
Janathan Grace Reflections 