The Balance Between Being Vulnerable and Being Protected in Communicating with Others.

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the balance between vulnerability and protection.

Back in 2004, I started getting the message to drop my emotional mask and to be more vulnerable. I set the intention to do so, even though I didn’t even really know what it meant. Physically, I was interested in Wilhelm Reich’s descriptions of emotional armoring through tight sphincter muscles…most importantly, I wondered how tight the sphincter muscles around my eyes were, given that my near-sighted eyes are always focused on a point about 6 inches in front of my face. I postulated that perhaps my tight sphincter muscles around my eyes were the physical method by which I was putting on my emotional armor; that didn’t give me many leads for learning how to drop it and to be more emotionally vulnerable, though.

In 2007, I finally learned a concrete tool for being vulnerable. I had taken two OneTaste workshops and started participating in the communication games they played during their In-groups. Later, a Hawaii group formed called Essensual Evolution, and we played the same communication games during our Speakeasies. Some of the major rules of the games were: say the first thing that comes to mind without censorship; if there’s something you REALLY don’t want to say, that’s the thing you’ll benefit most by saying; and whatever somebody says, even if it’s to you or about you, it’s really all about that person, rather than about you, so don’t take it personally.

This, then, was vulnerability: saying the things that I most wanted to hide about myself. Saying the things of which I was most ashamed. Saying the things of which I had the most negative judgement. Allowing people to see the parts of myself that I didn’t want to admit existed.

It was magical. I witnessed such good things come out of people opening up. Energy moved instead of stagnated. Something that had been an almost unbearable secret burden for an individual became practically effortless for the group to hold once they witnessed it. Often it would turn out that if there had been some “weird” energy between two people, once it was spoken and named it dissipated. Often the “weird” energy turned out to be that someone thought someone else was too attractive to even talk to.

Eventually we stopped having regular Speakeasies…people moved away or got busy, it demanded a lot time and energy (especially for the facilitators), we stopped having a great space to do it in, and there was no money in it to help pay back the facilitators and home owners that were subsidizing that experience with their time and space.

To some extent, the skills I learned during that time I’ve been able to apply to my daily life. To a greater extent, I’ve felt my social mask slowly creep back into place. It’s easier not to say the hard thing than to say it. And more importantly, if I am saying charge-y stuff outside the container of a communication game, the person receiving it might take on the charge rather than ground it out, and I might do more harm than good.

Which brings me to the protection side of the spectrum — protection for myself and protection for others. All it takes to convince me that being vulnerable all the time is a bad idea is to look at two-year-olds. Sure, they’re awesome in how they are always expressing themselves without any dissemblance or holding back. On the other hand, they can be narcissistic little jerks who are annoying to be around. We learn social skills for a reason, and one of those social skills is to have some inner censorship about what’s appropriate to say and when is the appropriate time to say it.

I censor myself all the time. If I’m listening to someone, I might have 15 things go through my head, and then choose to say the 3 things that I think are most positive or helpful. Maybe I won’t say ANY of them, and just ask more questions to draw the person out. If I feel angry or frustrated, it’s far more common for me to keep those feelings to myself than to share them with anyone, especially with the person that has me feeling frustrated or angry.

So, am I being less than genuine? On the one hand, mostly I think it doesn’t do any good to express my anger or frustration, because from what I’ve seen and experienced in the past, people are more likely to respond with defensiveness and counter-aggression than with empathy and change. After all, it’s my anger and frustration, it has everything to do with me and very little to do with them…MY anger, MY frustration, MY sadness, MY reaction…why even share it, especially if it creates a snowball effect of more unpleasant emotions? I read a quote once to the effect of “Telling someone a truth that they’re not ready to hear is the same as lying to them.” Being vulnerable and sharing my innermost truths with someone not ready to hear them perhaps does neither one of us any good.

On the other hand, my vulnerability training showed me how, if I’m all full of emotions that I’m not expressing, everyone in the room still feels it. Because it’s not named, however, nobody but me knows for sure what it’s all about, or even the nature of the energy. Ideally, I would be a mastress at moving the energies on my own, then sharing the content of what made me feel angry or frustrated from a neutral place…people hear feedback so much better when they aren’t feeling attacked by fiery energies and aggressive tones of voice. Knowing the best route, and having the skills to walk it, are two different things, though, so here I am, finding myself choosing to hold back more often than not, because I’m not a mastress yet and I know an undesirable tone of voice would creep in were I to express my “negative” feelings.

I suppose, as in all things, balance is the key. “Neither too open nor too protected ye shall be,” says my inner guru. Recently I expressed some feelings that had been coming up for me with a neighbor. I had been holding them back, but after a couple of months, they had built up so much they exploded out. Unfortunately, my neighbor was hurt by my feelings, no matter how much I encouraged him not to take them personally. Eventually, though, we were able to make some agreements that work better for both of us. Being vulnerable outside the structure of a communication game where the rule is not to take things personally left me with an emotional hangover that is still dissipating; overall, though, I think that saying something cleared the air and brought positivity in a way that saying nothing would not have accomplished.

My goal is to increase the number of people in my life with whom I can be vulnerable. I would like to see our culture embrace the policy that if someone is speaking their truth without blame or judgement, that we as listeners can bear witness to their truth without taking it personally, even if their truth involves us somehow. It is one of the ways we can show up for each other as a community, to bear witness to other people’s truths without reaction or judgement.