On Vulnerability
I’ve spent my last year and a half in spaces — Stanford GSB and Harvard Kennedy School — where we urge each other to “be vulnerable.”
But what does it mean to “be vulnerable?”
Oxford Languages defines vulnerability in traditional terms as: “the quality or state of being exposed to the possibility of being attacked or harmed, either physically or emotionally.” Brené Brown describes our contemporary version of vulnerability as: “uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure” and calls it “our most accurate measure of courage.”
I believe both definitions can be true, depending on the circumstances.
I also believe we’re often committing vulnerability malpractice. We encourage others to “be vulnerable” without understanding their life experiences or current situations. We encourage others to “be vulnerable,” yet judge others for what they say or do.
To “be vulnerable,” we first need to feel a sense of safety and unconditional support.
I’ve learned this the hard way. Over the last five years, I’ve been on a journey to remove the layers of armor that I built up during my childhood out of necessity, to do the slow, messy work in relationship with others to allow myself to become more vulnerable.
For most of my life, I felt I lived under the threat of violence. To be vulnerable would be to put myself at an increased risk of physical or emotional attack. To be invulnerable — to put on layers of armor — was an act of self-protection.
There was no room for vulnerability in a school where my classmates were using steroids. Where a minor slight could quickly escalate into a full-on fight. Where I got arbitrarily punched in the head after class one day because I was on the wrong side of someone’s self-described “fit of rage.”
There was no room for vulnerability growing up in a New Jersey town where swastikas were regularly drawn on the bathroom walls. Where your high school administration brushed it off as just, “kids being kids.” Where, when a swastika was spray-painted on my car, I was encouraged to not report it and wash it off.
There was no room for vulnerability in the living room, at age 17, when I learned that my uncle died by suicide. When, in Forensics Science class three weeks later, a sheriff’s deputy showed us a video of a man shooting himself in the head without warning. When I burst out of the classroom — crying, angry, alone.
Invulnerability was adaptive. Invulnerability was agency. Invulnerability enabled me to create a personal sense of safety in an environment that felt unsafe.
Vulnerability, at its foundation, requires a sense of safety.
Both Oxford Languages and Brené agree that vulnerability entails the risk of being exposed to attack or harm, either emotionally or physically.
To encourage vulnerability in others without engendering a sense of safety first is, therefore, to expose them to attack or harm.
Personally, I felt I needed to leave my home to begin to establish the conditions for safety.
I moved to Virginia for college, started a nonprofit after school and became financially independent, and then began to find sturdier, safer ground in my young adulthood.
But a greater sense of safety, alone, wasn’t enough for me to become vulnerable. I had layers of armor that I needed to shed.
Vulnerability is cultivated in relationships built upon unconditional love and support. These are spaces where you are accepted as you are, where you have nothing you need to prove.
I experienced this unconditional love at the age of 22 with my girlfriend. For the first time in my life, here was someone who had no desire to change me, who loved me as I was, rough edges and all.
Patiently and gently, she helped me start to shed my defenses, and showed me that I wouldn’t be harmed by sharing vulnerable parts of myself with her.
This experience opened me up, encouraging me to disclose more of myself to my chaplain and therapist in the years that followed. Each, in their own way, made me feel completely accepted and supported, further reinforcing that I could shed more layers of my armor.
All the while, I had the example of the nonprofit I founded, the Armed Services Arts Partnership (ASAP). In watching the veterans in our community grow by opening up and doing the things that scared them — whether that be sharing the most difficult story of their lives, or performing a five-minute stand-up comedy set — I internalized the transformative power of vulnerability, and I was challenged to follow their lead.
After five years, I was no longer only associating vulnerability with harm. I was also associating it with growth.
As much as anyone, I appreciate the power of a healthy vulnerability. It has allowed me to transform my relationship with myself, my loved ones, and the world around me. I am a better human today because I have shed much of my armor.
But, I also recognize that my vulnerability is a privilege — a privilege due to my sense of safety and security, and a privilege derived from my accepting, loving relationships.
Arriving at this point required a certain geographic mobility — enabling me to leave my hometown — to which many people lack access. Arriving at this point required years of difficult internal work, encouraged and modeled by a community of unconditional support that most people don’t have.
In our workplaces, our classrooms, and our communities, we have been wielding vulnerability sloppily.
We cannot keep asking people to “be vulnerable” in spaces where they do not feel safe. We cannot keep expecting others to “embrace vulnerability” in situations where their performance is being judged and their acceptance is conditional.
But what can we do?
We can start by acknowledging just how difficult a healthy sense of vulnerability is to attain. This means recognizing the different life experiences we each carry. It means internalizing that we are all in varying stages of our journeys moving toward (or away from) opening up. And, it means accepting and meeting others where they are, rather than predetermining where they should be.
We can also strive to facilitate environments authentically grounded in a sense of unconditional emotional support. This means relinquishing our desires to win conversations and prove others wrong. It means setting norms of assuming good faith and extending grace, listening with curiosity and without judgment, and seeking to accompany rather than fix others. And, it means holding ourselves and others accountable to these norms.
These recommendations are not panaceas. They do not address the physical and emotional violence that is endemic to our society.
But, they are a start.
And, if we put them into practice, we can begin to approach vulnerability — both in ourselves and in others — with more nuance, understanding, and tact.
