Selective Vulnerability
Every time I share my writing, a number of people send me messages commending me for opening up. Each time, I tell them that it gets easier the more you do it, that being vulnerable is important to our sense of belonging. I preach about the importance of letting people in, of being genuine, of connecting. I say all these things, but I don’t always practice what I preach. Sometimes I am a hypocrite.
I construct these posts that analyze certain experiences I’ve had and what I’ve learned by experiencing them. I think that it is our duty to do our best to understand how our experiences can be used to promote personal growth, and the growth of society as a whole. But I am a hypocrite because I partake in selective vulnerability. I’m not always vulnerable in my everyday life.
The artist NF explained this concept better than I ever could in his song, “WHY?”:
I know I like to preach to always be yourself
But my emotions make me feel like I am someone else
Me and pride had made a pact that we don't need no help
Which feels like I'm at war inside myself but I forgot the shells
I hold my issues up for all to see, like show and tell
A lot of people know me, but not a lot know me well
A few weeks ago, I was in a therapy session and my therapist said to me, “In front of me, you are this truly incredible woman. You are strong, intelligent, confident, and assertive. You aren’t afraid to say exactly what you’re thinking. I’m wondering if maybe you alter yourself so that you aren’t this same person when you’re with other people, especially romantic partners, and that’s why they pull away from you.”
In the moment I didn’t want to believe it. I felt attacked. I was defensive. I think that this scenario was telling of two things: 1) I chose a really great therapist if she was willing to call me out on my bullshit out of pure concern for my being, and 2) my impulsive reaction to enter fight or flight mode clearly meant that this comment was something that struck a nerve within me, and needed to be explored further in order to understand why.
We dug deeper into the idea of altering myself and discovered that when it comes to building relationships with other people, I find myself in this never-ending cycle of push and pull. In the majority of scenarios, I push. Another person pursues me and I want none of it. In the more rare occasions, I pull. I find someone that I am genuinely interested in and I become the pursuer, and they push me away in return.
The problem is that in those instances when I am the pursuer, I alter myself and I don’t even realize it. Each time, I feel like I’m offering everything I am on a silver platter in a “take it or leave it” kind of way. However, that’s not true at all. When I am in the role of pursuer I am not my complete self; I dull parts of me so as not to come on too strong. I believe it has something to do with a certain kind of fear of rejection that I only experience when I am in the pursuer role. Because I do it less often, it feels like a greater loss if I am completely myself and someone doesn’t like it. It feels more vulnerable being rejected when I am showing someone the whole version of myself than it does when I am only showing someone a small fraction.
To protect myself from a deeper rejection, I subconsciously created a defense mechanism that caused me to stop behaving in ways that are true to my being. In this way, I have hardwired my brain to stop being my full self with people that I admire. This means that if I am sitting in front of someone that I admire greatly (or am intimidated by, which is usually hard to differentiate) in any capacity, romantic or not, I eliminate parts of myself. I become quiet and insecure. Oftentimes in these situations, I find myself slipping into a “people pleasing” mode, where I become the ultimate submissive. I go out of my way to make sure everyone else is comfortable and getting what they want, to the point where I forget I have any wants or needs of my own. In those moments, all I want is for someone to tell me what to do. I’m not kidding, when prompted what I want, my mind literally goes blank and I cannot form any words other than, “I don’t know, what do you want?”
And if I am my true assertive self straight from the beginning, it’s probably because either there is a certain level of admiration I just don’t have for you (sorry about it), or in some way, you did or said something that reassured my brain that it was safe for me to be my 100% true self with you.
I think that an important distinction to make is that I don’t feel like I have to alter myself to become more palatable for other people, I subconsciously do it in order to protect myself. That is exactly why I can be vulnerable in my writing and feel (mostly) comfortable doing it. If someone doesn’t like or agree with something I wrote, that kind of rejection doesn’t hit as deeply. It is only a surface level rejection, and that is much easier to recover from than a rejection of everything that I am. My rational brain knows that rejection is rejection and no matter the kind it really shouldn’t deter me from living my life in any way, but try telling my emotional brain that.
This realization about myself is such a weird concept for me to wrap my head around. This kind of defense mechanism that I possess challenges things I thought I knew about myself. In reality, I am independent and capable. I am not a follower, so why do I subconsciously become one around certain people? I imagine that this new understanding of myself will be something I’ll be struggling with for some time. I can’t just override my subconscious behaviors overnight. It is not enough just to make the realization, it has to be an active pursuit on all fronts to negate this negative behavior.
From this moment on, I am vowing to do my very best at being my complete, vulnerable self, especially in situations where I would not normally be. I don’t want to be a hypocrite. I want to exemplify everything I believe to be true in the world. I encourage everyone reading this to do the same, even when it means admitting a hard truth about themselves.
Side Note: There is a really great talk on Netflix called “Brene Brown: Call To Courage” that explores vulnerability in our society and gives a more in-depth look at why it’s important, and I’d highly recommend it to anyone interested in the topic.