In her opinion, that’s the only way to establish meaningful connections, build friendships and find love.
These topics caught my attention because of my own quite wrecked relationships with shame and vulnerability throughout my whole life.
I recall my fierce twenties, when everything I was actually doing was being rebellious and dismissing everything and everyone who tried to give me advice about life.
Now I think the one and only reason for my demonstrative behavior, except hormones, was my unwillingness to be vulnerable.
I was so scared by the possibility of revealing my weakness as a human creature that I pretended to feel good even though most of the time I didn’t feel good.
Hiding my worries and avoiding straight questions were the ways of defending myself, which let me just fade into the background, as a flawless and seemingly perfect person.
Refusing vulnerability gave me a fat lot of good.
Since no one knew about my weaknesses, no one could hurt or mock me.
It was safe, but also a lonely life.
The trick is, when no one could get through your defense for hurting, no one could also reach you for caring.
Which means, you don’t get painful experiences, but, similarly, you don’t get love.
When I was listening to Brene’s lectures about shame, I couldn’t relate them to my life today.
My first thought was, Ah, I can skip this part since there’s nothing relevant for me.
But when I began to recall my life ten years ago, it became crystal clear for me that I have deep relationships with shame, from keeping my texts unseen to others to muting my real feelings in intimate moments with others.
In fact, shame was with me during my whole life, starting in middle school and accompanying me until my mid-twenties.
I experienced shame while writing my diaries, or talking with a significant other about my feelings, or inadvertently sharing something vulnerable about myself in public.
In all those moments, I often wanted to just fade away— not write all that I’d written, not tell all what I’d told my partner, and not answer all the tricky questions about myself.
It would have been easier just to shut down myself emotionally and let my shame suffocate me.
I don’t know why, despite tense inner pressure, I was mostly choosing sharing, writing and telling instead of closing myself off. it might be because I understood that if I had decided to keep silent, it would have been harder to start sharing and speaking again, despite the shame.
December 2022
100% GOOD (1 votes) 