You Are Afraid to Be Vulnerable
We connect to others through being open, but for some being open means being vulnerable. In your case this vulnerability leads you to the core of the boundaries of your identity, which have not been fully set within you. This leaves you feeling unsafe in intimate relationships. Rather than shutdown, learn to access those vulnerabilities within to find the intimacy in love that you wish for. Remember every vulnerability within is an invitation for love.
All strength comes from connection – from the connection of knowing who we are to the connection that comes from being united with another as one. Intimacy is the vehicle of connection. It is a vehicle of clarity. It is a vehicle of seeing. Intimacy is the most powerful energy of the universe. Being intimate – letting someone ‘in’ in a relationship – allowing a connection where we are seen clearly at our core level is our greatest desire but also our greatest challenge. Being intimate is the ability to be one’s self fully in the presence of another. We allow others to see and share our values, beliefs, dreams, fears, hopes and love without the fear of rejection. We relax as we can open and shut our emotional doors depending on the circumstances in which we find ourselves. In intimacy there is no fear about what is being seen or what is being shared. In choosing this card you have identified parts of you that are fearful of the connection of intimacy. You have hidden your fear of intimacy by being the listening post or tower of strength for others rather than acknowledging that strength comes from being vulnerable.
You have given others the space and freedom to be themselves, not realising that you have yet to give yourself the same gift. It is only through others that you understand the level of intimacy and connection within you because they reflect the aspects within you that are hidden. When you share who you are with others you feel connected not only to the person you have shared with, but more importantly you will feel connected to yourself. Being vulnerable and intimate will create the connection you are seeking, connection with yourself and Spirit. Through intimacy you connect to all there is.
We all operate at different levels of intimacy; like the keys of a piano there are high and low notes. True intimacy comes when you find the right notes in relationship with others as you move through the different levels of sharing. At each level you strike the right chord with others to find harmony. Conversation is a way of monitoring your levels of intimacy. At the lowest level of intimacy you form a connection through general comments to others. As the give-and-take of conversation increases the level of clarity and understanding, intimacy moves to a higher level, forming a deeper connection. In connection – at whatever level of intimacy – there is flow.
Level 1: With a stranger you comment on the weather, you create a connection by observing the world around you, ‘it’s very wet today’. The connection is created through a shared experience. Think of two people hud-dled at a bus stop; each feels a sense of connection because it is snowing or it is raining. They are smiling together. There is intimacy in the connection. There is flow, a connection to a love (to all that there is).
Level 2: In this next level of disclosure you share an opinion of that world around you. ‘It’s rainy today, I hate getting wet.’ ‘I love snow until it’s time to shovel.’
Level 3: At the next level you share your beliefs about the world around you: ‘I believe that this person is the right one for the job’, and you give your reasons. Most people operate at Level 3. It is the level where projects occur – raising children, taking out the garbage, a professional job is shared, etc.
Level 4: This is the level of comfortable assertiveness. You can feel and understand what is ‘true’ or ‘false’ (for you) in conversation and can address it with ease. You share your values and your beliefs. Your sentences start with ‘I feel … happy, sad, uncomfortable’, and so on.
Level 5: This is the level of vulnerable sharing. You reveal your most per-sonal details. It reflects your inner life – your joys and your fears, problems, painful life experiences, history, or the occasions in life that give you the deepest joy. You share what those values and beliefs mean for you personally and how they reflect on your life: ‘I don’t agree with your actions because of what I believe’ or ‘Please hold me I am afraid’. You are vulnerable without fearing the loss of respect, dignity or safety.
Level 5: This is the level of vulnerable sharing. You reveal your most per-sonal details. It reflects your inner life – your joys and your fears, problems, painful life experiences, history, or the occasions in life that give you the deepest joy. You share what those values and beliefs mean for you personally and how they reflect on your life: ‘I don’t agree with your actions because of what I believe’ or ‘Please hold me I am afraid’. You are vulnerable without fearing the loss of respect, dignity or safety.
No one level of connection is better than the other. There is nothing wrong with your relationship if on one day you are at Level 3 and another day you are at Level 5. You don’t have to be operating at Level 5 – sharing every detail of your life with others – in order to create connection with them. In fact, in Level 5 there is an openness that cannot be maintained for long periods of time. People will always withdraw to Level 3 – with the project driven-component – by making breakfast for the kids, paying the bills or doing a load of laundry, etc. There is intimacy, love and flow in these actions. Each level of intimacy creates a bond of trust; it links you to something and opens you up. You can move from Level 1 to Level 5 quite easily. Choose the right level of intimacy with a person to match the occasion and you will both feel a connection.
If you have chosen the wrong level of intimacy for the situation you may feel rejected if someone does not respond at the same level. If you have chosen the appropriate level of intimacy and shared what you thought or felt don’t worry if the other person doesn’t open up or even agree with you. The power of this card is to understand that if you want to, you can share at every level just because you can.
We feel intimacy – connection – when we choose the level of intimacy with the other person. In choosing the level of intimacy we decide the level of connection we are willing to engage in and we reflect the level of con-nection that we are emotionally ready for. In the case of the two strangers at the bus stop, there is a choice made by each of them to engage at that level of intimacy. Each individual sees and acknowledges the other in their connection of a shared experience at the level of intimacy appropriate for the moment. If one of the strangers had chosen not to engage by shutting the other person out, there would have been no intimacy.
In cases where we haven’t chosen the level of intimacy and others dictate the level of sharing required, our vulnerability comes to light and we retreat to the behaviours that keep us safe. These behaviours may take the form of anger, judgement, fearfulness, withdrawing by either shutting down the conversation or avoiding others. For instance, your mother-in-law comes over to your house and starts judging your home and how it is maintained. Through her comments she crosses your boundaries and engages at Level 5 feeling unsafe and defensive in her presence you try to operate at Levels.
1, 2 or 3. You want to set a boundary with her by saying, ‘I appreciate your comments but I run my household in a different way and these are my values for my children and my whole life’, but fearful of offending your partner you say nothing. So, instead of allowing her to see your vulnerability through the sharing of your feelings, such as, ‘Actually sometimes when the children speak back to me, I simply don’t know what to say’, you retreat from the possibility of connection with her. You are unable to create any new levels of intimacy because sharing means exposure for you. It is easy to keep what you feel inside rather than take the risk that what you feel may be abused or create conflict.
In cases like this you hide behind the mask of the different roles you play, disconnecting from your soft underbelly and dissociating from your core aspects of self. You are invulnerable because you do not share from your true self. You operate over the part of you that is calling for your help and acknowledgement. By doing this you lose the ability to gauge the best re-sponse that represents you emotionally. Sharing means the mask is removed and you therefore perhaps lose a position of superiority, being seen as the laid-back calm person, being supported by your friends in your role as the victim when you retell your story, the status quo with your husband, and so on. To become vulnerable you will have to release the mask that you hide behind. Removing the mask feels risky but what you gain through being real is connection – to self and to others.
This connection is what gives your vulnerability its strength. What keeps you hidden behind your mask is your fear. The mask of fear is your vul-nerabilities. Your vulnerabilities are your own self-judgements. Inside each of the emotions that define your fear of connection, fear of facing your hidden shame, self-doubt, self-criticism is the answer for how to connect. To remove the mask is to move forward through the emotions, to move into the light, to share your experience not as the victim who says ‘I’m frightened’, ‘I’m alone’, but to use your experience constructively to say, ‘I’m not ashamed’, ‘I don’t feel guilty’, ‘I’m open to my own solutions’, ‘I’m open to a new path’.
This card is asking you to follow your line of vulnerability to find your strength through connection. This is a line of motion (e-motion). You find the ‘weakness’ within you and turn the energy of weakness into strength. You allow the journey of your emotion, your vulnerability, to be your point of connection with the other person. For instance if a colleague questions your work – in your anger, in your defensiveness – you acknowledge, accept and connect that this person is the voice of your vulnerabilities – your fear of being judged ‘not good enough’. You may start by setting a boundary, by connecting to your truth, such as, ‘I appreciate your comments but I don’t agree with them because my values are actually different from yours’. Or you may choose to go straight to the common ground that you share with them as a co-worker by saying, ‘Actually that did confuse me, it was a question I asked myself ’. In this moment you acknowledge to yourself that aspect of yourself that you judge and the energy moves back into flow and becomes your strength. You are able to now celebrate your life and its challenges. You and your colleague share the same fears, the same insecurities – maybe in different forms but you are both human in your fears. You accept yourself and acknowledge that you are human – this is your strength. You can take off the superman mask and identify with others that, ‘We all do our best’.
You won’t necessarily change the other person’s opinion or behaviour but you will feel a lot more comfortable once you have connected with yourself and can speak from your core. And you never know, you might just find the connection you seek with the other person, your colleague or your mother-in-law. No matter the outcome with the other person, the power of vulnerability is that you will definitely connect to yourself.
The purpose of intimacy is not to change the other person. The purpose of intimacy is the freedom to be yourself. Knowledge of yourself is true intimacy.
