Feeling Vulnerable

I had a brilliant conversation with a friend until the early hours of this morning. The topics ranged from poetry to mental health to family ancestry to name but a few. The geek in me absolutely LOVES stimulating conversations like that no matter what time of the day or night it is.

Here’s the thing though, I kind of feel like I’m suffering from a little bit of a ‘vulnerability hangover’ and that’s due to one thing she said: ‘You sound vulnerable with your croaky voice.’ It was just an observation she had made and it’s unsurprising that my voice was deep and croaky considering the time of the night/early morning it was. I had been a little tired throughout the conversation but at that point, I found myself suddenly becoming more awake and alert.

A few posts ago (‘My Vulnerability and Shame’) I wrote about Brené Brown and her talks via http://www.ted.com on ‘The Fear of Vulnerability’ and ‘Listening to Shame.’ Whilst I found those talks truly moving to the point of which I am re-assessing my views on the aforementioned emotions and aspects of myself in order to better myself I am still finding it difficult to implement one of the things she said that I found so fundamentally moving:

‘Vulnerability is our most accurate measurement of courage.’

This is obviously one of those situations when they say ‘it’s easier said than done.’ Having said that though, I thought that over the last 6 months or so I was getting better at not only understanding it and truly believing but also actually implementing it. I mean, I am more comfortable talking about my mental health issues both on this blog and in person, I have made steps to check out counselling again to see what it is that I really need, I have laid the remaining demons of my past to rest and yet I still don’t understand why I find vulnerability as hard and as uncomfortable as I did back then. I suppose, after years of believing that vulnerability is uncomfortable, negative and well, scary it makes sense that it’s going to take more than a few months to change that.

Here’s the thing though, I really do believe that vulnerability is a fundamental aspect of courage and that actually once we’ve got that down it’s about realising that courage is not the absence of fear but rather the recognition that some things are more important than fear.

Here’s an injection of deep honestly: my concern is that if I had such a reaction with one thing that a friend had said, how on earth am I meant to be deal with a relationship? I don’t mean a relationship right now but I mean in the future. Wait, it’s not even that… It’s more like, if I feel so uncomfortable with vulnerability even within myself, how am I meant to deal with a whole other person too?

I think this is a good identifier in realising that I still need to work on ‘me.’ So now, I’m left with food thought and feeling a little more nervous a tad bit aprehensive about my initial counselling meeting this week.

Wish me luck.