[working definitions] vulnerability

[kaberett]

I've been noticing, working my way through Brené Brown's books, that many of the ways in which she defines or exemplifies vulnerability are just... not intuitive to me. They don't stick; they're an active effort to think my way through every single time I try to engage with the concepts involved. "To be vulnerable is to be capable of being hurt; to be weak is to be unable to withstand injury" is a definition she suggests that sort of works for me on an abstract level -- I at least don't have to work to remember it -- but I don't experience any emotional resonance with it.

Here's an alternative I've been turning over: vulnerability is offering people more complete data so as to enable them to better model me.

On the one hand, I can sort of see that it might sound more impersonal, more abstracted, than the explanation proposed in the previous paragraph -- and on the other it's one that I am viscerally attuned to, to the point that typing it out leaves me hyper-aware of my belly and my throat, of my physical softness, of my -- yes -- vulnerability made manifest. ("The delicacy of my skin" might need to feature in a poem, hmm.)

It seems to be a succinct and internally intuitive way for me to encode the thought-shape of hope-and-fear inherent in letting people see me by showing them how to hurt me (by telling them how I work), with its mirror terror that even if I try I won't be understood.

Comments

[alexseanchai]

something something mortifying ordeal of being known?

[kaberett]

Hmm, I think adjacent/tangential, at least in my experience of The Mortifying Ideal? In that I think my internal approach to same is something like "I am deeply embarrassed by/ashamed of Liking Things, if I tell people I will Like Things they will laugh at me because I'm ridiculous". "Here's something I like" feels like it can get to shame, for me, but by-and-large parses much less as Actual Immediate Threat?

[rugessnome]

not saying this is applicable to you--for me, idk, being ridiculous is fine! great! I like being ridiculous (I say this tongue in cheek, though, because people laughing at things I take more seriously can Hurt)

but the big thing is that with my past and possibly even predispositions, when telling people I like something, the response can bleed into moral judgment territory in my brain, into existential anxiety, into "you are a Terrible Bad person" and um that's... ouch.

[kaberett]

I can see that <3 For me I have got enough "fuck you I do what I want" about Fierce Defiant Joy that I mostly... don't? I'm pretty secure about the ways in which I enjoy all the things people might Pass Moral Judgment about?

For me it's not really a problem until I... want something that's inherently not solitary: wanting someone to want [me, in the context of whatever shared activity, as myself and not for whatever function I can fulfil for them], daring to think that they actually might is... where my shame comes in, but that's very much at the human-interaction level.

[niqaeli]

The definition you gave of hers just had me go "...sure, I guess." But, oh, I had a reflexive flinch from your formulation.

[kaberett]

<3

[recessional]

....I mean the definition of hers you quote makes me viscerally say "fuck you" and also "okay so what are you trying to get from me, when you decide to define me as being 'unable to withstand' the hurt, oh sorry 'injury', that you've just dealt out, and thus weak?"

But this is largely because of how that rhetoric is used and has been used against me, and as a result I call bullshit on the idea of differentiating "hurt" and "injury", and I also call bullshit on "okay you know what define 'withstand', because basically it SOUNDS like you're trying to make 'vulnerable' mean 'getting hurt but not TOOOOO much just enough that I can convince myself to be comfortable with the risk and also to accept that I'm going to react to the injury when/if it happens, but as long as I Keep My Chin Up then I don't have to deal with the concept of weakness or the idea that I might, in fact, get fucking wrecked.'"

Which is . . . another aspect of my problem with her work? In that she's trying! really hard! to convince you to take risks. But she refuses to, like, ADMIT that she's asking you to take risks. She's trying very hard to convince you that this risk! it will be okay!


Whereas your definition honestly makes perfect sense, because yes, that is in fact what's happening.

And in most cases this is actually going to be a good idea! Because MOST PEOPLE will actually use that data to make a better model in order to get along with you better.

But there's also no obscuring the fact that, welp, sometimes that better model is not going to be used to your benefit, and that's a thing that exists, and a risk that we have to take.

[kaberett]

In fairness to her she has written An Entire Book on the premise that "sometimes you take a risk and it doesn't work out for you and you end up flat on your face in the mud & the dust & the blood and... how do you get back up from there?" rather than glossing over it entirely, but that's very much in the context of "leaders!!! entrepreneurs!!!" so it's kind of a turn-off from that angle.


My definition is also coming from the place of -- okay, so, small fucked-up autistic Alex, right, is in the process of going I'M TOO GAY FOR THIS SHIT and flouncing out of the Church and therefore trying to work out a whole new system of ethics from the ground up while honestly probably quite traumatised and passively suicidal--

-- & where I ended up was "I won't deliberately use information people have entrusted me with specifically to hurt them". That was it. That was my line in the sand. (You will note that hurting people other ways was still on the table, along with recognition of... well, at least some of... my own limitations.)

I... have managed to broaden the scope a bit since then, what with becoming more stable and secure and generally closer to being within hailing distance of functional if not sane, but that's where I (as in the-me-that-feels-at-all-continuous) started from, and I Think It Shows.

[fyreharper]

Tbh that sounds to me like a good and reasonable baseline, and it would be great if more people put that into use.

[kaberett]

I get the impression it makes neurotypicals' skin crawl that I'd Need To Spell That Out For Myself. This is why it's asserted that autistics have zero empathy and are probably basically Nazis, etc etc etc...

[fyreharper]

:makes series of Faces: (does facepalm count as a face)

[alexseanchai]

yeah I'm not resonating with the better-model thing at all but damn could her comparison be improved

like if someone sticks a knife in one's back, neither one's weakness nor one's strength has anything to do with why one is bleeding

[kaberett]

I do want to clarify some that I was providing a very brief summary of something she genuinely has written Entire Books trying to explain; to sketch a slightly more expanded version, this is something she says very clearly in the context of trying to draw clear distinctions between "vulnerability" and "weakness" for the sake of an audience that's assuming vulnerability = weakness, and weakness = bad.

(Examples she gives of vulnerability that don't really work for me include "giving comprehensive and thoughtful apologies" in the way that I... kinda default to, these days. It hadn't occurred to me that saying "hey, I screwed up, here's my best understanding of how & what I'll try to do differently next time" could be considered "vulnerable" because these days a lot of it is just... automatic. I have drilled it enough that I don't have the anxiety about Losing Face If I Say I Was Wrong any more, so it's not... scary.)

[alexseanchai]

ohh gotcha

I will probably have more thoughts when not Splitting Headache?

[redsixwing]

Hoo boy, the snarl I did at 'unable to withstand injury.' It starts with "I'm still here, [unprintable]" and goes...downhill.

Your framing of it, though. That works better. Better models mean better predictions mean better ways of making results, be they positive or negative, and that trust is in itself a vulnerability. (I give you this image of me; please, be kind to it.)

And the mirror? That's where the sharp edges are, for me. That even in the showing, the image is incomplete; the data ciphered and the key missing.

[kaberett]

I want to clarify that this is a distinction she draws for the explicit purpose of decoupling "vulnerability" and "weakness" for the sake of an audience that thinks "weakness" is synonymous with "bad" or "unworthy", and she does contextualise it a lot more than I did here!

And: yes. I get frustrated and agitated and scared when I try to explain myself and none of the words come out right or work.

[redsixwing]

My apologies for the overreaction, then. *nod*

Yeah :( I don't know; people say that everyone has that problem, but I can think of two other than me who have said anything about it, and you're one.

[fyreharper]

:flat unimpressed stare at the “to be weak is to be unable to withstand injury” thing:

Your definition: yes yes yes.

In Which I hand people the keys to how I work, show how I can be hurt, in hopes that people will use that information to avoid doing so...

[mdlbear]

>>...show how I can be hurt, in hopes that people will use that information to avoid doing so...<<

Yeah; this. Sums it up nicely.

[kaberett]

To be fair to her: in context, she's making that set of definitions explicitly to try to make "vulnerability" more palatable to an audience that has probably historically considered "vulnerability" synonymous with "weakness", and "weakness" synonymous with "bad" or "unworthy" or what-have-you (where me, well, take the weakest thing in you -- & then beat the bastards with it).

On the topic of music, the other thing I think about a lot with respect to this is Seanan McGuire's Cartography.

[fyreharper]

Ehhh but those synonyms still aren’t. (Though I suppose there probably a lot of people who think they are, so. I suppose I am perhaps not quite her target audience for this either.)

Excuse me I think I need to go play that song/music video a bunch of times... (And pet the Cartography lyrics and wish I could find audio)

[meneltarma]

"To be vulnerable is to be capable of being hurt; to be weak is to be unable to withstand injury"

I... also do not resonate with that at all. I am physically weak. I withstand injury constantly. I can't NOT injure myself, I live with new (chronic) acute injury every. day. That's not what makes me feel vulnerable.

For me, vulnerability is being exposed to someone I don't trust, feeling like someone can turn the tables on me and would; it's structural power imbalances where I feel helpless and know if someone feels mean today I can't fight back; vulnerability is seeing someone else's weakness that can bring them to their knees and not wanting to hurt them and being aware of the precarity of my ability to do harm and wanting desperately not to do harm. When I am physically incapacitated (eg. literally unable to speak during a seizure), I am vulnerable because my ability to not-harm is extremely compromised, I could shatter trust that exists between me and people I love. It's not a weak a spot in my own personal armor so much as the sense the shield I use to keep other people away from the truly dangerous things is either missing, or can't protect them. (From me, yes, sometimes.)

But people I trust don't make me feel endangered. That's such a huge thing, isn't it? Do I feel safe? Do I have the capacity to make safety for my loved ones? I feel dangerous and exposed when I can't make things safer. Maybe there's no truly safe way to engage with people we trust, but it doesn't feel vulnerable when the understanding I'm working on is that we will hold each other's fragilities with care and try to make it safe. An argument is a vulnerable time to admit something needs to change because nobody is their best self. Needing to change doesn't make me feel vulnerable.

And maybe I miss a lot of the world because I move through it not opening up to people I don't trust, but I've learned the hard way that my red flags are worth listening to.

[kaberett]

*chinhands* (good to hear from you!)

A thing I've been thinking about a lot over the past few years, but struggling to get a grip on, is how much of my time I've spent feeling lonely & isolated & disconnected, and trying to work out how to mitigate that without compromising safety in ways that are intolerable to me. I've been thinking about it in part because I feel like I used to know how to form positive connections with people and then... lost it... around a series of unfortunate social implosions; I've been trying to work out how to find a way out of that. To, I think, work out safe ways to take down some of the shielding. (I have a longer post coming on this topic but it's... got a couple of things I want to say before I get that far, and they're both long too, and my wordsbrain keeps going on thesis, so Who Knows how long it'll be.)

Reading Brown is one of the things I'm doing in service of that goal. She is... very definite about the audience she thinks she's writing to; with this book, she's definitely targetting "people who think vulnerability inherently means weakness, and that weakness inherently means unworthiness" & is addressing them, rather than, you know, anyone with a more disability-informed perspective.

Which is, of course, some of why what she has to say lands wide of the mark for an audience of me.

I think.... that possibly a thing I'm trying to do, also, is draw a distinction between situations where I am vulnerable in the sense of open/honest/whole/seeking connection, and vulnerable because I am insecure or disadvantaged or seeking dispensation from someone with more power than me. And I think the former is the sense that Brown is trying to go for, which I think overlaps with your "we will hold each other's fragilities with care".

Language is difficult and words are slippery; does that make sense?

[rugessnome]

...I've been thinking I'll try a Brené Brown book the next time I get to the library, but we'll have to see how my patience/capacity to assert myself bears with various disagreements of varying intensity it looks like I'll have (...having read other posts of yours on the topic)

anyway, yeah I find your definition just...viscerally resonant. (I didn't even notice until I'm going over this before posting that you also used "viscerally")

Her definition of vulnerability, while it sounds like something I might say, doesn't feel very defining for me. (i.e., the statement feels more like ...idk "as a bread, banana bread contains a rising agent" idek breads as a metaphor popped into my head and that's. Interesting. "anger can be a destructive emotion", an implication, than a helpful explanation of what it is, somehow.) Furthermore, it's possible for me to parse "capable of being hurt" as capable of withstanding hurt, which is the opposite of what is meant(!)

And I feel like that phrasing interlocks with stoic/toxic masculinity and the very human pleasure/luxury of finding aesthetic qualities in sadness and being able to empathize with suffering... and even masochism which I don't actually regard as vulnerabilities. Sure, they are within the confines of that worldview, but I'm not confined to it.

(But weirdly, when I went from that sentence to think about myself as weak, I thought about Atlas with like, a faltering joint, trying to spin plates while shouldering the world, which on the face of it may make absolutely no sense but I suspect my mind is getting at the idea of comparatively weak, or the proverbial straw on the camel. Like, you, or an object, can be really strong, but maybe in ways not pertinent to or just not enough for the struggle at hand. Iirc, diamonds can shatter?)

[silveradept]

It sounds like a very particular brand of toxicity, usually toxic masculinity, that has the issue of being unable to withstand injury without falling apart. If it is meant for that specific audience, great. If it's meant for a more general audience, then I like your interpretation much better. Vulnerability is about being more of myself to someone, which means they can hurt me more effectively.

[divulge]

<3

[horselizard]

with its mirror terror that even if I try I won't be understood

That's relatable, for sure.

This is interesting, thank you. <3

[ewt]

So, a thing about vulnerability and authenticity is, we are all inherently vulnerable to the extent that we are interdependent. What that looks like in a particular context will depend on the various power balances etc, but ultimately "telling people the truth about myself" is inextricably linked to "and accepting that they may act on that information".

I don't think that offering more complete data makes one inherently and generally more vulnerable, because, well, interdependence is still a thing whether or not we acknowledge it. But I do think that the sort of authenticity and truthfulness and openness that is often meant by "vulnerability" *is* more risky in certain contexts, because humans are seldom on an entirely equal footing with one another. This authenticity, this vulnerability, is not a magic spell that makes relationships better; it only works if everyone is acting in good faith, and sometimes not even then. I do not want to be "vulnerable" around my childhood abusers. I don't want to have anything to do with some of them.

Things that, for me, lower the risk of injury and enable greater authenticity in communication with others include:
- hanging around with people who are trustworthy (it can take time to get data on this), so that the level of injury I calculate is lower
- improving my skills in the areas of self-care and recovery so that when injury does happen, it can be recovered from; with time and practice this is less terrifying. The more confident I am of my ability to recover from potential injury, the more willing I am to take risks.

Things that don't really help me:
- pretending that the capacity to be wounded is somehow morally bad
- pretending to not care if I am injured or that my injuries don't matter (I mean, this helps in the short term sometimes? But ultimately is not great: it leads to ignoring my own needs and getting massively over-extended. For me it's one of the most dangerous things about the way patriarchal expressions of Christianity emphasise humility, especially for AFAB people.)

TL;DR your version works better for me because words mean things and "vulnerable" and "authentic" aren't referring to the same thing, but frequently get used as if they are; authenticity is necessarily vulnerable, but vulnerability doesn't just vanish if we are inauthentic. And if I'm dealing with someone who has difficulty with opening up and "being vulnerable" my first assumption is, welp, they've obviously been in a bunch of situations where doing that wasn't safe or advantageous. That probably isn't anything to do with me, but it affects how I might want to behave around such people. My ideal course in such situations is to behave in ways that maximise safety for the other person while also working to compensate for any of my own emotional risk, which is easy to do if I'm in a particular role (teaching piano; leading a choir) and harder to do free-form.

[vass]

Hmm.

A couple of thoughts, not directly connected:

1. Re what ewt said, "and accepting that they may act on that information", I've been thinking (not aloud because those thoughts haven't condensed into something coherent yet) for a while about boundaries, in terms of the difficulty of determining what is or isn't "me" or "you" in a world in which we're all part of one giant ecosystem and are also full of microorganisms in symbiosis, and also of old evolutionary entities kludged together to form macroorganisms but still playing out their own ancient evolutionary strategies, which can come into conflict with each other even now... and how we're taking on and setting down molecules all the time, and acting on and being acted on all the time, and eating and being eaten all the time; and in that sense we are not and cannot be discrete entities, an island entire of itself and so on, and any boundaries and independence we establish are necessarily dynamic ones with push and pull and constant renegotiation, and with that comes the possibility that it will go wrong, that someone will take advantage -- but if we close our ports entirely, that is itself a way of going wrong. And so on.

2. Maybe there is more than one type of vulnerability. I think Dr Brown's definition points to something important about vulnerability (and she backs it up with the root of the word) but I don't like it as the defining feature either, even with her reminder that it's important to choose who and when one is vulnerable to, not just to be open to everyone all the time.

I like your definition too, but I feel like it doesn't quite cover all the territory I want it to. So, extending it: permissions. What you're talking about seems to be read access. But sometimes vulnerability is write access or even execute access. And sometimes it's adding someone to a user group. And this parallels the different forms of trust one can have in someone. Yes?

[azurelunatic]

Information close to my private keys, belike?

[vass]

*nod* Also, something related to a Cyteen analogy you've used before, about remembering where which tape came from. (I can't do that, my memory does not work that way, but I can definitely see why it would be an excellent practice if one could.)

[kaberett]

*headbutt* super interested in this, have been chewing it over, have More Things To Follow & will try to get to them tomorrow, but wanted to tell you how much I appreciate you before the next day cycle starts <3

[vass]

<3 Thank you for saying. Same.

[azurelunatic]

The phrase that just came to mind is:
Vulnerability, where I "make a map of my weaknesses" and share it

Related, my hissing refusal to understand* the practice of making a public and well publicized list of one's triggers.

* I don't need it explained to me

[kaberett]

It is a source of ongoing fascination to me, the extent to which people assume that because I'm very open about a lot I must necessarily be open about everything, such that if I haven't disclosed trauma related to [topic] I definitely don't have any (or probably even any experience of the broad area).

No I... just don't talk about the things I actually find hardest in any level of detail unless either it is of direct and immediate relevance that I communicate it, or I already trust you a lot.

[vass]

This tangentially reminds me of a Smol Vass story. Hmm, how can I condense this down so that only the relevant bits are here? Let's see.

Once upon a time when I was nine or ten, I told my parents about the plot of a book I'd read, and inadvertently trod hard on some very old trauma of my father's, involving not having been told something he needed to know. He got upset because I'd just trodden on his trauma. I got upset because he was getting upset AT me for something he'd never warned me to avoid.

I then (being a defensive and horrible Smol Vass who was still quite underdeveloped in several crucial components of being a person, including but not limited to empathy, ethics, a sense of proportion, and a verbal filter) immediately unfairly compared him to the persons who had not told him what he'd needed to know, thereby fully validating his decision not to trust me with the location of his emotional landmines.

I was wrong to do that, but I still think (as I instinctively knew then) that in a way he did wrong me (albeit much less than I wronged him) by leaving one of his (not only one, actually) emotional landmines where his young child could get to it without taking steps in advance to warn me not to touch it, or to contain his reaction when I did. But one can't always know in advance, of course.

I guess part of the calculus of sharing vulnerabilities is threat modelling both the pain and the likelihood of being accidentally triggered vs purposefully triggered (some people finding accidentally more painful than purposely, others the opposite); and a part of that calculus that doesn't get talked about much on the accidentally triggered side of the equation is that in intimate relationships, to allow someone to inadvertently hurt one, where they can't anticipate that, is also to hurt them. This is less than one's own pain at being triggered, but it doesn't count for nothing.

None of which is directly relevant to the situation you describe, of course, since needless to say, in a world where Certain Imageboards exist, among other bad actors, I fully endorse your principle of not making a map of where to hit you hardest available to everyone on the internet, without your even knowing who accesses it when.

[hairyears]

I read this with interest, and I will return to read it again; but I hold my counsel.

Vulnerability is a topic I steer around, very carefully indeed.

[sfred]

<3

[katzenfabrik]

Yes yes yes. This resonates strongly with me as well. <3

[sebenikela]

dropping in late to just say I like your definition and also it feels like a very Natalia in ybeb way of thinking about it

[kaberett]

... ha, thank you. <3

[cloudsinvenice]

This is a really interesting discussion. I keep running into Brown's stuff in extract form, most usefully the concept of a "vulnerability hangover", but I can definitely see the limitations of applying it in a context where we can already acknowledge weakness as a thing, and indeed have to, because disability...